OnEBoard Chat: Are Google Calendar's AI features saving your time? with host Priya Chandra, and guest Kim Nilsson.

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This week OnEBoard was hosted by Google Calendar and Workspace expert Priya Chandra, and  by Google Workspace for Education admin expert Kim Nilsson joined the discussion. We discussed Google Calendar's AI-powered scheduling, managing your calendar in the Gemini app, using secondary calendars, managing projects with Google Tasks and more.

This week we used an official Meet background celebrating the Lunar New Year.

Topics

This week Priya Chandra started the session with an overview of some of the limitations of Google's AI-powered "Help Me Schedule" feature. She also highlighted some of the hidden benefits of using Gemini to look at your calendar and schedule. 
  • Limitations of Google's "Help Me Schedule" and "Suggested Times", including missing scheduling conflicts with secondary and shared calendars and no option to rename the meeting.
  • Benefits and limitations of using the Gemini app for scheduling.
  • Gemini scheduling use cases: scheduling focus time, adding local events (like your bin day).
  • Issues with secondary and shared calendars.
  • Using Google Tasks and reminders. 
  • How Google selects "normal" working hours for scheduling.
  • Managing AI features for organizations and education.
  • Future potential for using AI agents to manage meeting times and "tough love coaching".

Takeaways


Priya Chandra: "I think  to answer the question that I posed in this session, no I don't think it's saving time at the moment. I think we've got a long way to go before we can start really handing off some of those very basic calendar actions completely to AI without wondering about where it might be taking us  and what it might be doing."

Kim Nilsson on enabling AI for students and shadow actions:"... unless you give them a tool that is allowed they're definitely going to use something."

Priya Chandra: "I think at the moment that is definitely something that Google really needs to look at is those secondary calendars particularly where they're shared with other people  and aren't just for your own internal use."

Bob Danley on using Google Tasks: "I have a big video project that I'm trying to do and you guys know that you need to break it down into smaller tasks and I find that using the Tasks and the Calendar really helps in that regards."

Nina Trankova: "In the end, it's my calendar and I can erase everything, reschedule, remove, and add new stuff. I don't think AI can replace a human managing their own calendar."

Related Resources

▶ Join the next OnEBoardChat on YouTube on March 8.
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