I’m becoming more and more of a fan of Google Now. Google Now is able to give me a good view of my life that is tailored to me. It looks at all the information I have on my phone and seems to learn from it. Google Now seems to pick up everything except flight information. So, how do you get Google Now to read flight information?
On my phone, I have multiple calendars; work, general Google calendar, kid’s school Google Calendar and some others. Google Now can look at all of those and give me a nice view of my coming day. If I have a meeting coming up, it gives me a good guess of when I have to leave for it with the address I put in. The Card for that meeting will also have a nice link to navigation with Google Maps. I love that. But, it will not look at a calendar entry that is a flight and identify it as such.
I do a fair bit of travel for work and get the calendar invites from our travel service, so that is easy. I also need them in my calendar for scheduling with colleagues. So, I have the information in my calendar, but Google Now wasn’t reading the flight information. Searching (with Google) around the internet, I was unable to find an answer.
This got particularly confusing when I would see flight information about people coming to visit us, but I didn’t have that information in my calendar. It turns out to be pretty simple. If you get an itinerary, or flight information send to your gmail account that is associated with Google Now, it will pick up that information for you. To get Google Now to read flight information, you just need to email your gmail the itinerary.
Now that it is reading my flight information, it is actually nice since you will see delays and other information. At a glance, you know if things are good (green) or bad (red) and can touch the card for more information.
So, when you book a flight, make sure you also send or forward a copy of the itinerary to your gmail, and Google Now will read in your trip details. Calendar entries don’t cut it.