Google Assistant can automate and many tasks, but for some reason, Google had limited some of its features for G Suite users. Now at its Google Next event, the search giant announced that Google Assistant can access G Suite users’ calendar, making it easier for business users to plan events.
The new integration for G Suite will allow users to edit, update or simply check the date or events on their calendar using Assistant. It was already easy for non-business Google Assistant users to navigate through their phone. All they had to do was say, “Hey Google,” followed by, “Access my Calendar,” or anything else they wanted to check. However, Google Assistant had been limited on G Suite until now.
Unlike regular users, G Suite users would be greeted with this unpleasant sentence: “I can’t access your G Suite calendar yet, but I’m learning how to do new things every day.” Now Google has finally added multiple interactions for Google Assistant, and integration with the G Suite calendar is one of them. Although it’s still in beta, Google Assistant’s integration with your G Suite calendar enables it to help plan your work day. You will also be able to ask about upcoming meetings and schedule changes as if you were a non-business user.
However, keep in mind you won’t be able to use the new feature if your Google Assistant isn’t enabled in your G Suite account. If that’s the case, the administrator of the package will need to make some changes to the Google Admin console. Google also offers a step-by-step guide on how to change privileges for different G Suite users, including who can access Google Assistant and who can’t.
For now, Calendar is the only G Suite app to offer this functionality since Assistant’s integration with G Suite is still in beta. Nevertheless, Google also announced other updates for G Suite:
- G Suite integration with Google Assistant (beta)
- G Suite Add-ons (beta coming soon)
- Cloud Search (generally available for eligible customers)
- Drive metadata (beta)
- Hangouts Meet updates: automatic live captions (generally available), public live streaming (coming soon) and increased meeting participants (coming soon)
- Connected sheets (beta coming soon)
- Google Voice for G Suite (generally available)
- Hangouts Chat into Gmail (beta)
- Office editing in Docs, Slides and Sheets (generally available)
- Visitor sharing in Drive (beta)
- Currents (beta)
- Access Transparency (generally available)
- Enhancements to data regions for G Suite (generally available)
- Security collaboration and automation (beta)
