Google Automates Your Calendar with Smart Rescheduler

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Mar 19, 2010

This week, Google is making even greater use of its famous search technology by handing it over to administrative assistants. Smart Rescheduler, currently a Google Calendar Labs project, utilizes Google’s ranking algorithms to dig up the best time and location for meetings. Can you imagine no longer having to consult with everyone’s schedule?

As Google Software Engineer David Marmaros pointed out in Google’s official blog, you don't just start randomly visiting pages looking for relevant content when you search the Web. You use a search engine.

The Google team has applied this logic to scheduling by using their algorithms to dig up the most relevant meeting times. The results are based on specified criteria like attendees, schedule complexity, and time zones. Smart Rescheduler even returns a list of available conference rooms.

Google Smart Rescheduler

"This process is 100% automated — no Google employees are doing any work behind the scenes," write Marmaros. "You can refine the results by marking people as optional, changing the meeting duration, ignoring certain conflicts, or specifying the earliest and latest times you'll accept. The results will immediately update to reflect your new requirements."

Once a user enables the tool through Calendar Labs, Smart Scheduler will show up to the right of your calendar, but you can always toggle its visibility if you don't like it taking up all that space.

The catch, of course, is that the tool only works if everyone has shared their calendars with each other. This means that it isn't ideal for first-time meetings, but it seems like a handy option for those that are already connected.

"Of course, we can't make meetings more interesting," said Marmaros in closing, "but we can try to save you frustration leading up to them."