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Share Your Availability

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.

Everything here lives in User Settings > Availability, under Your data in the settings menu, next to Calendar.

Set When You Are Bookable

The first card is When you're bookable. 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 User Settings > 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.

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.

Click Copy my next open times on the same card. 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 button reads Copied for a moment when it works.

This button 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 instead.

The second card is Your links. Each link is a named set of rules with its own web address that you can hand to anyone.

  1. On the Your links card, click New link.
  2. 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".
  3. 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.

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. 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, 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.

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 the card above 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 copies the sentence No open times in this window. rather than an empty block. Paste before you send, so you do not mail that line to somebody by accident.

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. For what the other person sees, see Your 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, and Book onto reads First available calendar again when you next open the form. Pick a new one if you care which.
  • 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 or cancelling a booked meeting does not put the slot back on offer. Groupthink holds the original time against your links even after you move the meeting or delete it from your calendar. The hold expires when the time passes. Until then, that start time is not offered again on any of your links.
  • The calendar invite is the confirmation. Groupthink does not send a separate confirmation email to you or to the person who booked.
  • 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.
  • 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

No. Copy my next open times works on its own and needs no link at all.

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.

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. 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 times on offer go the other way, and it is worth knowing why: with no calendar to read, nothing blocks anything, so both the booking page and Copy my next open times hand out your entire working-hours window. Connect a calendar before you send a link to anyone.

Does marking an event Free open that time up for booking?

No. Anything on your calendar blocks a booking slot, whether you marked it Free or not. Marking an event Free only affects calendar sync, where it stops a placeholder being written to your other calendar.

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.

Getting Help

Questions about availability links? Email support@groupthink.com.