Use the x-bees Meeting Scheduler

Let customers book time in your diary themselves, without the back and forth of finding a slot by email.

Let customers book time in your diary themselves, without the back and forth of finding a slot by email.

Set it up

1. Connect your Google or Microsoft 365 calendar. The scheduler works from your real availability, so without a calendar it has nothing to offer.
2. Click your user picture in the top left and open Settings, then Kite settings.
3. Set your available working days and hours. With a Microsoft calendar these follow your working hours in Outlook.
4. On the Calendar Settings tab, pick which calendars bookings are written to and which are checked for free time. They do not have to be the same one.
5. Set the meeting lengths you offer, anywhere from 15 to 360 minutes, and add a 15 or 30 minute break before or after so bookings do not land back to back.
6. Set Minimum notice before booking, so nobody books you for twenty minutes from now. Then Save.
7. Under Profile details, click the Calendar button and choose Copy link. That is the link you share.

The calendar link ends in /schedule and goes straight to your availability. Your ordinary contact-me link offers a chat first, which is the right one for a signature but a step too many when you are asking somebody to book.

How the customer sees it

They open your contact-me link and choose schedule a call instead of sending a message. They see your open slots, pick one, and the meeting lands in both calendars with the joining link already in it.

Accept the booking in Google Calendar

When somebody books you, the event is added to your calendar automatically. On Google Calendar you have to confirm it by clicking Yes. Leave it unanswered and the slot is still treated as available, so the scheduler can hand the same half hour to the next person who asks.

Keep your calendar honest

The scheduler offers whatever your calendar says is free. If you keep focus time out of your diary, it will be offered to customers. Block the time you do not want booked, and the problem disappears.

Limit the dates for one campaign

You can hand out a link that only opens a particular window, by adding parameters to the calendar link:

?start=dd.mm.yyyy&end=dd.mm.yyyy&subject=meeting%20subject

Write the subject with %20 where a space would go, or the link breaks at the first space.

Useful for an event or a launch week: the same profile, one link per occasion, and no bookings either side of it.

What arrives with the booking

A conversation is created for the meeting, so when the call starts you have the history of what was already discussed rather than a bare calendar entry. You get an email as well, and a reminder before it starts.

Two things to expect. The event lands in your calendar by itself, but the customer has to add it to theirs by hand, so it is worth saying so if the meeting matters. And a conversation started this way is public by default, meaning anybody with the link can open it.

What it will not do

• No team bookings. A customer books time with a person, never with a group. For reaching a team, use a website widget instead.
• Twelve months ahead is as far out as anybody can book.
• Ten open meetings per customer. The same person cannot book an eleventh with you until one of the ten has passed.

See also

• Share your personal contact-me link
• Schedule and run meetings