Google improves Calendar appointment scheduling experience with new features

Google is adding new options to further improve the Google Calendar appointment scheduling experience including the ability to add up to 20 co-hosts to your appointment schedule during the setup process.

This update allows you to create appointment schedules and receive booked events on secondary calendars. Until now, you could only create appointment schedules on your own primary calendar. 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.

Next up, users with delegate access (like an administrative assistant) can now edit or delete appointment schedules on the primary calendar. Currently, delegate access allows you to let someone else access your Google Workspace account to send mail or manage calendar invitations and events on your behalf.

Co-hosts, secondary calendars and delegate access will be 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.

As a co-host, you cannot add groups or users outside your domain. 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 can see details or make changes. Bookings will be visible on the host and any additional co-hosts' primary calendars.

Next up, you can check the "Check calendars for availability" setting, which lets you decide whether or not you want to check the availability of calendars added to the appointment schedule. The setting will be ON by default. Unchecking it means that even if there is a conflict on one of the calendars, users can still book that time.

This setting will be 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.

The new features are gradually rolling out to Rapid Release domains and may take up to 15 days to be fully visible. For Scheduled Release domains, the gradual rollout will start on February 12, 2024.