Following up on last week's announcement of offline access in Gmail Labs, we're happy to let you know that read-only offline access is now an option in Calendar for Google Apps customers.

So on top of organizing your Gmail inbox while you're traveling or without a strong Internet connection, you will be able to see your events in Google Calendar from wherever you are. Offline Calendar will let you view your existing schedule and events, but not edit them, so you don't have to print out calendars the night before a trip.

To enable offline in Calendar:
  1. Sign in to Calendar.
  2. In the upper right-hand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new 'Offline Beta' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.
Users of Google Apps Standard Edition can get started on these steps immediately. For Premier and Education Edition, domain administrators will first have to check the box next to 'Turn on new features' in the 'Domain Settings' page of the Google Apps control panel before their users can enable this option.

 This offline feature uses Gears, an open source browser extension that adds offline functionality directly to the browser.

Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager