Gmail brings in Calendly-style availability sharing from Google Calendar
July 21, 2023
On July 11, 2023, Google released new scheduling-related features for Gmail with Google Calendar integration, including quick event creation and easy availability sharing. Gmail will now have a calendar icon at the bottom of the conversation view, which will have two options — “Create an event” and “Offer times you’re free.”
The “Create an event” button is quite straightforward — it generates a Google Calendar event with the email subject as the event name and recipients of the email as participants. It also generates a meeting summary in the email body to quickly share the meeting. This feature was already available in Gmail, but was under the three-dot menu.
The new availability-sharing feature opens the calendar in the sidebar and lets you drag slots across different days to share them with the recipient. While you can share your availabilities in an email with multiple people, only the first person accepting a slot will be added to the invite automatically.