If you’re one of the many for whom Google Calendar has come to mean the difference between being on time and missing meetings altogether, but you refuse to budge in your love of Android devices, there’s good news for you. You can bid farewell to needing to put up with limited functionality compared to Google Calendar’s web-based service, thanks to a raft of improvements built into a recent update to the Android version of the popular app.

Google Drive integration

Making for an even more seamless experience using the whole suite of Google apps, Calendar is now more integrated than ever with cloud storage solution Google Drive. Whether it’s a meeting agenda or a hotel booking confirmation, you can now attach files from your Google Drive account directly to a Calendar event. No more emailing files around, only to have to resend them a week later to those who have mislaid them – Calendar even makes sure that all your event invitees can open the files you attach.

A week at a glance

When using Google Calendar on the web, we take it for granted that we can flick between a daily view of our schedule, a look at the work week, the full seven days or even a month at a time. But on Android devices, these have been features missing for too long – at least until now. The app previously supported a monthly view before it was axed; now the seven-day week view returns to allow you to get instant perspective on what’s on the horizon. Couple this with a new pinch-and-zoom capability that allows you to focus in on specific appointments – albeit that this feature frustratingly is only supported in the seven-day view – and it makes for a more efficient and rewarding calendar experience.

Link up with Google+

Take-up of Google’s attempt at a social network has admittedly been lower than some expected but, if you’re one of those who has jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, new integration between it and Calendar means you can quickly and easily import all your friends’ birthdays from your Google+ account. This saves you manually entering them into your diary and, with the option to receive timely reminders by SMS and email, you’ll never miss your colleagues’ special days again.

If you haven’t yet upgraded your Google Calendar for Android app, now’s the time – the latest version is available in the Google Play store. To learn more about deploying Calendar and other cloud-powered Google Apps to transform your company’s organization and productivity, give us a call.