G Suite Calendar Now Allows Event Rescheduling Proposals

- July 31, 2018

The version of Google Calendar offered to G Suite customers is getting a new feature that allows event guests to propose a new time for an event they're invited to. The system allows any guest to propose a rescheduling, and if the event creator approves, notifies everybody automatically. This can make meetings, parties and all sorts of other events go over much more smoothly in regards to ensuring everybody shows up and does so in a timely fashion. The new feature is available only in G Suite for now, and will be rolling out to all users within the next few days. There is no word on when or if this functionality will come to the consumer version of Google Calendar as well.

The feature manifests itself simply enough; guests at an event can look at the Calendar listing for the event, and there will be a button near the bottom of the "Detail" listing prompting them to propose a new time. Once that button is clicked or tapped, the screen will shift over to an editing form where the guest can set up a new time with a note, then send the proposal in for review. If the event creator approves the new time, all attendees will be notified. If multiple guests propose new times, the event coordinator can choose which one to approve, or can simply get everybody into a group Hangout to chat over a better time for everybody.

Google has been steadily introducing new features to G Suite since its inception, making the specially tweaked versions of the standard Google apps more and more useful for professionals. The company has made moves like improving support for pivot tables in Sheets, splitting up Hangouts for chatting and video calls, adding smart search and version conflict tools to Drive, and improving security in all apps, just to name a few. It is worth noting that G Suite is targeted exclusively to enterprise users, and can scale to businesses of all sorts. Unless Google brings them over to the consumer versions of its apps, there is no way for regular consumers to enjoy G Suite features.