January 30, 2024
Improving the Google Calendar appointment scheduling experience with new features
What’s changing
Last year, we introduced new appointment scheduling features to help you set more relevant meeting durations and tailor your calendar view to match your preferences. In our effort to further improve upon the current appointment scheduling experience, we’re adding the options to:
- Add up to 20 co-hosts to your appointment schedule during the setup process so you can host appointments with others.
- Create appointment schedules on secondary calendars. Prior to this update, you could only create appointment schedules on your own primary calendar. Now, you can create the schedule and receive booked events on secondary calendars as well. This can be particularly useful when multiple users, such as a team, need access to the same set of office hours. Everyone with permission to use the secondary calendar can make changes to the schedule and view incoming bookings. The appointment schedule can check the secondary calendar for availability, but cannot check the availability of all users with access to the secondary calendar.
- Expand the delegate access functionality to appointment scheduling. Currently, delegate access enables you to let someone else, such as an administrative assistant, access your Google Workspace account to send mail or manage calendar invitations and events on your behalf. Now, the person with delegate access can edit or delete your appointment schedules on your primary calendar.
- Select “Check calendars for availability”, which enables you to decide whether or not you want to check the availability of calendars added to the appointment schedule. Unchecking this setting means even if there is a conflict on one of the calendars, users will still be able to book that time. This may be useful if you want to prioritize incoming bookings over existing meetings.
Getting started
- Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
- End users:
- You cannot add groups or users outside of your domain as a co-host.
- Co-hosts are not able to see appointment schedule details or make changes. However, if the schedule was created on a shared calendar, the co-host will have access to see details or make changes.
- Bookings will be visible on the host and any additional co-hosts’ primary calendars.
- The “Check calendars for availability” feature will be ON by default and can be disabled by unselecting the “Check calendars for availability” box in the appointment schedule editor.
- Co-hosts calendars are not automatically checked for availability. You can select your co-host's calendar in the "Check calendars for availability" section to have their availability considered (as long as you are subscribed to that calendar).
- Visit the Help Center to learn more about creating an appointment schedule and customizing your appointment availability.
Rollout pace
- Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on January 30, 2024
- Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 12, 2024
Availability
Co-hosts, secondary calendars and delegate access:
- Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Nonprofits
- Available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Nonprofits, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts