The most underrated productivity feature Google has shipped this year is a tiny button at the bottom of the Gmail compose window. It inserts your booking page (or an ad-hoc set of proposed times) without leaving your email. If you have ever caught yourself alt-tabbing to Calendar to copy a Calendly-style link, this is the fix - and it is built into Workspace at no extra cost.
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How Do You Add a Schedule Link to a Gmail Email? (Quick Answers)
Q: Can I insert a Google Calendar booking link directly into a Gmail email?
A: Yes. Compose a new email, click the “Set up a time to meet” icon in the bottom toolbar of the compose window, and choose one of your Calendar appointment schedules. Google inserts a styled booking widget into the email - no need to leave Gmail, navigate to Calendar, copy a link, and paste back.
Q: What is the difference between an appointment schedule and “Propose times that you’re free”?
A: Appointment schedules are reusable booking pages with set availability rules (like a Calendly link) - good for recurring contexts like sales calls or office hours. “Propose times that you’re free” is an ad-hoc tool where you pick specific slots for one specific recipient - good for one-off meetings where you do not need a full booking page.
Q: Do I still need Calendly or Acuity for appointment scheduling?
A: Not for most use cases. Google’s appointment schedules cover the common needs - availability windows, buffers, automatic Meet links, calendar invites. You still need a third-party tool if you require round-robin assignment across a team, complex payment integration, or external CRM hooks. For everyone else, the native Google flow is enough.
Why This Button Exists
For most of Workspace’s history, the workflow for sharing a booking link was clunky:
- Open a new email in Gmail
- Realise you need your booking link
- Open Calendar in a new tab
- Find your appointment schedule
- Click into it and copy the public link
- Switch back to Gmail
- Paste the link
- Type a sentence introducing what the link does
That is seven context switches for what should be a one-click action. Google’s new “Set up a time to meet” button collapses the entire flow into a single dropdown inside the email compose window. It is a small change with a big day-to-day impact on anyone who schedules a meeting more than once a week.
Setting Up Your Appointment Schedule First
The Gmail button only works if you have at least one appointment schedule configured in Calendar. If you have never set one up, the workflow takes about five minutes:
- Open Google Calendar and drag-and-drop a block of time on any day
- In the event panel, switch from “Event” to “Appointment schedule”
- Name the schedule clearly - “Book time with [Your Name]” or “30-minute Discovery Call”
- Set the availability window (typically a recurring set of hours per week)
- Configure buffer time between appointments and minimum advance notice
- Optionally add intake questions (name, email, what they want to discuss)
- Save - the schedule is now active and has a public booking URL
Once at least one schedule exists, the “Set up a time to meet” button in Gmail will surface it.
Inserting a Booking Page in Gmail
The flow inside Gmail:
- Click Compose to start a new email
- In the bottom toolbar (the row of icons next to the Send button), find the “Set up a time to meet” icon - it looks like a small calendar with a clock
- Click it; a panel slides out with your appointment schedules
- Pick the schedule you want to share
- Click “Insert” - Google embeds a styled booking widget directly in the email body
- Finish the email and send
The recipient sees a polished booking card in the email - your name, the booking title, available slots, and a clear “Book” button. They never have to navigate to Calendar themselves; they just click the slot that works.
When to Use “Propose Times” Instead
The same toolbar also has a “Propose times that you’re free” feature, which solves a slightly different problem. Use this when:
- You only need a one-off meeting (not a recurring booking pattern)
- The recipient is someone specific where availability has been discussed
- You want to propose 2-3 concrete times rather than a full availability window
The flow:
- Click the same calendar icon in the compose window
- Choose “Propose times that you’re free”
- Pick the dates and time slots you want to offer
- Google inserts the proposed times as clickable options in the email
- The recipient picks one; both calendars get updated automatically
This is the better choice when you do not want to give the recipient access to your full booking page, or when you have already agreed on a general window and just need to nail down the slot.
What This Replaces (and What It Does Not)
This native flow handles roughly 80% of the booking workflows that small businesses use third-party tools for. The honest comparison:
| Need | Google native | Third-party (Calendly/Acuity) |
|---|---|---|
| Single-person booking page | ✓ Equivalent | ✓ |
| Multiple appointment types | ✓ One schedule per type | ✓ |
| Buffers and minimum notice | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-add Google Meet link | ✓ | ✓ (some) |
| Round-robin across a team | ✗ Not yet | ✓ |
| Payment collection at booking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom branding / white label | Limited | ✓ |
| CRM/Zapier integration depth | Basic | Deeper |
For solo founders, consultants, account managers, and most internal-facing team members, the native option is now good enough that the third-party tool is hard to justify. For dedicated sales teams or anyone collecting payment at booking, Calendly and Acuity still have a real edge.
Key Takeaways
- Gmail now has a “Set up a time to meet” button in the compose toolbar that inserts your Calendar appointment schedule in one click
- You need at least one appointment schedule configured in Calendar before the button surfaces options
- “Propose times that you’re free” is the ad-hoc cousin - pick specific slots for a specific recipient instead of sharing a full booking page
- For most small-business scheduling needs, this native flow replaces Calendly or Acuity at no extra cost
- Third-party tools still win for round-robin assignment, payment collection, and deep CRM integration
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Trusted by 10,000+ small businesses across 50+ countries. Our mission is to give you control over your technology strategy.
Start My Concierge Membership: Get unlimited, “all-you-can-eat” tech support for you and your team. We help you set up appointment schedules, calendar rules, and meeting workflows so your team books faster. Start Here
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Full Video Transcript
Did you know you can directly put your calendar appointment schedule link into your Gmail emails? Well, look at this. So this is one of the latest features that Google has released, and it’s basically letting you put your appointment schedules into Gmail. Now, an appointment schedule is essentially a calendar that you can set up in Google Calendar and assign a public-facing link to it. It’s similar to the kind of link you would have for a Calendly or another similar service. You’re basically saying to the world “When I am available, you can book a slot. If I am not available, no slots for you. Off you go.”
The link works like a Calendly link. For many years people did this with third-party applications: ScheduleOnce, Acuity, Calendly - lots of different apps that did this. Then Google said “Hey, that’s a great idea, let’s build it into our app,” and they built it into their own app. You may still have a use for some of those third-party apps because some of them have better integrations, better features, you can do things like round-robins. We happen to use Calendly for our sales team, but most of the rest of our project and support delivery teams just use the standard Google one. I use the standard Google one because I don’t need to be in a round-robin or anything like that.
Inside my calendar here, if I drag and drop a time slot, I can turn on an appointment schedule. There we go. I’m going to say “all weeks,” change the availability. Now I’m going to rename this one, make it a bit more obvious: “Book time with Peter.” There we go. Going to go ahead and update that. Wonderful.
Now I can send an email and automatically add in my appointment scheduler into the email. I love this idea, and this is something that I’ve been waiting for Google to release. I’ve often found that if I want to send an email, I have to go to my calendar, find the appointment schedule, click copy link, go back to my email, paste it in my email. Having one button is a really great feature.
I’m going to go ahead, hit Compose. Here is an email, and let’s see if I can insert my calendar. Oh, here we go: “Set up a time to meet.” Bottom right-hand corner there, I can click that button. I can insert my booking page: “Book a time with Peter.” And there’s even a random button here: “Propose times that you’re free.” Let’s see what happens when I do that. “Find times that you can meet.” One hour, add a date. Today is not a good idea. Let’s go on Wednesday and add another date, Thursday. This is an ad-hoc feature that’s going to put in there. Add to Meet. There we go. I’ve given some proposed times there. That is very cool.
And then of course the feature I was trying to demo, unless I have them confused, is I can go ahead and just insert my booking page. “Book a time with Peter,” and that just gives the standard booking page slot there. Beautiful.
If you liked this video, we have plenty more on the channel covering this topic and much, much more.
