Google Calendar Picks Up Out of Office Event Option, Work Hour Restrictions

Google Calendar for web is picking up two important new features over the next week. One of them will let you inform others that you are “out of office,” and the other lets you customize stricter working hours, so that others will leave you the hell alone.

With the new “out of office” option, you’ll be able to create calendar events that have a “different look” that normal calendar events, letting others know that you aren’t available at that time. Should someone try and invite you to an event then, Google Calendar will automatically decline it. And yep, you can customize the decline message.

Additionally, Calendar will try to “intelligently detect” if you are creating an “out of office” event, based on the past.

For the new working hours restriction, you now get to customize working hours for each day. Previously, you could only set these as a blanket time for all days. When this new feature shows up, Google may prompt you to set it all up.

These new features should rollout over the next two weeks.

// G Suite