How to set up a Bookable Schedule

Ready to create your first Bookable Schedule? Here's how:

Once you have Boomerang installed, open a new Gmail compose window and click on the red Meet button. Select Bookable Schedule.

Jump to:

• How to set up meeting details
• How to set your available times for booking meetings
• How to configure meeting options

How to set up Meeting Details 

First, you'll want to enter your Meeting Details, including:

• Meeting duration: How long will this type of meeting be? Choose from a list of common lengths or create a custom meeting length.
• Meeting title: What would you like to call this schedule? Choose something easy for you to identify — you'll be able to personalize this for each recipient you send it to, if you'd like!
• Meeting location: Where or how will you meet guests? You can choose to have a Google Meet or Zoom link automatically generated for each meeting, or enter a specific location or phone number to meet with.
• Meeting description: Anything else you'd like guests to know? Anything details here will automatically be included with every calendar invitation.

You'll confirm what calendar any events booked on this schedule will be added to:

How to set your available times for booking meetings

Next, you'll set up your Availability. 

Choose which calendars Boomerang should check to for availability. With Bookable Schedule's automatic double booking prevention, we won't let guests book times that conflict with existing events on any of the calendars you select at this step.

Then, set up a weekly schedule of availability during which you'd like to offer meeting times with guests. By default, Boomerang will start you off with Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm. Perhaps you only want to offer office hours to mentees on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, or only take sales calls in the mornings — you can set that up here:

You can switch to the Specific Date view if you want to make adjustments to individual dates (and see these availability overlaid with any meetings you already have on your Google Calendar!):

Now that you've set your availability, this will get saved as an Availability Set.  If you make any other Bookable Schedules later on, you'll be able to reuse this same availability set, or you can create new ones for each type of Bookable Schedule - whichever works best for you! To learn more about Availability Sets, go to this article.

Next, choose how far into the future guests should be allowed to book meetings on this schedule:

How to configure meeting options

At this point, your schedule is ready to use — you can click on the green Let's Schedule Some Meetings! button to start using it. But Boomerang provides powerful customization options that can really make Bookable Schedule work for you; here you can review the final More options tab to check them out:

Scheduling link: Customize the URL that will be associated with this schedule. With Boomerang, you can insert your schedule as an interactive, always up-to-date Magic Live Calendar right within Gmail. In case you ever find yourself scheduling via text/chat, or need a link in your email signature, you can use this URL instead.

Email reminders: Send guests an automatic email reminder ahead of their scheduled meetings.

Add extra attendees: Any attendees added here will automatically be sent a calendar invitation whenever a meeting is booked using this schedule. Use this setting to include any team mates you will want to include for this type of meeting — for example, a colleague that frequently joins you for discovery calls or user feedback interviews.

Questions: By default, guests will be required to provide their name and email address. Use the Questions setting to request any additional information from guests when they book a meeting, like other contact information, or context on the meeting.

Booking settings: use these settings to create boundaries around the times recipients are able to book with you.

Buffer time: Give yourself some time to prep, travel, and recharge between meetings.

Minimum booking notice: How close to the start time of a meeting to allow bookings. Avoid last minute surprises!

Maximum booking frequency: Limit the number of meetings that may be booked using this schedule per day, week, or month - avoid overload!

Start time increments: Set the frequency of start times to offer guests, within a given range of availability.

Schedule start and end date: Here you can set a date to activate this schedule and start accepting bookings, or a date to automatically pause it.

Once you're happy with your settings, click on the green Let's Schedule Some Meetings! button to complete the set up flow.

Now that you've set up a Bookable Schedule to your liking, you can use it again and again. Insert this as a Magic Live Calendar into any email, to let recipients schedule meetings in just one click.