How to set up a Team Bookable Schedule

What is needed in order to set up a Team Bookable Schedule?

Only Team Managers can create a Team Bookable Schedule (Team Managers are set by the Team Admin of the Organization/Company).
Team Bookable Schedules can only be created and used by Organizations that have purchased a Team Subscription (with licenses for each team manager and each team member).
Before you can set up a team bookable schedule, you'll need to have created a team - view this article for how to do so.

How to set up a Team Bookable Schedule

Navigate to the Teams page.

Click on the name of your team.

Click on Schedules.

Click on New Team Schedule.

Set the meeting title and the duration for the meetings - you can select one of the preset options or click on Custom to set a different duration. You can also add optional description, note, or instructions that you want guests to see. Then click on Next Step.

Select the Meeting Assignment type desired:

Collective - Collective meetings are booked with everyone on the team, so everyone's availability is taken into account. Only times that work with everyone's schedules will be offered to the recipient.
Round Robin - Round Robin meetings are booked with a single member of the team
- If you choose Round Robin, you'll also need to set the desired Distribution method:
  - Optimize for Availability - the combined availability is shown to the recipient, and an available team member is assigned to the meeting. This will show the greatest choice of bookable times to the recipient.
  - Optimize for Even Distribution - our system will cycle through the team members on a rotational basis for fairness, and we'll only show the availability for the team member that will be assigned to that particular meeting.

Add the desired team members to the schedule.

Set the location for the team meetings.

If Round Robin is the type of meeting you selected, each team member will need a location set for their meetings.
If Collective is the type of meeting you selected, you'll set one meeting location as the team manager.
For locations, you can either enter an address of a physical location/office, a phone number for phone call meetings, or select Google Meet or Zoom for video/virtual meetings.

On this same page, you can also add optional meeting attendees, if there is anyone within the organization that you want invited to the meetings, but who is not required to attend (their availability will not impact what times are offered to the recipients).

Set the availability for the bookable schedule. You can choose to:

Use each person's availability - this allows each team member to set their own available hours for meetings via their Availability Sets and their selected calendars to check for conflicts. For example, Sarah might set her work meeting availability to be from 12-3pm each day, while Joe might set his meeting availability to be from 9am-2pm
Or, instead of using each person's availability sets, you can Set the Same Hours for Everyone - this overrides everyone's individual available hours, setting a custom window for the team. Please note that if this is selected, a team member might become booked for a meeting outside of the hours they prefer to use for meetings, or even outside of their normal work hours.

If you choose to Use Each Person's Availability, you'll also have options for setting the schedule hours for these meetings. There are two options:
- Determine Automatically - the meeting times offered will only include times that overlap on everyone's individual meeting hours. For example, if Sarah's meeting availability is 12pm-3pm, and Joe's is 9am-2pm, the bookable schedule will only show meeting times between 12pm and 2pm (when their availability overlaps).
- Set Manually - the meeting times offered will only include times that a) overlap on everyone's individual meeting hours and b) are further restricted to set hours for the entire team. For example, if Sarah's meeting availability is 12pm-3pm, and Joe's is 9am-2pm, but the team meeting hours are set to 1-4pm, the bookable schedule will only show meeting times from 1-2pm.

Select the time frame people can book from. For example, you can set it to 3 months into the future, which means recipients will be able to see and book meeting times within 3 months of today's date, but will not be able to book a meeting further out than 3 months. You can choose the bookable time frame to be a number of days, weeks, months, or years, or you can set it to be indefinite (where any time in the future can be booked).

At this point, your schedule is ready to use - you can click on the green Create Team Schedule button to start using it. However, Boomerang provides powerful customization options that can really make Bookable Schedule work for you; here you can review the 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.
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 Times Between Meetings: Give yourself some time to prep, travel, and recharge between meetings. Please note this setting can further restrict the options shown to the recipient, as it will only show meetings that allow for that amount of buffer time before the meeting and after the meeting, based on the other events in each team member's calendar.
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. By default, we'll only offer meeting start times that match the duration. For example, the default setting means hour long meetings can only be booked on the hour (9am, 10am, etc) - but if you select the start time increments to be 30 minutes, those hour long meetings could be booked at 9am, 9:30am, 10am, 10:30am, etc. The smaller the start time increment selected, the more options your recipient will have offered to them.
Schedule Starts and Schedule Ends: Here you can set a date to activate this schedule and start accepting bookings, or a date to automatically pause it.
Magic Live Calendar Message: With this setting, you can customize the default messages that are prepended to each of your inserted Bookable Schedule calendar images.