Recalculating the slots everyone is free, from conditions you saved once
Compare team calendars and surface only the times everyone is free. The conditions are stored as a session, so you can run them again when calendars move.
- For
- People scheduling meetings with many participants
- Expected outcome
- Stop comparing calendars by hand and get candidate slots from stored conditions.
Comparing everyone calendars does not scale
Past five participants, lining calendars up by hand stops being realistic. Somebody opens each calendar, hunts for overlaps, proposes candidates, and starts again when one is declined.
Calendars also move. A slot proposed today can be gone tomorrow.
Team availability does the comparison for you.
What you need first
This method requires a connected meeting tool. Without one you cannot create the session at all. The participants calendars need to be connected as well.
Sessions, rather than one-off searches
The conditions you set are stored as a session. When calendars move, you rerun the same conditions and get fresh slots, instead of rebuilding the search.
"An hour, some time next week, with these people" is a condition you write once. Sessions also show up in the list of work in progress, so they do not get lost.
The conditions
Meeting length and the step size used to scan. The date range and hours of the day. A buffer either side of a slot, and whether to skip weekends. The buffer is where travel or preparation time goes.
How it goes
Choose the participants, enter the conditions, and calculate. Only the times when everyone is free come back.
If too few slots survive, widen the date range, shorten the buffer, or reduce the list of participants.
From there you can share the slots as they are, or open the result as a schedule and carry it through to confirmation. Confirmation behaves as it does for a poll — note that if the meeting tool connection has lapsed by then, the confirmation email is not sent.