Tag Archives: Google Calendar

New meeting creation flow for Calendar on Android

Quick launch summary

We recently announced a new event creation flow for Calendar on the web. We’re now making similar improvements to save you time and make it easier to create or edit events on your Android device.

You’ll see several changes when creating/editing a meeting on Android such as:

  • Maintain visual access to calendar grid: Now, you can collapse or expand the creation/edit view, so you can go back and forth between this screen and the Calendar grid. This allows you to interact directly with the Calendar grid by tapping on the desired time slot, drag & dropping vertically to another time in the same day, or horizontally to another day.
  • See guest availability without leaving the create/edit view: Easily see the availability of guests directly on the Calendar grid, as their calendars will load as you add them to the event. Google Calendar may also suggest a title for the meeting. After adding guests, organizers can see schedules of their guests by clicking on "View Schedules" or by dragging down the Creation View.


Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions.

On/off by default?
This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Save time with new scheduling features in Calendar

What’s changing

We’re updating the creation flow for meetings in Calendar to help you save time with an easier way to schedule.
You’ll see several changes when creating a meeting such as:

  • Peek at calendars and automatically add guests: Now, when you add a calendar in the “Search for people” box, you can temporarily view coworkers’ calendars. Creating a new event then automatically adds those people as guests to your meeting and might suggest a title for the meeting.
  • More fields in the creation pop-up dialog: The Guests, Rooms, Location, Conferencing, and Description fields are now editable directly in the meeting creation pop-up dialog. Once you add your coworkers’ calendars, they’ll load right in the background, making it even easier and faster to find an available time for everyone.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

People-first scheduling makes it quick and easy to find time with others. You can add rooms, a location, a video conference and add a meeting description without having to click into “More options.”

How to get started


  • Admins: No action required.
  • End users: No action required. This new creation flow will automatically appear in Calendar on the web.

Helpful links

Help Center: Create an event

Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Avoid double-booking rooms in Calendar

What’s changing

Rooms will no longer accept two Calendar events that overlap in time.

Previously, if an event was created directly on a room’s calendar by someone with manage permissions for the resource, the room would accept this meeting even if another event had already added this room for that same time period.

Now, if the room has already accepted another meeting, creating a new event at the same time directly on the room’s calendar will result in a room decline of this conflicting meeting.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why this matters

This means that you’ll no longer have to scramble to find an alternative room if your meeting room was double-booked.

How to get started


  • Admins: No action required.
  • End users: No action required, this behavior will happen automatically. For situations where you’d like a long room hold (such as an all day event) where you’d like to schedule individual sessions in the same room, we recommend the following work around:
    • Create a long hold booking of the desired room.
    • Create the individual sessions, where you write in the location field or description the room location; for example. “Room A [Separate room hold].”

Manually overwrite the Hangout information for the individual sessions with the Hangout ID of the long hold.

Additional details

This change in behavior only impacts future room bookings. Existing events will not be impacted.

Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions.

On/off by default?
This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

RSVP to Calendar events from forwarded invitations

What’s changing

We're improving how invitation forwarding works in Google Calendar. Now, if guests of a Calendar event have been granted permission to invite others, recipients of forwarded invitation emails can RSVP to the event. This will also then add them to the event as a guest.


Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

With this feature, guests of an event can now simply forward their invitation to allow others to RSVP and be added to the Calendar event. This eliminates the step of having to go into the event in Calendar to invite additional guests.

How to get started

  • Admins: No action required.
  • End users: Simply forward your Calendar invitation to the guest you’d like to add.

Additional details

Please note, for this feature to work, the organizer must have granted permission for guests to add other guests to the event.

Helpful links



Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Set start times and import reminders in Tasks

What’s changing

We’re adding three highly-requested features to Tasks. You can now:
  • Set a date and time for your tasks and receive notifications
  • Create repeating tasks
  • Import reminders into Tasks

Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

We’ve heard from you that you’d like Tasks to be the one destination to track what you need to do in G Suite. These features will help make sure all of your to-dos are in Tasks, and ensure that you can keep track of the deadlines associated with them. Additionally, importing reminders to Tasks can help your users if your organization is currently transitioning from Inbox to Gmail.

How to get started

  • Admins: No action needed
  • End users - Date/time and repeating tasks:
    • When you create or edit a task, you’ll now see a new “Add date/time” field.
    • After clicking on Add date/time, you can enter the date, time, and recurrence of this task.

  • End users - Import to tasks:
    • When you open Tasks on the web or your mobile app, you’ll see a prompt to copy your existing reminders over to Tasks. You can also trigger this manually by opening the overflow menu in the top right.
    • You’ll be able to select which list in Tasks you’d like to add them to, or create a new list.
    • You can also indicate whether or not you’d like these reminders to be deleted once they are copied.

Additional details

New time features
Every task now has two time-based properties, date and start time, that are available in the edit screen of each task.

These tasks will then show up in Google Calendar on the web at their specific time, as long as you have the “Tasks” calendar enabled on the left-hand side. If you’ve enabled mobile notifications, you'll also get notified for tasks at their scheduled dates and times in the Tasks mobile apps (Android/iOS). For tasks that have a date, but don’t have a time, you’ll get notifications at 9am local time.


If a task wasn’t marked as completed, you’ll get a second notification at 9am the day after a task was due.

Importing reminders into Tasks
This import tool will pull your reminders (from Inbox/Gmail, Calendar, or the Assistant) into Tasks.

When importing reminders into Tasks, we’ll copy over the title, date, time and recurrence of the reminder. Please note, reminders with locations associated will not be imported. Additionally, this is a one-time import and not a constant sync.

Availability

Rollout details
G Suite editions
  • Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
  • Both features will be ON by default.
Stay up to date with G Suite launches

View Calendar event creators to easily swap meeting rooms

Quick launch summary

You can now see the creator of a meeting when looking at a “busy” block of time on a resource or room’s schedule in the “Find a time” grid view. Simply hover over the block to see the event creator’s name (even if the event is “Private.”)



We’ve heard from you that being able to see who booked a room for a meeting is crucial in order to easily reach out to the creator to ask if they would be open to swap the room or change the meeting time.

Please note, the information such as the description and title of the event will still be hidden to ensure no sensitive information is shared.

Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions

  • Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?

  • This feature will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Google Calendar automatic room suggestions available on mobile

Quick launch summary

Last year, we released automatic room suggestions in Google Calendar on the web. We’re now bringing that feature to Android and iOS devices.

This feature, using Google AI, suggests the rooms for your meetings based on the locations and preferences of the guests.

To enable this feature, structured resource information and users’ work locations are required to be set.


Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions

  • Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?

  • This feature is ON by default and immediately visible when resources are structured and user locations are set.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Recurring Calendar meetings will migrate to Hangouts Meet video calling

What’s changing

As part of the migration from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Meet that we announced last year, we’ll now begin migrating the video conferencing for your recurring Calendar events from classic Hangouts to Meet. Previously, we made the change so that new events scheduled in Calendar will use Meet. Now this change is to update previously scheduled events in Calendar as well.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why we’re migrating

We've built Hangouts Meet to have a fast, simple interface with enterprise grade meeting functionality such as livestreaming and meeting with up to 100 people. To ensure you get the best-in-class experience we’re migrating the remainder of your existing recurring Calendar events. This will happen gradually in an effort to limit any disruption and ensure that you can focus on what’s important: meetings where people can be as productive as they are when they’re face-to-face.

How to get started


  • Admins: No action needed.
  • End users: When you join a recurring Calendar event on classic Hangouts, you will see a banner that future occurrences of this meeting will be on Meet.

Additional details

Migrating existing Calendar events
This change will take place gradually as users join affected meetings. They will see a migration banner notifying them future occurrences will be on Meet. After the end of the call, all participants will get an updated event information with the new meeting details. Single instance (non-recurring) Calendar events will remain unchanged.

If your meeting doesn’t migrate
Some of your meetings may not automatically update to Meet. When this happens, you’ll see a banner in the video call notifying end users to update the Calendar event to Meet. This may happen for complex Calendar event setups, such as if different events have the same video link.

Helpful links

Help Center: Migration FAQs

Availability

Rollout details

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 11, 2019
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 25, 2019

G Suite editions
Available to all G Suite editions

On/off by default?
This setting will be ON by default.

Stay up to date with G Suite launches

Easily enter building locations into the Admin console

What’s changing

You can now input addresses, instead of latitude and longitude coordinates, to enter the locations of your office buildings in the Admin console. This is a more efficient and reliable ways for you, as a G Suite admin, to manage international office locations.

Who’s impacted

Admins only

Why you’d use it

Adding address information immediately unlocks automatic correction of room and resource time zones based on building address. This ensures that you have correct data in the room insights dashboard. Additionally, with this change we’ll now automatically set the correct time zones for all resources in these buildings, and help ensure you see accurate usage by time of day in the room insights dashboard.

In the future, this information will also power other intelligent features such as:
  • Automatic time zone adjustment when you’re working from other buildings
  • Accurate directions from Calendar
  • Room suggestions in nearby buildings

How to get started


Admins: There are three ways to input this information:
  1. Directly from the Admin console user interface: In the Admin console under Manage Resources > Manage Buildings, you can enter addresses directly and be shown a Google map to confirm their location. This is recommended for entering a small number of buildings at a time. 
  2. Bulk upload via CSV file: This is also in the Admin console under Manage Resources > Manage Buildings. The bulk upload spreadsheet supports a general address format, so you can verify your locations in many countries and regions. 
  3. Upload via the Building Resources API. 
End users: No end user impact.



    Additional details

    Check out the Help Center for complete instructions on adding locations for all three of these methods and read the documentation on how to add building addresses via the API.

    Helpful links

    Help Center: Set up buildings, features, and other resources

    Availability

    Rollout details

    • Rapid Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility) starting on February 6, 2019
    • Scheduled Release domains: Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility) starting on February 6, 2019
    G Suite editions
    Available to all G Suite editions
    On/off by default?
    This feature will be ON by default

    Stay up to date with G Suite launches

    Allow Google Calendar users to book Microsoft Exchange resources

    What’s changing

    You can now let your Google Calendar users book Microsoft Exchange calendar resources, such as meeting rooms, when they schedule a meeting.

    Who’s impacted

    Admins and end users

    Why you’d use it

    We know that some of you manage a coexistence of Google Calendar users and Microsoft Exchange users within your organizations. Last year, we added the ability to share free/busy information across users in these two environments. With this launch, Calendar users can now easily book any resources that are stored in Exchange.

    How to get started


    • Admins: To enable Exchange room booking in the Admin console, please follow these instructions.
    • End users: Once this feature is enabled, Calendar users will see both Calendar and Exchange resources displayed as bookable options.

    Additional details

    For more information about Calendar interop, check out the Help Center.

    Helpful links

    Help Center: Allow Calendar users to book Exchange resources

    Availability

    Rollout details


    G Suite editions
    Available to all G Suite editions

    On/off by default?
    This feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled at the domain level.

    Stay up to date with G Suite launches
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