Google Calendar - How to Use the Suggested Times Feature

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Scheduling an event can be difficult. However, Google Calendar does have several features to try to make this a little less painful...and a little less than 30 emails to create.  One of these is the Suggested Times feature.  This will suggest open time slots of the duration you want for all those invited to your event. 

A couple items of note with this features:

  • it works best if everyone has established their working hours.  (Check out this previous post in how to do that if you need to.)
  • it works best if you have viewing rights to the calendars of everyone you are inviting.  For example, for me - it makes scheduling within my own organization easier as we have the ability to at least see free/busy time for everyone's calendar.  


(Here is a video on How to Use the Suggested Times Feature.)

To use this features, first open or create the event on your calendar.  Make sure to go into More options so you see the full event details -

When filling out (or updating) the information, make sure to add your guests. On the right side below the listed guests, you will see a SUGGESTED TIMES option -

Click on that and a pop-up will appear showing the time(s) when all participants can attend -

It will not only search the current day, but up to the next 7 days if needed to provide you with several options. If it cannot find any times in the next week, it will show this message -

Clicking on the time/date you want will change the event details to that.  Then just save.  

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