# Share Your Availability > Share when you are free as text or as a booking link. Source: https://groupthink.com/docs/availability/ Last updated: 2026-10-03 Groupthink can answer "when are you free?" two ways: as plain text you paste into a reply, and as a link someone else opens to put time on your calendar. Both read the same thing. Open times are computed across **every calendar you have connected**, so a dentist appointment on your personal calendar stops a client booking over it. You do not have to daisy-chain accounts or keep a second scheduling tool in step with the first. The fastest way to share your times is the sidebar. Click **New** at the top of the left sidebar and choose **Copy my open times**. It works from every page, and there is nothing to set up first. The rest lives on one page, **Calendar & booking**. To open it, click **Calendar & booking** under **Today** in the left sidebar, or go to [app.groupthink.com/today/calendar](https://app.groupthink.com/today/calendar). The page has three sections, in this order: - **Booking links**: the links you hand out so someone can book you. - **Availability**: your working hours, the window booking links offer times inside. - **Calendars**: the calendars Groupthink checks before it offers a time. Older links to **Scheduling** or to the Availability section of Settings still work. They open this page. ## Set When You Are Bookable The card is **When you're bookable**, in the **Availability** section of Calendar & booking. Your calendars say when you are free. This says when you are willing to be booked. Every availability link offers times inside this window and nowhere else. 1. Go to [Today > Calendar & booking > Availability](https://app.groupthink.com/today/calendar#availability). 2. Set a **Start** and an **End** time. 3. Set your **Timezone**. Your working hours are read in this zone, and Groupthink also uses it when it renders times in your recaps and digests. 4. Under **Days**, click the day chips to choose which days you are bookable. You cannot turn off every day. 5. Click **Save**. A green **Saved** appears next to the button. ![The When you're bookable card: working hours, timezone, day chips, and the Copy my next open times button](/availability-working-hours.png) ## Copy Your Next Open Times as Text Sometimes the right answer to "when are you free?" is a couple of lines in a reply, not a link. From anywhere in the app, click **New** at the top of the left sidebar and choose **Copy my open times**. Groupthink puts the next week of free time on your clipboard as plain text, ready to paste. It reads like something a person would send: ``` Monday, Aug 17: 9:00–11:00am, 2:00–5:00pm Tuesday, Aug 18: 10:00am–12:00pm (times in PDT) ``` ![The sidebar's New menu, open, with Copy my open times as its last item](/copy-open-times-menu.png) A line appears under the box saying what happened: _Copied — next 7 days, 9am–5pm PDT_, with your own hours and timezone, next to an **Adjust** link that opens the working-hours card. The line goes away on its own after a few seconds. If your hours look wrong in that line, click **Adjust** — that is the whole setup, and you only meet it after the copy, never in front of it. ![The read-back under the box after copying, showing the working-hours window and an Adjust link](/copy-open-times-notice.png) The same action is also on the **When you're bookable** card as **Copy my next open times**, and behaves the same way. Two cases put nothing on your clipboard, and neither says **Copied**: - **No open times in the next week.** The line reads _No open times in the next 7 days_, with **Adjust** right there to widen your hours or days. - **No calendar connected.** The line reads _Connect a calendar first so these are real times_, with a **Connect calendar** link. With no calendar to read, nothing would block anything, and Groupthink will not hand out your entire working-hours window as if it were free time. **Copy my open times** uses one fixed set of rules and does not read any of your links. It looks for **30-minute** openings, no sooner than an hour from now, across the next **7 days**, and writes out at most five days with up to four ranges on each. Your working hours, days, and timezone apply the same way they do everywhere else. For a specific link's rules, use **Copy as text** on that link's row on the [Calendar & booking](https://app.groupthink.com/today/calendar#booking-links) page instead. ## Create a Booking Link Booking links live in the **Booking links** section of **Calendar & booking**, under **Today** in the left sidebar. Each link is a named set of rules with its own web address that you can hand to anyone. 1. Click **Calendar & booking** under **Today** in the left sidebar. Your links are listed first, under **Your links**. 2. Click **New link**. 3. Give it a **Name**. This is what the person booking sees at the top of the page, so make it descriptive: "30-minute intro" rather than "link 2". 4. Adjust the rest of the settings (see the table below), then click **Create link**. Your new link appears in the list with its web address underneath it. ### Link Settings | Setting | What it does | | ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Name** | Required. The heading on the booking page. | | **Description** | Optional. A sentence or two shown under the heading. | | **Length** | How long the meeting is. Options run from 15 minutes to 2 hours. Defaults to 30 minutes. | | **Buffer** | Time held clear either side of a booking. Defaults to **None**. | | **Minimum notice** | How soon from now the first slot can be. Defaults to **4 hours**. | | **Booking window** | How far out times are offered, in days ahead. Defaults to 14, up to 60. | | **Start times every** | The spacing between offered start times. Leave blank to step by the meeting length. | | **Most per day** | A cap on how many bookings this link accepts per day. Leave blank for no limit. | | **Book onto** | Which of your calendars the meeting is created on. Leave it on **First available calendar** if you do not care. Open times are still computed across all of your calendars either way. | | **Location** | For meeting somewhere in person. Leave it blank for a video call. The text shows on the booking page and on the confirmation. Setting it does not switch **Attach a meeting link** off — turn that off yourself for a genuinely in-person meeting. See the limitation below about what reaches the calendar invite. | | **Attach a meeting link** | On by default. Adds a Google Meet link to the invitation when **Book onto** is a Google calendar. See the limitation below for Outlook. | | **Accepting bookings** | On by default. Turn it off and the link stops working for anyone who opens it. | Working hours, days, and timezone are not on this form. They are one setting for you, on the **When you're bookable** card in the [Availability](https://app.groupthink.com/today/calendar#availability) section just below your links, and every link honors them. ### The Web Address Never Changes Groupthink generates each link's address for you. You cannot choose it, and editing the link later never changes it. Rename a link, change its length, pause it and turn it back on, and every copy already sitting in somebody's inbox keeps working. ## Share and Manage Your Links Each link in the list shows its name, a summary of its rules, how many bookings it has taken, and its full web address. A summary line reads something like `30 min · 15 min buffer · 4 hr notice · 14 days out · 3 bookings`. A link with **Most per day** set carries a `max 2/day` piece as well. Each row has five actions: - **Copy link** puts the web address on your clipboard. Paste it into an email, a message, or an email signature. - **Copy as text** reads that link's current open times and copies them as plain text, the same paste-able format as **Copy my open times** but using this link's own rules. - **Edit** opens the settings again. - **Pause** stops the link working without deleting it. The row is marked **Paused** and the button becomes **Resume**. There is no confirmation step, so it is a safe thing to toggle. - **Delete** removes it for good. Groupthink asks first, and warns you that meetings already booked through the link stay on your calendar. If a link has no open times in its window right now, **Copy as text** puts nothing on your clipboard and does not say **Copied**. A line under the row says so instead, for example _No open times in the next 14 days, so there is nothing to paste._, and suggests widening the window in **Edit** or sending the link anyway, since the link keeps checking your calendar. ## What Happens When Someone Books The meeting is created on the calendar you chose under **Book onto**, titled with the link's name and the person's name (`30-minute intro — Dana Reyes`). You and they are both on the invite, and both of you are notified by the calendar provider. Whatever they typed under **What's this about?** is in the invite description, so read it there. The person who booked also becomes a relationship in Groupthink, and the meeting sits on their record. That is the part a standalone scheduling tool cannot do: a booking is not a row in a separate app, it is the start of a relationship record that keeps building every time you talk. For the whole picture of your side, see [After Someone Books](/docs/after_a_booking). For what the other person sees, see [Your Booking Page](/docs/booking_page). ## When Your Calendars Change A link belongs to you rather than to one calendar, so it survives most of what you do to your connections. - **The calendar under Book onto is disconnected.** The link keeps working. New bookings land on your first connected calendar instead. The link still points at the calendar that is gone, so **Book onto** shows nothing when you open **Edit** — pick a calendar again if you care which one bookings land on. - **You disconnect every calendar.** The link still opens, but nobody can complete a booking through it. They see a message that the link is not connected to a calendar right now. Connect a calendar and it works again. - **You connect another calendar.** Its events start blocking booking slots straight away, on every link you already have. Nothing to re-configure. ## Known Limitations - **Cancelling and rescheduling** are not built into the booking page. The confirmation tells the person to reply to the calendar invite, which reaches you directly. - **Moving a booked meeting does not put the old time back on offer.** Groupthink keeps holding the original start time against your links until that time passes. Deleting the meeting from your calendar does free it, once your calendar next syncs. See [After someone books](/docs/after_a_booking). - **Both of you get a confirmation email.** Along with the calendar invite, Groupthink emails the person who booked (subject: "Confirmed:" followed by the link name and your name) and emails you (subject: their name, "booked", and the link name). You can turn off your copy in [User Settings > Notifications](https://app.groupthink.com/settings#notifications). Their email has a **Cancel or reschedule** button that does not work yet. If they need to change the time, they should reply to the calendar invite. - **No meeting link on Outlook.** **Attach a meeting link** creates a Google Meet link, so it only does anything when the booking lands on a Google calendar. A booking on an Outlook calendar arrives with no video link, and the booking page has already told the person one is coming. If you book onto Outlook, set a **Location** instead, or point the link at a Google calendar. - **Location does not reach a Google invite.** The **Location** text shows on the booking page and on the confirmation the person sees, but it is not written into the location field of an invite created on a Google calendar. Put the address in the link's **Description** as well so it travels with the invite. On an Outlook calendar the location does reach the invite. - **A Location does not turn the video link off.** The two settings are independent. Leave **Attach a meeting link** on with a **Location** set and a booking on a Google calendar gets both, and the confirmation page shows the video link rather than your address. Turn **Attach a meeting link** off for an in-person link. - **Live double-check on Outlook.** Groupthink re-checks your live calendar before it accepts a booking on Google. On Outlook it uses the calendar it has already synced, which can be a few minutes behind. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why does my link show so few open times? Almost everything on your calendars blocks a slot, including holds written by other scheduling tools and multi-day events. The two exceptions are invitations you declined and events you marked **Free**. If you are coming from a tool like Reclaim or Clockwise, the holds it wrote still count as busy until you turn that tool off, so a link can show far fewer days than your working hours suggest. Open the calendars for that week and you will find something sitting on each missing day. ### Do I need a booking link to share my availability? No. **Copy my open times** in the sidebar's **New** menu works from any page, on its own, with no link and no setup at all. (Settings has the same action as **Copy my next open times**.) ### Does it look at all of my calendars, or just one? All of them. Open times are computed across every calendar you have connected, across accounts and across providers. The **Book onto** setting only decides which calendar the meeting is created on. ### Can I have more than one link? Yes. Make one per kind of meeting: a 30-minute intro, a 60-minute working session, an in-person coffee with a **Location** set. ### Can I choose the web address? No. Groupthink generates it, which is what keeps it stable when you edit the link later. ### What if two people book the same time? Only one of them gets it. The second person sees a message that the time was just taken and a refreshed list of open times to pick from again. ### Does an invitation I declined still block a slot? No. An event you declined is not a commitment, so it does not block the time. Neither does an event you marked **Free**. Everything else on your calendars does. ### What if I have no calendar connected? Booking links need one. With no calendar connected there is nowhere to put the meeting, so a visitor who tries to book sees a message that the link is not connected to a calendar right now. The booking page goes the other way, and it is worth knowing why: with no calendar to read, nothing blocks anything, so the page offers your entire working-hours window even though nobody can complete a booking. The copy buttons refuse instead — **Copy my open times** copies nothing and asks you to connect a calendar first. Connect a calendar before you send a link to anyone. ### Does marking an event Free open that time up for booking? Yes. An event you marked **Free** (Free in Google Calendar, Show as Free in Outlook) does not block a booking slot, so a focus block or an all-day banner you left Free stays bookable. Calendar sync reads the same setting: a Free event does not get a placeholder written to your other calendar. See [calendar sync](/docs/calendar_sync). ### Someone booked a bad time. Can I move it? Move it on your calendar and reply to them, the same as any other meeting. Two things to know: the person cannot reschedule from the booking page, and moving the meeting does not free the original slot on your links. See Known Limitations above. ### Do I need to keep the working hours in sync with anything? No. There is one working-hours setting and every link reads it. ## Related - [Your booking page](/docs/booking_page) — what the person you send a link to sees - [After someone books](/docs/after_a_booking) — the meeting, the notetaker, and the relationship record - [Keep your calendars in sync](/docs/calendar_sync) — so a commitment on one calendar blocks a booking on another - [Google Calendar](/docs/google_calendar) and [Outlook Calendar](/docs/outlook_calendar) — connecting more accounts - [User settings](/docs/user_settings) — where your working hours live ## Getting Help Questions about availability links? Email [support@groupthink.com](mailto:support@groupthink.com).