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How To Suggest Meeting Time Slots via the Chrome Extension

For users of the Email Sidebar on:

 

9 min read

 

RG Email Sidebar enables you to schedule meetings with your business contacts without any extra back-and-forth email correspondence. Select available time slots in your calendar, also considering availability of your colleagues involved, create and send out interactive meeting invites, get your calendar automatically updated according to the recipient’s time choice. Additionally, RG Email Sidebar adds Events created this way to your Salesforce account.

 

Tip

Also, see this Revenue Grid blog article for special insights

 

On link opening, selected Time Slots are parsed as a “static shot” that does not exclude suggested slots which got reserved after the link was opened.

However, any reservations added to the Organizer’s calendar later are also considered by the Time Slots system. As soon as a recipient clicks on their preferred slot, RG Email Sidebar checks if the slot is still available in the organizer’s calendar. In case it is occupied by another reservation, the recipient is suggested to pick another slot. In addition, by refreshing booking page browser window, the recipient can actualize the table after such checks.

Time Slots links can be generated even if RGES Sync Engine is not running; however, in this case, the resulting meetings cannot be synced in the Salesforce calendar till syncing is resumed.

 

Tip

See this article to learn how to use the Time Slots feature in RGES Outlook Add-in

 

 

 

 

To schedule a meeting via the via RGES Meeting Scheduler by sharing your preferred time slots through an interactive invitation:

 

1. Open an email from/to recipient(s) who you want to initiate a meeting with or create a new email message by clicking the New email or the Reply button in Gmail and specify one or multiple recipients in the To, Cc, or BCC fields. Then open the RG Email Sidebar by clicking the Open RG Email Sidebar icon









2. In RG Email Sidebar, click the Time slots icon in the Smart actions bottom toolbar

 

 

Once you click the Time Slots icon, you will see the following Time Slots dialog in the sidebar:

 

First Time Slots dialog

Fill in the general meeting parameters

3. Fill in the basic meeting details in the first Time Slots dialog:

  • The Meeting subject field is prefilled with the subject of the related email (if any), and you can edit it according to your needs

  • In the Location field, you can select a room or location from your Google workspace or manually enter a location (including online services)

  • In the Duration drop-down list, you can set the meeting slot duration from 15 minutes up to 8 hours

  • In the Attendees (required) field, you can add the participants whose presence is required at the meeting. It’s prefilled with the email recipients. Also, you can add internal attendees who will receive the invite for this meeting once the link recipient books it

Note

If you add any in-org attendees (they must belong to your Google workspace) in the Attendees (required) field, the resulting Booking page will show only the time slots that are available on all in-org attendees and organizer’s calendars. This ensures that the selected slot will be convenient and available for all required in-org attendees

 

  • In the Attendees (optional) field, you can add the participants, who will also receive the invite for this meeting once the link recipient books it, but as optional attendees. Note that optional attendees’ calendars are disregarded on building availability table

  • In the Body (Description) field (at the bottom of the Time Slots dialog), you can add additional information for participants, which will be saved as a meeting description in the Google calendar and in Salesforce. Note that the generated email will not include this text in its body

 

 

4. Link the meeting with the Salesforce Business and People records:

  • In the Save to Salesforce record search box, you can find and select a Business record (Account, Opportunity etc.), which will be linked with the resulting Salesforce event once the link recipient books a meeting

  • In the Save to Lead or Contact search box, you can find and select a People record, which will be linked with the resulting Salesforce event once the link recipient books a meeting

Note

If you faced a situation when the booked meeting had linked to the wrong Contact in Salesforce, refer to this article describing how to resolve the problem and prevent it in the future

 

 

Fill in the advanced meeting parameters

Tip

If you don’t need the Advanced fields and controls in the Time Slots dialog, click the v (collapse) icon next to the Advanced options section title to hide them

 

5. Fill in the optional meeting details under the Advanced options tab:

  • Using the Reminder field, you can enable and set a Google reminder in your Google calendar to notify you before the meeting starts

  • Using the Slots in drop-down list, you can set the custom time zone for the meeting time slots.
    For example, if your recipient is located in a different time zone. Also, you can quickly find the needed time zone using the search field

  • By checking the Disregard organizer’s calendar box, you exclude the organizer’s calendar from the resulting meeting time selection table. This allows you to manually select available times in the organizer’s calendar, even if they overlap with other engagements

 

6. After populating all required fields in the first Time Slots dialog, click Next to proceed with the second one

 

 

Second Time Slots dialog

Select preferred time slots for the meeting

In the second Time Slots dialog, RG Email Sidebar reads your Google calendar data and build daily tables of your unoccupied time slots, so you can easily find available time slots and select the preferred ones. Also, if you added any of your colleagues in the Attendees (required) field, these tables consider your colleagues’ calendar data and show only the time slots that are available for all in-org attendees.

 

7. Select the preferred time slots within the unoccupied spans in the schedule:

  • Open the preferred date by clicking the Date selector at the top of the dialog; you can also navigate between days by clicking the arrow icons on either side of the selector

  • Pick meeting time spans that suit you best by clicking on a free slot and dragging the cursor down; selected time spans can be longer than the meeting Duration specified in the previous dialog but cannot be shorter







Note

  • If you select several adjacent time slots, they do not get merged, and displayed as separate time slots on the Booking page
  • You can select multiple time slots on different dates: after you have selected slots on one date and then switch to another date using the calendar control at the top, all previously selected slots are kept
  • If you’ve checked the Disregard organizer’s calendar box, you can also select busy time slots, except those that are also busy for the required attendees.

 

 

8. Click Insert in the upper right corner of the second dialog, and the generated Time Slots links will be automatically inserted into the new email message

 

 

Now you can send the email containing the Time Slots links out to the recipient, so they can select a convenient time slot and book a meeting with you.

Important

The Time Slot links are valid for 60 days after they were generated or till the date of the latest proposed slot, whichever comes first. Also, Time Slots links expire once the recipient books the meeting. The 60 days validity period can be adjusted on a request sent to our CSM team

 

Tip

If you want to set up a custom Time slots email message template, refer to this article

 

 

 

 

Automatic Parsing of In-Org Mandatory Attendees’ Availability

If any of the meeting’s required attendees are your colleagues (their email addresses are recognized as internal), RG Email Sidebar considers their calendar data and reflects it on a schedule in the second Time Slots dialog along with yours. This feature allows you to select time slots suiting your colleagues’ calendars:

 

Note that you cannot select time slots within day-long spans reserved for all-day calendar events with busy and out of office statuses. However, free and tentative (non-mandatory) all-day events do not impose this limitation and are not indicated in the Time Slots calendar. The same handling patterns are also applied for non-all-day meetings and appointments.

 

 

 

 

Time Slots Dialog Auto-Filling

In the Time Slots dialog, RG Email Sidebar prefills some fields with the default values, the data from the selected email (if any), and your Google account. The following fields will be prefilled:

  • Meeting subject – the subject of the selected or opened email when the Time Slots icon is clicked in the Sidebar

  • Duration – 30 minutes

  • Attendees (required) – recipients from the To field of the selected or opened email when the Time Slots icon is clicked

  • Attendees (optional) – recipients from the CC field of the selected or opened email when the Time Slots icon is clicked

  • Reminder – None

  • Slots in – time zone specified in your mail account settings

 

Also, there is a possibility to set custom values that would be prefilled every time you open the Time Slots dialog in RG Email Sidebar. To get this option configured, please send a corresponding request to our Support team.

 

 

 

 

How to Select a Time Slot (Recipient Side)

Note

The Booking page language is set based on the locale specified in the web browser of the Time Slots links recipient

 

When a recipient opens the invitation link, they can select the time slot by clicking on their preferred date and time. Additionally, recipients can change the time zone for the available time slots using the drop-down list above the list of available time slots.

 

Note

When a recipient clicks on their preferred slot, RG Email Sidebar checks if it is still available in the organizer and in-org required attendees’ calendars. In case it is occupied, RGES suggests recipient to select another slot. Also, the recipient can actualize information about available slots by refreshing the Booking page

 

After a recipient selects a slot on the Booking page, they will see a Booking confirmation dialog, where they need to click the Book meeting button to finish the booking.

 

As soon as a time slot is selected and booked by the recipient, it gets automatically reserved in the organizer’s and attendees’ calendars, and they will receive a corresponding email notification.

 

Important

The time slot links are valid for 60 days; they expire after the meeting date/time passes or 60 days after they are generated. A meeting may be scheduled for any date in the future, but the recipients must reserve their preferred time slots within 60 days. This validity period can be adjusted on a request sent to our CSM team

 

If you send Time Slots to multiple recipients (potential attendees), only one meeting can be booked using them. Once the meeting is booked, the Time Slots links get expired. If other recipients try to book the meeting using the same links, they will see the following notification: