Table of Contents
Invite individuals to an event
Add guests to a calendar entry
Allow guests to modify a calendar entry
Expanded guest list from Group
Invite people who don’t use Google Calendar
View guest lists and responses
Add or remove guests from a list
Allow invited guests to add new guests
Respond to calendar invitations
RSVP to an event using Google Calendar
RSVP to an event with Apps mail
RSVP to an event from other email applications
Invite individuals to an event |
Invitations in Google Calendar let you circulate information about a particular event without requiring you to share your entire calendar with others. It also allows you to track the responses of the people you have invited.
Guests added by invitation to your calendar entries will also have the latest information about your event – whenever you make a change, they will also be notified of that change in their calendar, email, or their selected mode of notification.
With invitations, Google Calendar makes it easy to coordinate meetings with others at your school – you can quickly view free/busy information for many people at once to find a time that works for everyone.
Here's an example of how you might use invitations with your calendar: you need to schedule a staff meeting that involves several individuals. To do this, you create a calendar entry and add the individuals as 'guests.' You can check the guest availability to make sure everyone is free at the same time. Then, those individuals will receive a calendar invitations for the event, have the ability to RSVP and view the full event details. If these individuals also have Google Apps accounts within your school, they will automatically have the event added to their own calendar. If at any point you make changes to the staff meeting, your guests will see those changes reflected in each of their individual calendars.
To invite guests to a new event, follow these steps:
To invite guests to an existing event, follow these steps:
When you are scheduling a calendar entry for multiple people, it can be useful to check the schedules of each party to make sure you choose a time that works for everybody. If you are adding guests who also have Google Apps accounts with your school, you can check their availability to find a time that works, or use a Google Calendar tool to find the next available time everyone invited is free.
You can check your guest availability when you create a new calendar entry or edit the entry afterwards.
To check guest availability when you create a new calendar entry, follow these steps:
From your calendar window, you can view a calendar of someone who also has a Google Apps account at your school alongside your own calendar, just follow these steps:
Review the previous step to learn how to add guests to an event.
It can be easier to negotiate a meeting time or collaborate on the event description when your guests also have access to edit your event's details. For example, if you're planning an event with multiple people it could be helpful to have one person add in the agenda in the description, while another invites the guests and confirms the event location.
While this is possible by sharing your entire calendar, some situations call for granting access to specific events or you may not be interested in giving sharing access to all of your calendar entries.
For this purpose, Google Calendar provides the option to allow guests to modify events to which they're invited. This means they can change the event time, location, or description, or add additional guests.
To enable this feature in an existing event, follow these steps:
While creating a new event, follow the instructions above, clicking to the Event details page when creating an event from the calendar view (if you create an event using the Create Event link, you will automatically see the Event details page)
Currently, you can invite up to 500 guests per event. To accommodate an event with a guest list over 500, create additional events for every 500 invited guests.
Invite groups to events |
Google Groups for Business and Admin managed Groups are an easy way to share information with multiple people at once. Because Groups are addressed via a single email address, you can easily add large numbers of users to a calendar event at once.
There are two primary reasons to invite group email addresses to an event:
If you invite a group to a calendar event, the group's members list expands in the invitation, but only if you have the appropriate access permissions for that group. This limitation protects the privacy settings for a group, and it applies to both users and administrators.
To add a group to a calendar entry, follow the same instructions as creating an event and adding individuals.
The primary difference is that instead of an individual email address, you will enter in the Group email address:
When you enter a group in the guest list, and you have permission to see the group's members, the group will expand and the members will then appear in the invitation as if you added each one separately.
The group expansion will happen either immediately, after a short delay, or after the event is saved, depending on the size of the group.
A few things to note:
For more information about settings for the expanded guest list, please visit the section on Google Groups for Business and Google Calendar in Module 6: Chapter 5.
Invite people who don’t use Google Calendar |
Anyone with an email address can receive invitations from Google Calendar, regardless of whether they use Google Calendar as a part of Google Apps for your school. This can include parents, students (if students do not have Google Apps accounts at your school), friends, or other individuals outside of school.
When the individuals receive an invitation, they will have the opportunity to RSVP and view the event details with a calendar entry link. They can later change their RSVP status or review the event details with that same link.
When guests receive a Google Calendar invitation, they will receive an email with the event name, date & time, location, and description.
Within the email, there are links to RSVP as a Yes, No, Or maybe. There is also the option to add a comment to their RSVP status.
If you have allowed guests to view the event guest list, the email invitation will also contain a 'Who' section of other event attendees.
They can also click on the more details link within the invitation to see a webpage with all the event information.
If you change the event, you can choose to notify guests – for the guests who don't use Google calendar, they will receive another email notification with all the event details. They can also continue to access the event details via the more details link.
If your guest uses a calendar application that supports the iCalendar format, they can use the iCalendar file attached to the invitation to display your event on their own calendar.
View guest lists and responses |
If you have created an event or just received an event invitation, you can check to see who else has been invited to an event.
Please note: the owner of the calendar event can choose not to make the guest list visible. If you do not see a guest list, it may be because the owner has enabled this setting.
To check who's invited to an event, just click on the event – the attendees will be listed in the Who section of the event bubble.
For more detailed guest information (and to see the status of each person invited), follow these steps:
Keep in mind that the event organizer can restrict the visibility of the guest list for each event.
Show or hide a guest list |
As an event organizer, you have the option to show or hide the guest list (including all responses) from your guests. Keep in mind that people with permission to edit your calendar will always be able to view the guest list for events scheduled on that calendar.
Showing a guest list can be useful so that the other attendees can see who has been invited and who is coming. However, if you are holding a confidential meeting it may be necessary to hide the guest list to maintain privacy.
Please note: the guest list is visible by default – if you do not wish to have the guest list visible, please review the following instructions.
To change the settings for your guest list, follow these steps:
Please note: Guest lists are automatically hidden for events with more than 100 guests (regardless of organizer's selection).
Edit a guest list |
Google Calendar allows you to modify your guest list at anytime. You can add new guests or remove existing ones.
To add more guests, follow these steps:
To remove guests, follow these steps:
In many occasions you may want to allow guests to invite additional people. These additional people will appear in the guest list, have the opportunity to RSVP, and can view all the event details.
To allow guests to invite other individuals to your calendar entry, follow these steps:
While creating a new event, follow the instructions above, clicking to the edit event details page when creating an event from the calendar view (if you create an event using the Create Event link, you will automatically see the Event Details page).
Respond to calendar invitations |
When people invite you to events using Google Calendar, these events will automatically appear on your calendar with a question mark.
To RSVP directly on your calendar, follow these steps:
To change your RSVP status to a calendar event, follow these steps:
If you're invited by someone to an event with Google Calendar, you may receive an email with the text of the invitation.
Please note: You don't always receive an email if the organizer chooses not to send the email or if you have turned off email notifications for new events.
If you're an Apps mail user, you can RSVP to the event directly through the email invitation by clicking on one of the links (Yes, No or Maybe).
You can also go to the event's page and leave a comment next to your RSVP status as mentioned previously.
If your friends are using another email application (such as Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.) to read and reply to your Google Calendar invitation, make sure they use the 'Yes/No/Maybe' links in the body of the invitation itself rather than the response buttons provided by their email application.
Currently, when guests respond using the email application's reply buttons, the event is only updated if it's scheduled on your primary calendar.
This means that someone using Microsoft Outlook should not use the Outlook reply tools, but rather the 'Yes/No/Maybe' links that are included in the email notification.