Team availability — surface only the times everyone is free

What team availability does

You choose the people who need to attend, and their calendars are compared so that only the slots where all of them are free are surfaced.

Unlike a poll, you do not line up the candidates yourself. You state the conditions — an hour, some time next week — and the matching slots are calculated for you.

This is worth reaching for when there are enough participants that comparing calendars by hand stops being realistic.

What you need before you start

This method requires a connected meeting tool. Without one you cannot create the session at all.

The participants calendars need to be connected too. Anyone without a calendar connection cannot be assessed for availability, so the result will not mean what you expect.

Set the connections up first.

The conditions you can set

You give the length of the meeting and the step size used when scanning. With a 60 minute meeting and a 30 minute step, the scan considers 10:00-11:00, then 10:30-11:30, and so on.

You also set the date range to search, the hours of the day to consider, whether to skip weekends, and a buffer to keep free either side of a slot. The buffer is useful when you need travel or preparation time.

Sessions you can recalculate

The conditions are stored as a session. Because calendars move, you can run the same conditions again later rather than rebuilding them.

Sessions also appear in the list of work in progress, so they do not get lost.

Confirming a slot

You pick from the calculated slots and confirm. What happens next is the same as a poll: the confirmation and reminders go out, and a meeting URL is created.

If the meeting tool connection has lapsed by the time you confirm, the confirmation email is not sent. Watch out for expired connections.