To find Google calendar invites annoying

[Dongdingdong]

Does anyone else find it irritating when someone at work emails you to arrange a meeting and you agree a time over email - only for them to send a Google calendar alert thing shortly afterwards?

We've already agreed a time and I'm perfectly capable of putting it in my own diary, thanks. Plus I don't even use Google calendar so it's a pointless exercise anyway!

AIBU?

This is an apt AIBU for me this morning - YADNBU!

I've been wrestling with a stupid external outlook/gmail calendar conundrum all week. The sharing settings and event management controls just don't work between two organisations. The people I've invited/added on our side just aren't getting the info they need. All of which would EASILY be avoided if they sent us the email, and we managed our own damn diaries.

Grr.

YABU.

It's polite, they're trying to make your life easier.

It's polite, they're trying to make your life easier.

Meh. How is it polite to have someone else add me to a system I don't even use? If anything they're causing me a mild inconvenience as it's yet another email to look at then delete!

YADNBU. Anyone who uses Google Mail is DU as it's crap. So inflexible. You can't even tab in the body of an email. Pile of 💩

How is it polite to have someone else add me to a system I don't even use?

The idea is that your calendar system picks it up from the email and - depending on your settings - quietly puts in your diary with no fuss.

I doubt people are actually deliberately sending them out - Google just "does it" when they create a calendar entry by default. They'd need to go into their settings and untick/deselect/turn off "send an email to all participants".

If it's really bothering you, why not create an email handling rule to delete invites on receipt ? A lot easier than trying to contact everyone you might ever receive an invite from and ask them to get their shit together ....

Anyone who uses Google Mail is DU as it's crap.

You can't always blame them. You need a google account (i.e. gmail address) to be able to access the play store, and all that google goodiness you've waited your whole life (lives if you believe in reincarnation) for. And once you have a gmail account, by God, does google ram it down your throat. It pops up everywhere. Even when you weren't aware it was there.

I disagree. I find this useful - goes in the diary from the invitation without me having to do it.

I've worked in fairly laid back, small orgs where meetings are less formal (think something like 3 meetings in the diary for the week officially. Very sparse). I've also worked in v v large, global orgs where a meeting is just a conference call with participants having really really difficult diaries and multiple time zones.

If you work in a role or job more like the latter, not having an up to date diary once you've committed to a meeting can have stressful , difficult to fix admin & logistics repurcussions.

Therefore I suspect if you don't like this,op... You're probably in a company, role or team that's a little less meeting busy / time critical or simply smaller!

Also it would piss me off if someone organised a meeting then didn't set it up from an administrative pov. I'm not your fucking PA, is what I'd be thinking.

We all use the same calendar at work. I'd find it so odd if they didn't send the calendar invite. Puts it in for everyone, all sorted

Hmph. Maybe I'm just an old fuddy duddy!

Google calendar is amazing. Imagine if you had to rearrange the time, but you forgot (people are human and it happens) but the other invitee remembers to change it! Automatically you get notified and see it. Love it. Best system for me at the moment and you can share it with other people !

Google calendar is amazing.

That's one word, I guess ...

Imagine if you had to rearrange the time, but you forgot (people are human and it happens) but the other invitee remembers to change it! Automatically you get notified and see it. Love it. Best system for me at the moment and you can share it with other people !

Microsoft Exchange/Outlook was doing that in 1997. Just because nobody actually bothered to use it ... (except at one employer, where it was a disciplinary offence not to keep your calendar up to date).

Our company uses Google suite. Admittedly it's more restrictive than Outlook but a lot of people don't use it for much more than the basics.

Everyone at my company uses the same calendar system. It would be borderline unacceptable not to.

Sending calendar invites means the person sending the invite can quickly edit details and provide updates such as dial ins, location, participants, timings etc. It also means everyone's PA has access for diary management purposes.

Organising a meeting and not putting it in everyone's diary is downright rude in my workplace. Perhaps yours is different but I think you're more out of touch than you realise.

YADNBU. I don't use an electronic diary either. I use a diary. More emails to deal with- and don't get me started on the people who just decide to book me in to a meeting without asking because their system tells them they can!

Organising a meeting and not putting it in everyone's diary is downright rude in my workplace

It would be a performance management issue in mine (technology competence / administration / organised).

Frankly if you've got more than 2 or 3 people meeting, the technical tools that my employer pays high ££s for licensing for - well, they're meant to reduce muck ups, help with availability planning, etc.

If someone tried to say "nah I'm ok, I'll stick with my book diary", they'd be shown the door. It might work for them, but in my office / role / industry, it's a significant problem from a time management and audit log perspective. There is no option to use paper.

Integrated email/calendars can also be configured to book rooms, projectors, etc etc. In fact the last 3 roles I have had, they have been the only way to book them.

Quite a lot of "it's all about me" here ... get to a company with several sites (let alone email systems) and people will be clamouring for a tool which automatically invites attendees and keeps the meeting entry up to date. It's also a good way to attach agendas, supplementary documents (or links thereto) and to know who the minutes should go to.

If someone tried to say "nah I'm ok, I'll stick with my book diary", they'd be shown the door. It might work for them, but in my office / role / industry, it's a significant problem from a time management and audit log perspective. There is no option to use paper.

I worked for one company where it was expected (and documented in the employee handbook) that everyones diary was kept up to date. This allowed people to arrange meetings by using the "auto arrange" feature in Outlook to suggest a slot when everybodies diary showed as free. And one of the projects I worked on at that company involved posting appointments from another system for offsite personnel which they picked up on their Blackberries (showing my age now ).

Generally I can't get enough tech to help my life. Although there's also a lot of cruft I can do without .