Google Calendar invites will show whether people will join remotely or in-person

Now that more than 40,691,665 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across Canada and the majority of people have received their first shot, normalcy is almost upon us.

Businesses and offices have started implementing hybrid models that involve working from home but also from an office in some situations. To accommodate this hybrid future, Google has updated its RSVP feature for Calendar with two new options.

When RSVP-ing to an invite, you can now select whether you’ll be joining the meeting virtually or in person. To do this, click on the dropdown next to the ‘yes’ button in the meeting invite. The dropdown will show three options — ‘Yes,’ ‘Yes, in a meeting room,’ and ‘Yes, joining virtually.’

When looking at the event details, both the meeting host and the invited participants will be able to see how people intend to attend the meeting. Those that choose ‘Yes’ will have symbols next to their names that reflect their decision. If the participant wants to attend in person, a door symbol will be added next to their name. If the participant wishes to join virtually, it will be indicated by a camera icon next to their name, allowing participants and the host to prepare accordingly.

This dropdown is launching first in Google Calendar and later coming to Gmail invites. These attendance details will not be shared with users on other platforms like Microsoft Outlook.

The feature has started rolling out for ‘Rapid Release’ (users under rapid release get updates as soon as they drop) domains and could potentially take up to 15 days or more for the feature to become completely active.

For people under the ‘Schedule Release’ domain, the new RSVP feature will begin rolling out on July 22nd and could take up to 15 days or more to be fully available.

Image credit: Google

Source: Google