Google has made an update to Google Apps that will automatically add a Hangouts link to any calendar appointment that is shared among users. This is something that could be extremely useful for businesses where staff are in geographically diverse locations, telecommute or simply are having an online meeting out of normal working hours.
There’s a few provisos added to the update which included:
- Hangout video calls are only added if the event creator has an active Google+ profile.
- Admins can disable this feature through the calendar settings page in the Admin console. Users will still be able to add or remove Hangouts video call links from events, but will not be able to set their own defaults.
One thing users need to be mindful of is ensuring that their calendar time-zone is properly set, otherwise the link between Hangouts and Calendar mightn’t be so smooth.
It’s only a minor update, but it shows that Google are committed to their products and offering more consistently; do you have a Google Apps story to share?
Source: Google Apps Blog.
Ugg, yet another attempt by Google to force it’s closed ecosystem down our throats.
Google was “Don’t Be Evil” but with the removal of XMPP and federated chats, the closed protocols for GMail integration, their Nexus hardware not having storage expansion leading you to use Google Drive, their constant Android location tracking, the non-stop ad network, and now the constant Hangout availability (which produces data for Google’s voice and face recognition software), Google is really out to eat us all.
We have no concern for our own future as long as the product is free.
That’s nice but they need to get hangouts/SMS threads into the one conversation. Looks stupid when I have multiple threads for the one contact. Just copy what Apple have done with iOS. That works extremely well.
All this stuff is nice, but the multiple threads thing is the biggest issue for me.