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You will soon be able to share your working locations on Google Calendar. The app will let you specify whether you’re working from home or coming to the office. This will make it easier for users to notify their colleagues and bosses about their working plan for the day, or week, as companies prepare to gradually welcome employees back to the offices following the months-long work-from-home season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The feature will be available starting August 30.
According to Google, it will be an optional feature. It will let you add a work location routine to your calendar so your colleagues and bosses know where you are working from on a particular day when they invite you to an event. You can select your working location as home or office, or enter a custom location, from a dropdown menu next to your daily working hours in Google Calendar. You can also leave the location field unspecified for any given day, or update it whenever you want. Of course, you can entirely turn off the feature as well.
The main Calendar screen will show your working location just below the day/date in the Week view. You can quickly update your location from there. Your working location will be only visible to “people who can view your free/busy availability.”
Google Calendar is gaining the ability to share where you’re working from
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we work. Working from home has become a new norm. However, as the pandemic subsides, companies are gradually starting to reopen their offices. Still, it’s not fully back-to-office season yet.
In the meantime, Google has been adding new features to its Calendar app to help users with the current work model. In February this year, Google Calendar gained the ability to split your working hours, as well as create out-of-office (OOO) entries. This allowed users to mix personal commitments and other obligations with their work schedules. To make things more convenient, it is now letting users share their working locations as well.
As said earlier, this feature will be available to users starting on August 30. However, admins can already control how it is “used in their organization”. The feature is ON by default but admins can choose to disable it.
For end-users, meanwhile, the ability to share working locations on Google Calendar is OFF by default. Starting on August 30, a pop-up will appear with an option to turn it ON, unless your admin has disabled it. If you missed the pop-up, you can turn ON the feature from Calendar settings.
As always, users on Rapid Release domains will receive the feature first, followed by those on Scheduled Release domains. Google expects the rollout to be completed by the end of next month.
This feature will be available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Nonprofits, and G Suite Business customers. Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Frontline, and G Suite Basic customers will not get it.