How to share your availability

Three ways to say when you are free

Which one fits depends on who is asking and how often.

• Times in a message: right for one person, once.
• Your calendar shared as free or busy: for someone who plans with you every week, such as a partner or a close colleague.
• A booking link: for people who ask often, or whom you do not know well. They pick; you do not write options back.

How to offer times in a message

This is the oldest way, and for a single meeting it is still the quickest. What makes it work is giving the other person few choices that are really free.

1. Look at the whole coming week, not only tomorrow.
2. Offer two or three times, on different days.
3. Give each one its length: Thursday 10:00 to 11:00, not Thursday morning.
4. Add your time zone if the other person may be somewhere else.
5. Keep those times free in your calendar until they answer, so you do not give one away twice.

How to share your availability in Google Calendar

Google Calendar can share a calendar with people you name and let them see only when you are busy. Google’s help gives the steps for a computer.

1. On a computer, open Google Calendar.
2. Under My calendars, point to your calendar, click More and choose Settings and sharing.
3. Under Shared with, click Add people and groups.
4. Enter the person’s e-mail address and choose See only free/busy (hide details).
5. Click Send.

Google Calendar’s appointment schedule

The other way in Google Calendar is a booking page, which Google calls an appointment schedule. With a personal Google Account you can make one, on a computer: its help says it cannot be made in the Calendar app for Android or iPhone.

More than one schedule, automatic e-mail reminders, checking availability across several calendars, payments and e-mail verification need Google One Premium, a Google AI plan or an eligible Google Workspace plan.

At work, in Outlook

Outlook on Microsoft 365 has a personal booking page that Microsoft calls Personal Bookings. Its documentation says it follows the licensing of Microsoft Bookings, and that your organisation’s administrators can turn it on or off, so whether you have it depends on your work account.

A booking link

A booking link is a page with your free times on it. The other person picks one, and you never write options back. Scheduling tools such as Calendly and Cal.com are built around this, with paid plans for payments and teams; the comparison of the two sets their free plans side by side.

Whichever you use, two things decide whether it works: the times it offers must really be free, and you must still be able to say no. A link that reads only one calendar offers times that your other calendar or your own plans have already taken.

Where TimeLoop differs

TimeLoop is a day planner, and its booking link, trytimeloop.com/@yourname, offers the time your plan leaves free: around events from Apple Calendar, Google Calendar and Outlook, the tasks it has placed and the gap you keep between things. A guest needs no account. Every pick is a request: you accept, decline with a kind note, or offer another time, and only an accepted time goes into your day.

You make the link on iPhone, on Android or in a browser, and from a phone you can share it as a story picture of your free times. It has one length at a time and takes no payments. The booking link is free; planning from a sentence is part of TimeLoop Pro.