A previous version of this story ran on April 3, 2024. It has been updated as of June 13.

It’s time once again for one of our long-running series: Updates from Google. We have a bevy of updates for the Miami community, each targeting various audiences. Read on to see if any of these things impact you!

Appointment slots to be replaced by appointment schedules

On July 18, Google will be deprecating the “appointment slots” function and replacing it with the more robust “appointment schedules” function.

Soon, Miami users who have used appointment slots in the past will start to see banners in their Google dashboard nudging them to transition to appointment schedules.

So what’s the difference? The appointment slots feature allows you to set up a block of appointments for other people to reserve directly in your calendar, as long as others have access to your calendar. The appointment schedule feature gives you a booking page to share with folks even outside Miami (including those without a Google account). On this booking page, folks can schedule meetings with you.

This is important: Existing appointment slots will not be automatically migrated. If you have existing slots, you will need to recreate those with appointment schedules.

To learn more about appointment schedules in Google Calendar, read more at the Google support website.

Google Sync to be deprecated

In the longer term, Google Sync will no longer function in our Workspace domain.

Google Sync is a tool that allows users to link third-party, platform-specific apps to their Miami Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts. For instance, iPhone users can use Google Sync to sign in with Microsoft Exchange to get Miami Gmail messages in Apple Mail or Calendar events in the Apple Calendar native app.

Unfortunately, Google is deprecating this service in favor of the more secure “OAuth” way to sign in. This does mean that if you are checking your email from Microsoft Outlook, you may need to set up your account differently (please read below).

Google Sync will stop working on Sept. 30, 2024. This essentially means that you will need to configure your mail, calendar, and contacts apps to “Sign in with Google” instead of with just a password.

If you check your Miami email, contacts, or calendar with the following applications, you will need to do the actions listed:

Outlook 2016

Move to Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365, a web-based version of Outlook) or Outlook for Windows or Mac, both of which support OAuth access.

iOS or MacOS app, or Outlook for Mac (and only using password to log in)

You’ll need to remove and re-add your account. When you add it back, select “Sign in with Google” to automatically use OAuth. Please visit our KB article for instructions on how to add your account to iOS.

Please note: We highly recommend using Google's Gmail app over the built-in Apple iOS Mail.