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Who needs a calendar when you have Alexa? The personal assistant is not only helping you control your house, but she’s now managing your schedule, too. Since 2017, Alexa has been able to keep tabs on your calendar — all you need to say to set a meeting or an appointment is, “Alexa, schedule a meeting for 10 a.m. on Wednesday.” But previously, if you needed to make a change to an existing event, you had to go to a computer or mobile device. That is no longer the case. Beginning this week, if you say, “Alexa, rearrange my meeting,” she will ask which event you need to be edited and what new timeslot you would like to occupy.
For an even simpler interaction, you can just command Alexa to move your 9 a.m. meeting on Tuesday to 3 p.m. on Wednesday. You’ll immediately see this change implemented on your computer, your phone, and anywhere else. Better still, you can actually get Alexa to schedule a meeting with a specific individual, as long as he or she is in your contact list.
For example, if you say, “Alexa, schedule a meeting with Carol,” she’ll find Carol from your digital black book, and if there are multiple people with matching names, confirm exactly which Carol you’re talking about. Then, Alexa will suggest a time that suits both of your calendars — be warned, this feature will only work if you and Carol have set your calendars to share information with one another. This way, you no longer have to carry on long, arduous conversations to determine who is available when. Alexa will check all of this for you.
As it stands, these new features have been rolled out to calendars in Gmail, G Suite, Office 365, and Microsoft Exchange. Currently, only Alexa users in the U.S. will be able to explore the whole host of calendar maintaining abilities that the smart assistant has, but it seems likely that this ability will soon be expanded to users in other parts of the world as well.
So if you’ve been having some trouble managing your calendar, look no further than Alexa — she’s only too happy to help.