Free unused Google Calendar meeting rooms

This feature is available with G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Enterprise for Education editions. Compare editions

Turn on automatic room release to free up booked meeting rooms that are no longer needed. Booked rooms are released when all but one person declines the meeting. When a room is released, an email notification is sent.

Use the Room Insights Dashboard to help you analyze room releases for your organization. With this dashboard, you can see the total number of released room hours, rebooked hours, and unreleased hours.

Turn room releases on or off

You can turn on or off automatic room release for one or more rooms.

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to Buildings and resources.
In the Room Insights Dashboard section, click Open.
Scroll to the Room release section, and click Edit Settings.
Click the resource name to open resource details.
In the Room settings section, click the Down arrow .
Change Allow calendar-based room release to On or Off.
Click Save.

Fix unwanted room releases

You can reduce unwanted room releases with a thoughtful choice of room and organizer exceptions. Google Calendar includes logic to help, but your choice of rooms and user groups are critical.

Situations where Calendar doesn't release rooms

Calendar doesn’t release rooms if a meeting:

Has guests decline less than 10 minutes before a meeting starts
Is set up to occur in the next 30 minutes
Holds a room that’s booked directly on the room's calendar
Lasts longer than 3 hours
Holds a room for the same meeting that was previously released and then re-added
Has no guests apart from the organizer
Is booked on a secondary calendar

Note: This is not a complete list of room release factors, and room release logic is subject to change.

Choose rooms to release

Google recommends that most of your rooms have automatic room release turned on, except for rooms that are:

Frequently used by important employees, such as a CEOs private room
Used for business-critical functions (hiring, client meetings, or special events)
Restricted for most employees
Used by external guests not invited to the event

Choose room organizers

Exclude users from automatic room release who:

Create the meetings for VIP employees
Frequently book meetings for others but don’t attend
Are high-level executives
Set up business-critical and external-facing meetings

Exclude user groups in the Admin console

To remove a user group from automatic room releases, you need an administrator account with Services > Calendar and Groups > Read privileges. See Assign administrator roles to a user or Create custom administrator roles for instructions.

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to Buildings and resources.
In the Global room settings section, click the Down arrow .
Under Exempt user group, click Edit Group.
Enter the user group and click Save.