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Calendar

Booking links

Share a link that shows your real availability so people can book time with you directly, without the back-and-forth.

A booking link is a public page showing your genuine open time. You send the link, the other person picks a slot, and the meeting lands on your calendar. No back-and-forth, and no exposing your calendar to anyone.

Your link looks like get-alfred.ai/book/intro-call. Every account gets one created automatically at signup, so you already have one.

Where to find it

From your dashboard, open the Scheduling card and choose Booking Links. There are two tabs:

  • Setup for creating and configuring links, which are called event types
  • Bookings for everything booked, plus any requests waiting on you

What the person booking sees

Your name, the meeting name and description, and how long it runs. Then a calendar with only your genuinely open days selectable, and times grouped into morning, afternoon and evening.

Their timezone is detected automatically and every time is shown in it, so nobody does the mental arithmetic. They can switch zones if they are booking on someone else’s behalf.

They enter a name and email. Company, phone and a note are optional, behind a disclosure so the form stays short. When they confirm they get a confirmation screen with the meeting details, a join link if there is one, and buttons to add it to their own calendar.

What happens when someone books

Straight away:

  • The event is created on the calendar you nominated
  • The guest is added as an attendee, so they get a normal calendar invite
  • A Google Meet link is generated if you asked for one
  • The guest gets a confirmation email with join, reschedule and cancel links
  • You get an email with their name, email and anything else they filled in
  • A toast appears in the app if you have it open

Both emails come from notifications@get-alfred.ai, and every time in them is written in your timezone. The guest also gets reminder emails 24 hours and 1 hour before.

Settings

Everything below is per link, so a 15 minute intro can have different rules from a 60 minute deep dive.

Meeting name and description. What the guest sees. The name saves as soon as you leave the field; everything else saves with the Save button.

Public URL. Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, 3 to 50 characters. Changing it breaks any URL you have already shared, so pick it early.

Add event to. Which connected calendar the booking lands on. Only calendars you can write to are offered.

Duration. 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. Under Advanced, you can let guests choose from several lengths instead.

Conferencing. Google Meet, a custom link you paste, or no video. Google Meet is only available when the hosting calendar is a Google one. On Outlook, paste your own meeting URL.

Check for conflicts on. Which calendars are consulted for busy time. Leave it alone and alfred_ checks every calendar it can see, which is usually what you want.

Availability. Toggle the days you work and set one or more time windows on each, in 15 minute steps. “Copy to all” applies one day’s hours to the rest. Windows cannot overlap within a day, and at least one day has to be open.

Timezone. The zone your availability is defined in. Guests still see their own.

Under Advanced:

  • Buffer, 0 to 30 minutes of padding either side of a booking
  • Minimum notice, from 1 hour to 2 days, so nobody books you in ten minutes
  • How far ahead, from a week to three months
  • Let guests choose duration
  • Require my approval before booking

Requiring approval

With approval switched on, booking becomes requesting. Nothing is written to your calendar and the guest is told their request has been sent.

You get an email with Accept and Decline, and the request also appears under Requests in the Bookings tab with the same buttons. Accepting creates the event and sends the guest the normal confirmation. Declining sends a polite note with a link to pick another time.

Two things to know. A pending request does not hold the slot, so someone else can still book it; if that happens the request is declined automatically and the guest is asked to choose again. And a request cannot be accepted once its start time has passed.

Cancelling and rescheduling

Every confirmation and reminder email carries reschedule and cancel links, so the guest can handle both without asking you.

Cancelling removes the event from your calendar and emails the guest a confirmation with an offer to book again. You are notified too.

Rescheduling sends them back to your booking page with a banner showing the time they are moving. The new booking is created first, and only then is the old time released, so a failure cannot leave them with nothing.

To cancel from your side, cancel the event on your calendar as normal.

How open time is worked out

A slot is offered only when all of these hold:

  • It sits inside one of your availability windows for that weekday
  • Nothing on any checked calendar overlaps it, including the buffer either side
  • It is at least your minimum notice away
  • It is within your how-far-ahead window

“Busy” follows the same rules other scheduling tools use. Events you have marked free, events you declined, and all-day markers that do not block your day are ignored. On Outlook, tentative counts as busy.

Calendars you subscribe to rather than own, like holiday feeds, sports fixtures and imported iCal subscriptions, are left out by default, since they are information rather than commitments. Tick them under “Check for conflicts on” if you want them to block bookings.

Availability is recomputed live every time someone opens your link, and checked again at the moment they confirm. If someone takes the slot in between, the guest is shown the nearest alternatives instead of a failure.

Create as many event types as you like. One is marked default with a star, and that is the one alfred_ shares when it is asked for your link.

Deleting deactivates rather than destroying: the URL stops working and stays in your booking history. You cannot delete your last remaining link, and deleting the default promotes another automatically.

Working with alfred_

Ask for the link and alfred_ hands over your default:

  • “What’s my booking link?”
  • “Send Priya my scheduling link”

You can also ask it to change settings, including duration, buffer, minimum notice, how far ahead, timezone, conferencing and whether approval is required:

  • “Make my intro call 45 minutes”
  • “Require my approval before bookings”
  • “Pause my booking link”

Set your availability windows in the editor rather than by chat. The per-day editor is the source of truth for which hours you are bookable, and asking alfred_ to change your hours will not update it.

If you pause a link, it disappears from the Setup list until you reactivate it. Ask alfred_ to turn it back on.

When bookings stop working

If your guests see “No times are currently available”, the usual cause is a disconnected calendar. alfred_ cannot read your availability, so rather than guess it shows nothing. Reconnect the account and the link works again immediately.

Booking links also switch off if your subscription lapses, and they are not switched back on automatically when you resubscribe. Ask alfred_ to reactivate the link, or create a new one.