Google rolling out improved meeting room suggestions in Calendar

Google has announced that it is rolling out improved meeting room suggestions in ’Google Calendar’.

Earlier, there were two different room suggestion types based on a company’s Calendar settings, the tech giant said in a Workspace Updates blogpost on Monday.

The first option lists frequently used rooms for users to pick from, while the second uses the structured meeting rooms feature to suggest rooms based on meeting attendees’ self-selected working location.

Structured meeting rooms are rooms that are assigned to specific buildings, with meeting hardware and capacity information.

In order to better optimise meeting rooms and foster greater collaboration, especially in a hybrid work environment, the company is combining the two options in an updated structured meeting room setting.

“The working location set by a user is taken into account for all room suggestions, and in cases where location data is unavailable, proposed meeting rooms will be based on frequently used rooms,” the company said.

This update will be helpful as it manages meeting rooms more efficiently by taking planned working locations into account.

“As a result, meeting rooms are only allocated for those who are most likely to need them,” Google explained.

The company further mentioned that working location must be enabled or a main office building must be set for the users in the admins’ domain to access this feature.

Earlier this month, the tech giant had announced that it was rolling out a feature to set working locations in Calendar.

Since 2021, users have been able to indicate where they are working from directly in Google Calendar

Now, with the new option, users can set working locations in Calendar that ”indicate where you’re working for specific portions of the day”. This feature helps users to more accurately reflect their availability based on the physical location they set, which can change throughout the day.