Tag: Google Calendar

A new update to Google Calendar is rolling out on the web that brings the ability to add a note to a calendar invite as well as propose a new time.  The new feature is rolling out to all G Suite accounts, including the free ones that most consumers use, over the course of the next few days.

Once you have the update, you can open up a meeting that you have been invited to and at the bottom of the meeting invite, can propose a new time or add a note, both of which will be sent to the meeting organizer.

Google G Suite customers are going to soon be able to benefit for a handy feature in Google Calendar.  Automatic Room Suggestions, based on your location, is coming to the web version of the app, allowing you to quickly see meeting rooms that are available based on where you are at the time.

The feature goes hand-in-hand with a release that happened earlier this year which would allow for rooms to be found based on where a guest was located.  Now, once admins have established the work location of an employee, they can see what rooms are available to them when they are setting up a meeting.

A new, cloud-side update is currently rolling out to Google Calendar that is going to make it much quicker to see when an event has been declined by all invitees.  If you have sent out an invite and all attendees have declined it, you will now see a small exclamation point next to the event in Google Calendar.  You can then tap on that event and will see a prompt to reschedule the event given it has been declined.

The idea is that at a glance, you can look at your calendar on your phone and see the decline without having to actually open up the invite on your calendar to see who has accepted and who has not.

A new and handy new feature is rolling out to Google Calendar on the web that allows you to add messages to updated calendar invites.  Currently, when you updated an invite in Calendar, it sends the updated information (date, time, etc) but it does not include the ability to add a message for why the meeting was moved or the updated content of the meeting.

This new feature will be rolling out to all G Suite customers as well as consumers and while the focus is on the web portion, the ability to add notes to an updated invite is also available in the Android version of Google Calendar.

Google has announced the dates when G Suite customers will begin getting the new Google Calendar.  To this point, G Suite admins have been able to manually force the update on domains or to delay the release of the new Material Design calendar on their domains.  Now that is changing with several key dates coming up.

For domains that are in the Rapid Release schedule, users will start getting update next Monday, January 8th if their domain is set to automatic updating.  Users can still opt out, for now.  For those domains in the Scheduled Release bracket, you will get the update following Monday, January 15th.  Again, users can opt out for now.

For those readers who administer a Google G Suite environment, take note of an announcement that Google made this week.  On February 28, 2018 the classic Google Calendar interop tool will be shuttered, meaning that you will need to be using the new tool which was announced back in July.

For those who aren’t familiar with this tool, it allows for the seamless coexistence of a Microsoft Exchange or Office 365 environment within a G Suite account in that same environment.  That means users can search across not only Google Calendar but Microsoft-based calendars for information, meeting times and the like.

In July, Google released a far more robust version of this interop tool, bringing several new features and overall stability to the solution.  That is the version that Google wants you using and, come February next year, you will have to use it going forward.