Appointments

You may have already received appointment requests via email.  You are directed to respond in the email yes, no, or maybe to a meeting or other event.  If you respond "yes" the appointment is added to your calendar automatically.

Perhaps you have also figured out how to send such invitations.  If not, here is how.

In your Gmail calendar, create a new appointment, filling in all the details about it, as well as the date and time.  Over to the right, you will see an option to add "guests" to your event.  Enter the emails of people you wish to invite.  When you save the appointment, you will be prompted to send invitations to your guests.  If you select "yes" they will get the emails that allow them to add the event to to their calendars with a single click.

By default, guests are able to see the guest list and invite others.  If you leave these selected, recipients will be able to see the email addresses of others sent the same invitation and will also be able to forward the invitation to third parties who will also be able to join the event and see other addresses.  If you don't want this to happen, make sure to uncheck those options.  Also, there is an option, unchecked by default to let users modify the event.  This gives all recipients the ability to alter all aspects of the event, including date, time, location, or description.  These changes will be updated for everyone who received the invitation.  I recommend this option be left unchecked in most cases.

This will work even if your guests are not using Gmail.  The calendaring system used is an industry standard supported by most modern system.  If the recipient uses Outlook, or another online mail program like Yahoo or Hotmail, the system should work the same.  If the recipient does not have an up to date system, they will still receive an email with the information.  They just won't be able to transfer it to a calendar.  Users should be able to respond to such invitations on their smart phones as well as on a regular computer.

If you are planning a meeting or arranging an event, this is often much better than sending a regular email.  All responses are kept together in one place, and everyone has the event added to their calendar.  It avoid multiple replies and the back and forth that fills up your inbox with multiple messages where one would do.