Gmail will now let you share availability from Google Calendar

Gmail is getting more intuitive by the day, with a new release that now adds new calendar features to the mail itself. Apart from all the AI-powered features that were announced at Google I/O this year, Gmail will now also let you share your availability with a recipient, from within the mail compose section itself.

Until now, users either had to rely on third party apps — popular of them being calendly — or follow a rather tedious calendar sharing process to share their availability. However, Gmail will now have a calendar icon at the bottom of the conversation view, which will have two options — “Create an event” and “Offer times you’re free”, the latter of which lets you share availability.

The “Create an Event” feature is basically moving an existing feature to a more accessible place. This lets you create an event with the title being the subject of the email while adding email recepients as participants. It also generates details of the meeting automatically as email body for easy joining. This was already available, but has been simply moved to a more accessible place.

The “Offer times you’re free” is something new, which now allows you to share your availability and let it be visible to all recipients of the email. It lets you select the time slots you wish to share. And while you can share your availabilities in an email with multiple people, only the first person accepting a slot will be added to the invite automatically.

This functionality was pretty much one of the most asked for, and something for which users have been dependent on the likes of calendly among others.