Categorized | Sci-Tech

Google invites a maelstrom of frustrated calendar users

By Baron Sekiya | Hawaii 24/7 Editor

On Thursday (March 18) Google Calendar users were surprised to find that new events entered into their shared calendars defaulted to send out invitations to anyone else sharing the calendar. Existing events also wanted to share details if the event was edited after Thursday morning.

Waves of Calendar users hit Google’s forums complaining and begging for Google to ‘roll-back’ this feature or bug to the pre-auto-invite version.

A Google employee in the forum nicknamed Alice PB&J said this isn’t a feature and posted this to the group:

Hey guys,

Thanks for all your posts on this to let me know about the issue. I want to clarify that what you’re seeing isn’t a new feature of some sort, and we’re actually working to fix the behavior you guys have been reporting.

The issue with being prompted to notify guests when saving events (even when no guests have been added) should be fixed. You’re probably all still seeing that secondary calendars are being treated as guests and being added to the Guest list — the team is working on fixing this issue, as this is not intended behavior.

Again, thanks for everyone’s patience and for all the information you’ve shared to help us address these issues. Let me know if you’re experiencing any other problems!

Best,
Alice

As of Friday mid-morning in Hawaii the bug for new entries appears to have been fixed but as reports continue in the forum we haven’t heard the last of this problem. We also use Google Calendar at Hawaii 24/7 and yes it’s causing some problems for us too.

Updated (3/22/10)

Hey folks,

Thanks for letting us know, loud and clear, that this issue is still affecting you guys. I know it’s frustrating, and I appreciate your guys’ patience as we work to get it resolved. There’s a lot of information (and, unfortunately, some mis-information) in this thread, so to try to get everyone on the same page, here’s some official info:

– We’re aware of the issue and doing all that we can to fix it. Part of the issue was resolved last Friday (specifically, the prompt to send invitations when there are no guests on initial event creation), and we hope to have the issue fully resolved soon. I’ll post back here as soon as I have more information.

– While we use the Apps Status Dashboard typically to report outages, the Twitter account is a great way for us to get the word out. We’ve posted about this issue there (http://twitter.com/googlecalendar/status/10885748910), and are directing people to this thread for updates.

I know this issue is frustrating, and we’re making it a priority to get it fixed quickly and completely. I really appreciate your guys’ patience and thank all of you who have let us know about this issue and have offered workarounds. Again, as soon as I have an update, I’ll let you all know.

Best,
Alice

As of 3/23/10 to problem appears to be resolved

Alice PB&J has posted an answer to the question “Calendar prompting invites to guests when I don’t want them”:

Hi folks,

As many of you mentioned here (thanks for dropping back in to let everyone know ), the issue should now be resolved. I really appreciate your patience while we worked this one out, and you should all see Calendar behaving as intended again, effective immediately. Please let me know if anyone is still experiencing problems, and thanks again for your patience.

Best,
Alice

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