Automatically Share Calendars to New Group Members in Google Workspace

Introduction

In this article we will explore how to auto share calendars to new group members in G Suite. Currently, the calendars shared with existing groups or users are not visible to new group members or new users. They have to manually add any calendars that have been shared. This adds complicity to both new employees and administrators, especially considering large amount of staffs arriving / leaving. Unlike Shared Drive where new users will immediately see the shared folders, shared calendars do not automatically show up in the left panel of new group members' calendar. This article is going to show you how Foresight automatically re-share calendars to new group members in Google Workspace, so they don't have to manually search and add those calendars. It also presents a time saving benefit of automatically sending welcome emails to new group members.

If you have yet to install Foresight, check out this quick start.

Video demo

Suppose we have 2 groups, Group Project Elk and Group Market Insights. Project Elk has 1 group shared calendar while Market Insights has 2 group shared calendars. The calendars were shared with the groups by the way in Google documentation Create and share a group calendar. Existing group members have received invitation emails for the calendars. Now we add a user Constance Martinez to Project Elk and a user Darrel Kelly to Market Insights. A table is worth 1000 words.

At the end of demo, Constance and Darrel received two group specific welcome emails containing group shared calendar links.

Instructions

In a nutshell, to complete the task of sharing calendar to new group member, we basically created an automation rule to send an welcome email to new members of that group. The formula here is TRIGGER: Group member added => ACTION: Email. Now let's break down.

1. In Rules page, click to create a rule.
2. Select Group member added trigger.
   
3. In the Edit trigger page,
   1. Grant the account access permission. Foresight will need your permission to read your audit activities log to make it work.
   2. Specify the target group to watch. If leave this empty, joining any groups will trigger the rule.
   3. (Optional) specify specific member to watch. You don't need it for this use case. It's useful when you want to monitor specific employee joining any groups. If leave this empty, it means any member joining any groups or a specific group will pull the trigger.
      
4. Click Next.
5. Select an Email action.
6. In the Edit actions page,
   1. Grant the permission to send emails on behalf of you.
   2. Select the To field from the variable's drop-down list. This Variable represents the new group member.
   3. (Optional) Add additional recipients. You can copy yourself and/or someone else.
   4. Fill in Subject. Any variables are supported.
   5. Fill in the Email Body. Share your calendar links (see the screenshot below) to the new group member as well as other resources in the email. Variables are available, such as the member's email, first name, last name, the group name and etc.
      
   6. (Optional) Add additional actions.
      
7. Click Next.
8. In the Review page, give the rule a name.
9. Click Create.
10. You just created an automation rule that automatically sends a welcome email and shares group calendars to new group members.

The steps above apply only to one group. To share different group calendars or other resources to new group members, create one rule for each group. Now assume you have done all groups, to test out the automation rules, follow this.

1. In your Admin Console, assign your users to groups you have rules for.
2. Check Foresight notifications. You will get one notification per rule execution, i.e. one event of a member being added to a specified group.
3. Verify in your Gmail Sent folder if your welcome emails with calendar links are sent successfully.
   

You are all set.

What about sharing a corporate calendar to every new user?

By default, a calendar is created and owned by a single user and available for the entire corporate. It does not automatically add to others' calendar list. While it's simple for broadcast your calendar to existing users with a megaphone 📣, new users won't discover it without your manually telling them. Now let's automate it.

First of all, you will ensure a corporate-wide shared calendar accessible to others. In the Access permissions of your calendar settings, check Make available for <you-organization-name>.

Then, use another User created trigger, combined with the Email action to automatically send the corporate-wide calendar link(s) to every new user. The link can be included in a new employee welcome email. For further information, check out Automated Welcome Email to Google Workspace New Users.

What's more?

Audit log in Admin Console is very useful for administrators to monitors domain events and changes. They can be leveraged to automate your work, improve your productivity and enhance system security. If you have any ideas, feel free to leave comments below.

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