We bring you the most useful updates from Google in the month of March.

1) End a Google Meet video call for everyone at once

What’s changing

When a Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals or Education Plus host leaves their meeting, they can now choose to keep others on the call or to end the call instead, ejecting everyone else.

 

We’ll launch this feature to additional Google Workspace editions in the coming months.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

In some cases, a host may not want people to continue a meeting without them present. For example, teachers may want to prevent students from having unsupervised meetings.

Additional details

When a host is done with a meeting and wants to leave, they now have two options:

  • Leave meeting: The host will leave the meeting, but the meeting will continue.
  • End meeting for all: Everyone, including people in breakout rooms, will be ejected from the meeting. Participants will be informed that the host has ended the meeting. Once the meeting has been ended, people will not be able to rejoin, unless the host rejoins first.

We recommend that, after ending a meeting, if a host wants to meet with a new group of people, that they create a new meeting. This can help prevent previous participants from joining.

Getting started

  • Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
  • End-users: There is no end-user setting for this feature. Visit the Help Center to learn more about ending a video call in Meet.

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals and Education Plus customers
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, and Nonprofits customers

Resources

2) More options for sharing your availability in Google Calendar

What’s changing

We’re adding two new options in Calendar, which will help you better communicate your work availability to your colleagues. Specifically, you can:

  • Create repeating out-of-office entries.
  • Split your working hours into multiple segments each day.

At the moment, working hour segments will only be available on the web and repeating out-of-office entries on the web and Android devices. See below for more information on these features, including rollout details.

Who’s impacted

End users

Why it’s important

As many people have experienced changes to their working environments in the past year, their work schedules have also changed—and are now often mixed with personal commitments and other obligations. We hope that with the addition of repeating out-of-office entries and segmentable working hours, you can better organize your time and communicate availability to your colleagues.

You can use segmentable working hours to indicate when certain blocks of time are outside of your working hours. Working hours are visible on your calendar when someone schedules a meeting with you.

In addition to using repeating out-of-office entries for vacation time, you can use them to indicate time when you need to handle personal commitments—like childcare, exercise, and more. They can also be used to better communicate part-time availability or certain days when you’re consistently unavailable.

Additional details

Repeating out of office entries and declining meeting behavior
If you create a repeating out-of-office entry and select “Automatically decline meetings,” a decline meeting notification will be sent to the organizers of any meetings scheduled during your repeating out-of-office entry. If the declined meeting is a recurring meeting, those organizers may get multiple notifications—these emails are bundled for Gmail users, but not always for users of other email services.

Getting started

Admins: No action required.
End users: Visit the Help Center to learn more about splitting your working hours or creating repeating out of office entries in Google Calendar.

Segment your working hours in Google Calendar

 

Creating repeating out of office entries in Google Calendar

 

Rollout pace

Working hour segments

  • Rapid Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on February 22, 2021
  • Scheduled Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 8, 2021

Repeating out of office entries

  • Rapid Release domains: Extended rollout (potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 1, 2021
  • Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on March 15, 2021

Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, and Education Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, and Nonprofits customers

Resource