Google Calendar Now Has Optional Attendees

If you have been using Google Calendar to schedule and organize meetings then you know that while it allows you to invite guests to an event, there’s really no way to make sure who needs to attend the meeting and who can skip it.

The Google Calendar team realized that and has now introduced a feature called Optional Attendees.

As the name implies, this feature lets you make some attendees optional. This means all the attendees will know who’s gotta come and who might not be attending. And that means people can easily gauge the importance of the meeting and what is likely to be discussed.

The screenshot above shows how you can make some attendees optional. As you click on the link that says “Make some attendees optional”, it generates an icon for each of the attendees. Now you could click on the corresponding icons for the attendees you want to mark as optional.

Overall, for people who heavily rely on Google Calendar for meetings will find this feature useful. It could also make your meetings more productive and fruitful.

For more on this, read the announcement on Gmail blog.