How to manage 'Busy' vs. 'Free' calendar settings

Manage your calendar visibility to control when you're available for scheduling. By setting events on your connected calendar to 'Busy' or 'Free,' you tell Calendly whether those times should be shown as available to others.

For example, you can:

  • Mark all-day calendar events like holidays as 'Free' so they don’t block availability.
  • Set focus time as 'Busy' so guests can't schedule over it.

This setting gives you more control over your availability without editing Calendly directly. It’s helpful if you rely on synced work calendars.

Learn more about managing general availability in Calendly.

Before you begin

  • Connect your calendar to Calendly.
  • This setting is managed in your external calendar (not in Calendly).
  • Changes made in your calendar will sync to Calendly automatically.
  • All-day events show at the top of your calendar. If set to 'Busy,' they can block your whole day. Change them to 'Free' if you want to stay available.

Set an event to 'Busy' or 'Free' in Google Calendar

  1. Find your event in Google Calendar.
  2. Select the pencil icon to Edit event.
  3. Select the Busy or Free dropdown and choose your status.
    • Calendly marks you as unavailable for events marked as Busy.
  4. Select Save.

calendar status gmail.png

Set an event to 'Busy' or 'Free' in Outlook or Exchange

  1. Find your calendar event in Outlook.
  2. Select Edit and More options.
  3. Select the Busy, Free, Working elsewhere, Tentative, or Away/Out of office dropdown and choose your status.
    • By default, Calendly marks Outlook calendars as unavailable for events marked as Busy, Tentative, Away/Out of office, and Working elsewhere.

    • In an Exchange Calendar, if your event status is set to Working elsewhere, Calendly will read you as available.
    • In the What's considered unavailable? dropdown in your Calendar settings, you can choose how you'd like Calendly to read the statuses you set in your calendar.

  4. Select Save.

busy calendar status outlook.png