A quality-of-life update for Workspace subscribers
Appointment scheduling in Google Calendar began life as an exclusive feature to Google Workspace for Individuals subscribers a couple years ago — it made sense with the boom in independent contractors who work with clients one on one. Then it came for more Google Workspace users last year to make prepping for office hours and meetings easier. It’s definitely a great addition to the toolset for many, but there’s been one particular conflict point that’s actually hidden multiple conflict points for a lot of users. Fortunately, Google’s gone and done something about it.
Starting today, the scheduler feature will be able to detect any conflict points from all of your associated calendars — whether you own them, can manage or edit them, or subscribe to them from your various other Google accounts — and not just the one tied to your Google Workspace account.
If you’ve put down, say, a dentist’s appointment on one account and it crashes into any of your appointment availability periods set up through your Workspace account, our handy friend Google Calendar will automatically block that time out of your availability by default — just as with any same-account time conflicts. It’s handle for all those schedules we’re on because, as we all know, we’re always on someone else’s schedule.
You may want to toggle some settings to make sure Google knows what to block from which calendar and that you have buffer times that ensure you’re not stuck in transit between your obligation and being open for appointments again.
Multi-calendar conflict tracking will be available starting today for Rapid Release domains and from February 7 for Scheduled Release domains, according to the Google Workspace Updates blog. Subscribers to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits will get a piece of this. Anyone on Essentials-tier plans, legacy G Suite plans, or solely on a personal Google account will have to wait and hope the feature will be made available to them.
