Google Calendar now plays nicer with Microsoft Exchange

Google today announced a small but important update to how Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange can work together going forward.

It’s not unusual for a company to still use both Google’s G Suite tools and Microsoft Exchange in parallel, and with this update, G Suite admins can now allow their users to see real-time free/busy information across the two systems. This means tools like Google Calendar’s Find a Time feature and Outlook’s Scheduling Assistant can now easily talk to each other, for example.

Once an admin has enabled them, these new Calendar Interop features will be available on Google Calendar for Android, iOS and the web, as well as all Outlook 2010+ clients on desktop, mobile and web.

Google already offered some basic interoperability with Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010, but the old tool couldn’t sync data automatically and hence didn’t work in real time. Syncing between Google Calendar and Outlook also involved using a public Exchange folder and other sysadmin wizardry to work. In contrast, setting up this new interop tool is far more straightforward.

The company says this new feature is currently rolling out to users and should be available to all within the next three days.