Calendly’s Free/busy rules feature lets you free up more time in your calendar by allowing you to book over specific meetings. This makes it easier to set and manage your availability.
Before you begin
- Connect your calendar on the Calendar settings page and set it as a Calendar to check for conflicts. Need help? Read more here.
- Note: You don't need to use a Calendar to add events to in order to use free/busy rules. But if you do add new meetings to a calendar, make sure your Calendar to add events to is set to be checked for conflicts.
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You can use the free/busy rules feature to:
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Book over any personal or Calendly event on your connected calendar
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Book over events up to 60 days into the future
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Setting up free/busy rules
Set up free/busy rules in your event editor. Here's how:
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- From your Event types page, select the event type you wish to edit
- Select More options at the bottom of the editor.
- Expand the Free/busy rules section.
- Select + Add meeting exception.
- Next, using the dropdown menu, select one of the following options:
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includes
- This option will search your connected calendar for all event titles that include what you type in the search bar.
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matches exactly
- This option will search your connected calendar for event titles that exactly match what you type in the search bar.
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includes
- Enter your calendar event title into the search bar.
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Select Enter on your keyboard to allow those meetings to be booked over for your event type.
- By selecting Enter, all events listed within the 'x meetings' list can now be scheduled over for this event type.
- Select Save changes.
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Booking over Calendly meetings
When Free/busy rules are set up, you can also book over Calendly meetings. When you do, you’ll get a notification in your 'New Event' email.
Select the 'View in Calendly' link to be taken to your Meetings page. There, you can reschedule the Calendly meeting if desired.
FAQ's
With our free/busy rules feature, you can book over the following events:
- Calendly meetings on your Calendar(s) to check for conflicts
- Connected calendar events
- Any external event on your connected calendar
- Focus time blocks on your connected calendar
- Breaks within your connected calendar
No. After booking over a Calendly-scheduled meeting, you’ll get a notification about any conflicting events.
You can then choose to reschedule or keep the conflicting meeting.
To see if your event is set up to book over meetings:
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- From your home page, select the event type you wish to check.
- Select More options at the bottom of the editor.
- Expand the Free/busy rules section.
- Review what (if any) calendar event titles are able to be booked over.
The book over meetings function uses your Calendars to check for conflicts to find conflicts.
If your Calendly-booked meeting was not added to a Calendar to check for conflicts, or your event type title is not included in the calendar event title, it will not appear as an available meeting exception.
To fix this:
- Go to your calendar settings.
- Make sure your Calendar to add events to is also selected as a Calendar to check for conflicts.
- If you're using calendar invitations as your event type notification method, check that the event type title is included in the calendar invitation title.
- To change your notification type from calendar invitations to email confirmations, check out this article.