Shared documents, online meetings and calendars

Work and study increasingly happen with other people who are not in the same room. A group may write a report together, a teacher may meet students on a screen, and a clinic may send an invitation for an appointment. All of this depends on three skills: sharing a file with the right level of access, taking part in an online meeting, and keeping a calendar. They are easy to learn, and doing them well makes you reliable and safe to work with.

Shared documents

A shared document is a file kept online that several people can open, and often edit, at the same time. Instead of emailing different copies called report-v2-final-FINAL.docx, everyone works on one copy. You see other people's cursors, and each change is saved automatically and recorded in version history. You need a connection, because the file lives in the cloud, although some services allow offline editing and sync later.

You share a document by pressing its Share button and either typing the email addresses of the people you choose, or creating a shared link. For each person or link you choose a level of permission. Think of three roles at a school notice board. A viewer may read the notice. A commenter may pin a note beside it. An editor may change the notice itself.

Comments, suggestions and working together

Good co-authors talk in the document. A comment is a note attached to a word or paragraph. People can reply to it and mark it as resolved when it is settled. A suggestion (in some programs called tracked changes or suggesting mode) shows a proposed edit in colour, which the owner can accept or reject, so no one changes the text silently. Use comments for questions and suggestions for wording.

• Agree who is responsible for each part, so that two people do not rewrite the same paragraph.
• Do not delete another person's text unless you were asked to. Suggest the change instead.
• If something goes wrong, open Version history, look at earlier versions and restore the one you want.
• Remember that the owner, and often every editor, can see who changed what.

Online meetings

A video meeting lets people see and hear one another over the Internet. Most services work in a browser or through an app, and the host sends a link for the meeting, often inside a calendar invitation. Before you click it, check that the invitation came from someone you know. Fake meeting invitations are used for phishing, so do not enter a password on a page you reached from an unexpected invitation.

Most problems come from equipment and connection, so test before the meeting, not during it. Your browser will ask for permission to use the camera and microphone. Allow it only for a meeting service that you trust, and know where to switch it off again. You can also use the wifi or a cable to improve the connection.

Meeting manners

• Mute your microphone when you are not speaking. Background noise is very distracting for the others.
• Use headphones if you can. They stop an echo, which happens when your microphone picks up the other person's voice from your speaker.
• Sit facing a light, not with a bright window behind you, and check what is visible behind you.
• Wait for a pause before speaking, or use the Raise hand button or the chat if there is one.
• Say your name when you join and do not share the meeting link publicly.
• Before sharing your screen, close private windows and notifications. Share one window rather than the whole screen when you can.
• If you record a meeting, tell everybody first, and ask people before you share a recording.

Calendars

A calendar keeps your appointments in one place and sends reminders. Online calendars sync between your phone, tablet and laptop, so an event you add on one appears on all of them. An event normally has a title, a date, a start and end time, a place or meeting link, and a reminder. You can invite people by email address, and they receive a calendar invitation that they accept, decline or answer with Maybe.

When people live in different places, the time zone matters. A meeting at 15:00 in Nairobi is not at 15:00 in London. Good calendars display the time in the viewer's own zone, but only if the event's zone was set correctly. When you arrange a meeting with someone far away, write both times in the message, for example 15:00 East Africa Time (13:00 London). Also be careful with invitations from strangers. A calendar entry can contain a link to a fake page, so treat the link in an unexpected invitation as you would a link in a suspicious email.