Arranging meetings is a major productivity drag, especially agreeing on a suitable time. Google wants to solve this problem with its new Offer times you’re free tool in Gmail, which lets you set availability times for meetings and other events.
Gmail Gets a New Tool to Show Your Availability
Google announced the new Offer times you’re free tool on itsGoogle Workspace Updates blogon 11 July, 2023. It says the feature is designed to help you set up one-to-one meetings with customers, colleagues, etc.
We’re adding a feature into Gmail that helps you find convenient 1:1 meeting times with others much quicker. This is especially useful when scheduling time with customers, partners or people in your organization whose Google Calendars are not visible to you.
Instead of negotiating dates and times for meetings, you may propose a day and set your availability times in an email. The recipient can, then, create an event for the meeting during the time slot set in your original email–all without leaving the Gmail app.
By cutting out unnecessary email exchanges, Google hopes this feature willmake your meetings more productive.
How to Set Your Availability Times in Gmail
To show your availability times for meetings in Gmail, start composing or replying to an email. Then, click on theSet up a time to meeticon in the menu toolbar to the right of theSendbutton.
Next, click on theOffer times you’re freeoption, and you can set your availability times on a proposed day for the meeting in question.
If you can’t see theSet up a time to meeticon, as above, you may have to wait up to 15 days for the rollout to complete across all accounts. The announcement confirms the feature will be available for all Workspace customers and personal Google Account users, too.
For now, you can only set availability times for your primary calendar and the feature only works for one-to-one meetings. The wording in Google’s announcement suggests it may expand the tool to cater for group meetings at a later stage.
If you send your email to multiple recipients, only the person tobook an appointmentwill be added to the event. You’ll have to manually add other participants to the event if you want them included.
Gmail Is Ramping Up Its Productivity Features
Google is constantly releasing new features in Workspace and Gmail to help users spend less time manually typing out emails. The new Offer times you’re free tool will cut out the frustrating email back-and-forths while trying to arrange meetings, and we can’t wait for the feature to (hopefully) support group meetings.
This follows the rollout of Gmail’s Help me write feature that uses a generative AI system to help you write emails faster, using prompts.
