Amazon’s Alexa is a service that finds much of its strength in its ability to link up to third party apps, and today, it’s getting just a little bit stronger in that regard with the ability to link to a G Suite account’s calendar. As of today, G Suite customers can not only have Alexa help them keep up with their calendar and give them reminders, but they can set up calendar events and reminders right from Alexa as if they’re using Google Assistant. Customers can simply say, “Alexa, what’s on my calendar?” to have their calendar information read to them, just like with any other calendar that Alexa can integrate with. Commands like “Add in a meeting with Cory and John at three P.M. tomorrow,” among others, should now all work seamlessly for G Suite customers. G Suite users can link up their calendar through the associated menu in the Alexa app, just like they normally would for their Google Calendar.
Amazon’s virtual assistant has had the ability to link to a normal Google Calendar for some time, but G Suite customers have been left high and dry until now. While G Suite and Google Calendar are functionally alike as far as end users are concerned, their authentication protocols and some other aspects meant that Amazon had to get specific cooperation from Google and do a good amount of extra work to get G Suite accounts’ calendars to connect with Alexa.
The list of cloud calendar services that Alexa supports by default is still a bit on the short side, though IFTTT recipes allow you to make some changes. The addition of G Suite brings the number of supported services to four, with the other three being Google Calendar, as mentioned above, along with Microsoft’s Office 365 Calendar and their Outlook Calendar. That’s still more than some other ecosystems can offer, including that of Google. Google Assistant can only use Google Calendar and G Suite Calendar out of the box, though much like Alexa, you can use IFTTT and Tasker to expand on that functionality if you want to take the time to set up the requisite skills and commands. Microsoft’s Cortana is a bit more versatile, boasting support for both Microsoft and Google’s calendar products out of the box.