Calendar events that update when Google Groups change

Posted by Boris Khvostichenko, Product Manager, Google Calendar

Life is full of changes, especially at work. As some people retire or move on to new jobs, other people arrive to take their place. Even within a company, people often switch teams and take on new roles, which can dramatically change how they spend their time or who they need to meet with at work.

Google Calendar should make it easy to manage your schedule at work, especially if you're switching teams and trying to attend a new set of meetings. Starting today when Google Calendar invitations are sent to members of a Google Group, the attendee list will automatically update as people join or leave the group.

When you join a Google Group, you will be added to all of its meetings. And if you leave a group, those meetings will be removed from your calendar. Now you don’t have to worry about missing your new team’s meetings or having your calendar overrun by events that no longer matter.

This update will roll out to Rapid Release customers today and to Scheduled Release customers in the coming weeks. It will only apply to new calendar events created after the roll out is complete, but you can apply it to existing meetings by re-inviting the group.

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Add events to Google Calendar from Gmail

Posted by Boris Khvostichenko, Product Manager, Google Calendar

(Cross-posted on the Gmail blog.)

If you do a lot of scheduling over email, it's now a little bit easier to create events directly from your Gmail. Starting today, dates and times within emails are lightly underlined: click them to schedule that conference call or lunch date without ever leaving Gmail.


When you click on one of these underlined dates, you’ll be able to preview your schedule for the day and change the title, date or time of the event. Clicking “Add to Calendar” will do exactly that -- add the event to your calendar, and for extra convenience, the calendar event will include a link back to the original email.

This new feature is rolling out over the next week to Rapid Release domains with the English (US) language. We'll be adding other languages soon, so stay tuned.

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Live webinar: Accessibility Updates for Docs, Sites and Calendar

Posted by Naomi Black, Technical Program Manager, Accessibility

Earlier this year, members of the blind community shared a powerful message with us about the importance of accessibility. On the Official Google Blog today, we announced some accessibility enhancements to our products, including new keyboard shortcuts and improved screen reader support in Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar. For blind students and employees who rely on assistive technologies to access the web, we hope these improvements will make it easier to use our products.

To answer your questions and discuss how today’s product updates affect blind users in businesses, governments and schools using Google Apps, we’d like to invite our enterprise customers to join us for a webinar on September 21.

Accessibility Updates for Docs, Sites and Calendar
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
12:00pm-1:00pm PT
Sign up here

To learn more about accessibility features in Google Apps, please visit our help center. For information more generally about using Google products with screen readers, how to send us feedback and how to track our progress, visit google.com/accessibility.

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Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an internet connection

Posted by Benoît de Boursetty, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)

The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.

Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page.

Google Calendar and Google Docs let you seamlessly transition between on- and offline modes. When you’re offline in Google Calendar, you can view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments. With Google Docs you can view documents and spreadsheets when you don’t have a connection. Offline editing isn’t ready yet, but we know it’s important to many of you, and we’re working hard to make it a reality. To get started using Google Calendar or Google Docs offline, just click the gear icon at the top right corner of the web app and select the option for offline access.

IT administrators can deploy Chrome Web Store apps to users en masse by setting up organizational policies for Chrome.

Today’s world doesn’t slow down when you’re offline and it’s a great feeling to be productive from anywhere, on any device, at any time. We’re pushing the boundaries of modern browsers to make this possible, and while we hope that many users will already find today’s offline functionality useful, this is only the beginning. Support for offline document editing and customizing the amount of email to be synchronized will be coming in the future. We also look forward to making offline access more widely available when other browsers support advanced functionality (like background pages).

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