Google Calendar adds 'out of office', 'working hour' features for better work-life-balance

Google Calendar has introduced two new features called "out of office" and "working hours" to improve user's time management skills and develop a better work-life balance.

The features will help users ensure that others will know when they are available and when they would not want to be disturbed.

The Calendar application will help automatically decline meeting requests that may be scheduled during time slots defined as "out of office".

"When creating an event on the web, simply select the 'out of office' entry type. The 'out of office' object will have a different look on the Calendar grid, signalling to others that you are unavailable," Google's 'G suite' team stated in its official blog post.

Users will have the ability to "protect their personal time from their work time" with the "working hours" option. They will also have the option to set working hours to specific intervals for all week days separately.

These features will be made available to all G suite edition users within the next two weeks.

"Based on your time zone and past scheduling patterns, Google Calendar can now infer your working hours. You may see a prompt asking you to set them, and you can further customise them as needed," the post adds.