Tag Archives: Google Calendar

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – July 9, 2021

New updates 

Unless otherwise indicated, the features below are fully launched or in the process of rolling out (rollouts should take no more than 15 business days to complete), launching to both Rapid and Scheduled Release at the same time (if not, each stage of rollout should take no more than 15 business days to complete), and available to all Google Workspace and G Suite customers.

Add a background image to Google Keep notes on mobile
You can now customize your Google Keep notes on Android and iOS by choosing a background from a set of designer-created images — simply open a note, select the palette icon, and select a background. | Available to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google Accounts. | Learn more.

Allow Users to receive shared calendars on mobile
Users can now share their calendar with another user on their mobile device without fear of spam attacks. Once a user shares a calendar with a recipient, the recipient receives an email notification with a link “Add this calendar.” The recipient must explicitly click on the link to add the calendar to their account. 


Previous announcements 
The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog earlier this week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

Indicate whether you’ll join a meeting virtually or in person on Google Calendar
To make Google Calendar more flexible in the hybrid workplace, we're introducing new RSVP options for Calendar invitations. With this update, you can indicate how you plan to join a meeting - in the meeting room, or virtually. | Learn more.


Scheduled refresh improvements for Connected Sheets now generally available
Today, several improvements for scheduled refresh are now available: hourly refreshes, specific start dates, and frequency options such as every five days, every two months, etc. | Available to Google Workspace Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Education Standard customers. | Learn more.


For a recap of announcements in the past six months, check out What’s new in Google Workspace (recent releases).


Indicate whether you’ll join a meeting virtually or in person on Google Calendar

Quick launch summary 

To make Google Calendar more flexible in the hybrid workplace, we're introducing new RSVP options for Calendar invitations. With this update, you can indicate how you plan to join a meeting - in the meeting room, or virtually. 


Then, both the organizer and guests will be able to see how attendees are planning to attend the meeting in the event detail. This will help meeting attendees know what to expect when joining a meeting, and prepare accordingly. 


Note that if you select the new RSVP options, the join method details (e.g. “joining virtually”) are not shared with contacts on other platforms, such as Microsoft Outlook. The new RSVP options will initially be available on Google Calendar, and will be coming to calendar invitations in Gmail soon. We’ll announce on the Workspace Updates blog when it’s available. 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 

Important changes to how the Google Calendar API manages and limits queries

What’s changing 

There has been a change to how the Google Calendar API manages usage. Previously, Calendar API queries were monitored and limited daily. These queries are now monitored and limited on a per-minute basis. 

See below for more information. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and developers 



Why it’s important 

This change introduces better behavior when a quota is exceeded, as requests will be rate-limited until the quota is available rather than falling all requests for the rest of the day. Additionally, this will help developers identify issues around quota enforcements faster. 

More information regarding your usage and quota limits can be found in the Google API console. 



Additional details 

To ensure you’re working efficiently with your quota, we recommend: 
  • Using push notifications instead of polling. 
  • Randomized timing to ensure user requests are spread out evenly, rather than bursts of requests. 
  • Using incremental synchronization with sync tokens for all collections instead of repeatedly retrieving all the entries. 
  • Increasing page size to retrieve more data at once by using the max results parameter. 
  • Updating events when they change to avoid recreating all the events on every sync. 
  • Using exponential backoff for error retries to make rate-limiting work properly. 



Getting started 

  • Admins and Developers: Use this guide to learn more about how to view your API usage and limits.
  • End users: There is no end user impact for this feature. 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 

More options to control which holidays show on your Calendar

Quick launch summary 

To provide more control over your calendar, we’re adding a new option to choose which holidays to display. Previously, we showed all holidays for regions you select, including official public holidays (such as thanksgiving in the US, or the summer bank holiday in the UK), as well as unofficial other holidays (such as Valentine's Day and Mother’s Day). Now, you can choose if you want to see: 
  • Public holidays and other holidays: Will continue to display all holidays, as it does today. 
  • Public holidays only: Will only show official public holidays for your region. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: This new option will be available to users by default. The default will remain to show all holidays, so there will be no change unless a user specifically changes it. 
  • End users: To manage holidays on your calendar, go to Google Calendar on the web and go to Settings > Add Calendar > Browse Calendars of Interest > Regional calendars, or on Mobile go to Settings > Holidays > Regional holidays. Use our Help Center to learn more about managing holidays in Google Calendar. 

Rollout pace 

Google Calendar on the web and Android 

Google Calendar in iOS 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers, as well as users with personal Google accounts. 

Resources 

More options to control which holidays show on your Calendar

Quick launch summary 

To provide more control over your calendar, we’re adding a new option to choose which holidays to display. Previously, we showed all holidays for regions you select, including official public holidays (such as thanksgiving in the US, or the summer bank holiday in the UK), as well as unofficial other holidays (such as Valentine's Day and Mother’s Day). Now, you can choose if you want to see: 
  • Public holidays and other holidays: Will continue to display all holidays, as it does today. 
  • Public holidays only: Will only show official public holidays for your region. 

Getting started 

  • Admins: This new option will be available to users by default. The default will remain to show all holidays, so there will be no change unless a user specifically changes it. 
  • End users: To manage holidays on your calendar, go to Google Calendar on the web and go to Settings > Add Calendar > Browse Calendars of Interest > Regional calendars, or on Mobile go to Settings > Holidays > Regional holidays. Use our Help Center to learn more about managing holidays in Google Calendar. 

Rollout pace 

Google Calendar on the web and Android 

Google Calendar in iOS 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers, as well as users with personal Google accounts. 

Resources 

Edit details in line with Google Tasks on the web

Quick launch summary 

You can now add additional information to your personal tasks without opening the “Details” dialog box. We hope this change makes it faster and easier for you to add descriptions, assign dates and times, and organize your tasks. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature. 
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about editing tasks on the web. 

Rollout pace 


Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 

Use Google Maps in the quick access side panel

Quick launch summary 

You can now use Google Maps in the quick access side panel. This means you can use Google Maps to see and research place information on the same screen, which can make it easier to: 
  • See place details such as location, opening hours, and user reviews. 
  • Make sure you’re adding the correct location to a Calendar event. 
  • Get travel times and directions to plan ahead your trip to an upcoming event location. You can add trips to your Calendar to help arrive on time by knowing when to leave. Predicted traffic and transit at the future time of the event is used for a better estimate of travel time. 
The quick access side panel can already help you view your Calendar while in other Google Workspace apps, take notes, manage your tasks, and more. With Maps in the side panel, you’ll be able to see more information without switching contexts or using multiple tabs. This will make it easier to plan and participate in timely events. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: This feature will be on by default for all users with Calendar and Maps enabled. If Maps is disabled for a user, there will be no change to their experience and they will not see Maps in the side panel. Visit the Help Center to learn more about turning services on or off for your users. 
  • End users: If your admin has enabled Maps for your domain, click on the location of any Calendar event to start using this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about using the side panel. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources 

Be informed when someone subscribes to email notifications of your Calendar

Quick launch summary

We’ll now notify you when someone subscribes to updates made to your Google Calendar.

When you share your calendar with others, they have the option to subscribe to changes you make on your calendar. In order to increase transparency to calendar owners on who can access this information, we'll inform them via email if someone subscribes to be proactively notified about upcoming events or any changes to existing and new events on their calendar.

We'll let you know when someone subscribes to any of these notifications about your calendar


Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about sharing Calendar permissions.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Snooze Google Calendar desktop notifications

Quick launch summary

You can now snooze Google Calendar desktop notifications directly from the notification itself. A top user request, this should make it less likely that you miss meetings or show up late. By default, snoozed notifications will reappear one minute before the scheduled meeting; you can change this timing in your Calendar settings. You can also “re-snooze” a notification for an additional five minutes as many times you’d like, until the meeting ends.

You can now snooze Google Calendar desktop notifications—directly from this notification.


A few things to keep in mind:
  • You must have desktop notifications enabled and Calendar open in a tab to see notifications on your desktop.
  • You can only snooze notifications on Chrome browsers.
  • Users with desktop notifications enabled may see the promo below in the coming weeks.
Users with Calendar desktop notifications enabled may see this one-time promo in the coming weeks.


Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End users: This feature will be ON by default if you have desktop notifications enabled. You cannot remove the option to snooze notifications, but you can change the timing of snoozed notifications. Visit the Help Center to learn more about changing and turning off Calendar notifications.
You can change the timing of snoozed notifications in your Calendar notifications settings menu.


Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers

Resources

Reminder: Switch to the new desktop Google Chat app before March 30 2021

What's changing

As previously announced, we plan to switch users from the old electron-based Google Chat app to the new Chat standalone app in March 2021. If you or your users are still using the old version of desktop Google Chat, you should upgrade to the new desktop Chat app before March 30 to minimize any potential disruption. 


Who’s impacted 

Admins and end users 


Why it matters 

Last year, we introduced a new Google Chat standalone app. The app is a Progressive Web Application (PWA), which provides a fast, reliable, and engaging way to use Chat on any desktop device with the Google Chrome web browser. 

In February, users of the old app started seeing banners prompting them to install the new desktop Chat. Clicking on the banner takes them to chat.google.com, where they see a pop-up nudge asking them to install the new Chat app. 

Regardless of whether the new Chat app is installed, users will be able to use Chat on the web at chat.google.com or within Gmail, if permitted by their admin. 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 

  • The new Google Chat app is available now to all users. 

Availability 

  • Applicable to all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business customers 

Resources