How to use Gmail’s new meeting-scheduling feature

Scheduling meetings with busy people — or when you’re busy yourself — is practically a Herculean effort at work. You can save time and energy when scheduling meetings with a new Gmail feature that helps you find slots to meet directly from your inbox, without even needing to navigate separately to your Google Calendar. (Say goodbye to the frustration of scheduling meetings with people whose calendars you can’t see!) You can also create the usual detailed calendar events you’re used to from your inbox.

Here’s how to find time to meet in Gmail

1. Compose a new email with recipients, or open a reply to an email you’ve received from someone you need to meet with.
2. Click the Calendar icon at the bottom of your message. If you can’t see this option, click the More options icon (the three dots) and hover over “Set up a time to meet.”
3. Select “Offer times you’re free.”
4. Your calendar will open in a pane to the right of the email. Select one or more open time slots that work for you. You can add multiple time slots per day or add time slots on different days.
5. Click “Next,” then fill out relevant fields (the title of your meeting, duration, location and description).
6. Click “Add to email” to send your proposed times to your email recipients. From there, they can choose the time that works best for them. Once they choose, the event will appear on both your calendars.

Beyond the finding time to meet feature, there are two other ways to schedule meetings directly from your Gmail. One allows you to create an event from any email in your inbox; once you are in an email, just look for the More options icon (the three dots) at the top of your inbox and choose “Create event.” A calendar invite with prefilled details will be created. Visit our Help Center for more.

In addition, we now have a new way to create a Calendar event while you are composing an email, which will also insert a smart chip with a summary of the event into the body of your email.

Here’s how to create Calendar events in Gmail and insert event details in an email

1. Compose a new email with recipients, or open a reply to an email you’ve received from someone you need to meet with.
2. Click the Calendar icon at the bottom of your message. If you can’t see this option, click the More options icon (the three dots) and hover over “Set up a time to meet.”
3. Select “Create an event.”
4. Your calendar will open in a pane to the right of the email with title and guests pre-filled from the email. The calendar pane shows both your and any recipients’ availability, if possible. Fill out the fields as needed.
5. Click “Save” to send the calendar invitation, which will also insert a summary of the event into the email body.