Suggesting times
How alfred_ finds your open slots, what it respects when picking them, and when it sends times to a participant without checking back with you.
When you need to send someone availability, alfred_ does the calendar math and writes the email. On a scheduling thread it will also send that email for you, so it is worth reading the section on approval below.
Finding your open time
Ask for your own openings in whatever way is natural:
- “When am I free for an hour this week?”
- “What do I have open Tuesday afternoon?”
- “Find me three 30 minute slots between Wednesday and Friday”
If nothing fits, alfred_ tells you why rather than returning an empty list. Usually that is a day packed solid, or a window too narrow for the length you asked for.
What alfred_ respects when picking slots
- Real events on every connected calendar, work and personal, Google and Outlook together
- Focus blocks, since they are ordinary busy events
- An earliest-meeting rule, if you have set one. “No meetings before 10am” is absolute, and alfred_ will return nothing rather than break it
- Focus days, as a strong preference. Whole days you have asked to keep meeting-free are avoided when possible, but offered rather than coming back empty-handed
- A default weekday business-hours window when you have not told it otherwise
Two things it does not apply, despite being easy to assume: there is no configurable gap between meetings outside of booking links, and quiet hours do not restrict scheduling. See Conflict detection for the full list of what is and is not checked.
Does alfred_ send times without asking me?
On a scheduling thread, yes, and that is deliberate. If alfred_ is a recipient or is copied on a thread where a time is being worked out, and it finds two or more slots that work, it sends those options straight to the participant. Asking alfred_ to handle the scheduling is treated as the approval.
It comes back to you instead of sending when:
- It can find only one workable slot, or none at all
- The calendar lookup fails or returns something it cannot trust
- The back-and-forth has been running a long time without landing
Booking the event is held to a stricter rule than proposing. If alfred_ cannot confirm the slot is still free at the moment of booking, it stops rather than risk double-booking you.
This is different from the rest of your inbox. When alfred_ drafts a reply to an ordinary email, that draft waits for you. The send-on-your-behalf behavior applies to scheduling threads alfred_ is actually part of. See Drafts and approvals.
Proposing times in a reply you send yourself
For a thread alfred_ is not on, ask for the times and paste them, or let alfred_ draft the reply for your approval:
- “Reply with three 30 minute options next Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon”
- “Send my availability for a one hour call next week”
Scheduling with other people
alfred_ proposes your openings. On the surfaces you use day to day, the web app, text messages, and email threads, it does not compute mutual free time across a group by reading everyone else’s calendars.
In practice that means for a meeting with several people, alfred_ finds when you are free and offers those times, and the participants pick from them. That is the same thing a person would do on your behalf, and it works without needing access to anyone else’s calendar.
If you need people to pick a time without a round trip, a booking link is the better tool: participants see your live openings and choose one themselves, in their own timezone.