Meetings

Meeting Scheduler: 101

Learn how to use Lindy to schedule your meetings and manage your calendar.

Lindy is your go-to scheduling assistant, functioning just like a true executive assistant.

Think of it as a proactive part of your team—just CC Lindy in your email threads, and she will promptly provide available times, coordinate with participants to secure the best meeting time, and manage all details, including invite links and attendee information, according to your preferences.

You can get started with a Meeting Scheduler Lindy that will:

Be triggered when CC’ed into an email exchange
Look for available time on your Calendar
Reply to the recipient with three available times
Work with the recipient until a time has been agreed upon
Schedule the event on your Calendar, given your Calendar preferences
Confirm with the recipient that the invite has been sent

Set Up

If you have not already added the Meeting Scheduler Lindy to your account, do this now.

Lindy Mail

First, click the Email Received trigger and customize your Lindy’s Lindy Mail Address.

This is the email address you will use to CC Lindy on your emails to have her chime in and offer times (or schedule the meeting at the suggested time).

Copy the Lindy Mail Address to your clipboard so you can send Lindy as an email when you are ready to test.

Understanding Conditions

After the Email Received trigger, there is a Condition step.

This Condition determines Lindy’s next actions before she responds to the email recipient.

Scenario 1: Specific Time Mentioned

If the email Lindy was CC’ed into specifies a time, for example:

“Hey Jim, looking forward to checking out a demo of Tarlo.ai. CC’ing Lindy to get something on the books for Tuesday at 4 PM.”

Lindy will create an event for both you and the recipient. She’ll include relevant details from the email exchange and confirm with the recipient once the invite has been scheduled.

Scenario 2: No Specific Time Mentioned

If no specific time is mentioned, and Lindy is tasked with finding a suitable time, for example:

“Hey Jim, looking forward to checking out a demo of Tarlo.ai. CC’ing Lindy to help us find a time for next week.”

Lindy will first check your calendar for availability. Then, she will propose three possible times to the recipient.

These condition prompts can be updated based on how you want Lindy to proceed with scheduling.

Customizing Calendar Preferences

To ensure Lindy schedules meetings adhering to your Calendar preferences and requirements, click the Google Calendar List Best Times action.

Authorize the Calendar you want Lindy to check for availability.

You can schedule the Earliest Start time of the event, for example, “today” if you want Lindy to schedule meetings the day of or you can define a specific day, like “September 7th,” if you do not want a meeting scheduled until after September 7th. Vice Versa for Latest Start.

Calendars to Check:

You can add additional Calendars for Lindy to check availability.

Note: Lindy can only check availability for Calendars you have access to.

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Under User Preferences, specify your available hours for meetings and preferred days of the week.

You can also set limits on the number of meetings scheduled per day and how many minutes in advance to look for an available time.

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Lindy’s Response

Click into the Lindy Mail Send Reply action to see the default prompt that instructs Lindy on how to structure her response after checking for available time.

The default prompt is:

Reply with the times you just found, send an email like this:

"Hi $FIRSTNAME,

Happy to help you find a time! Do any of the following work for you? (all times in $TIMEZONE):

* Monday, June 21st at 3pm (make sure the times are formatted like this)
* ...
* ...

Best,
Lindy"

##Notes##
1) Do tailor this reply to the context of the conversation. Don't reply this word for word every time like a robot.

2) $FIRSTNAME should refer to the person to whom you are offering times. Usually you won't address your user (the email who first cc'd you).

So if your user asks you to find times for the group, you should address the other person on the email thread (e.g. "Hi James" if James is the other person on the email thread). 

You can also address both your user and the other person where this makes sense. If you are unsure whom to address, just skip the "Hi $FIRSTNAME" altogether and get right to the body of the email. To be clear, you should never say "Hi Jack" since Jack is the name of your user. 

3) There is no need to say anything like this (the other person knows we don't have access to their calendar): "Please note that these times reflect the availability of Florent and Jack, as I don't have access to Harrison's calendar."

4) Be sure to only offer times that you found available from the most recent list_best_times_to_meet action

5) $TIMEZONE should just be formatted like: Pacific Time, Mountain Time, Central Time, or Eastern Time

Because Lindy has context on who the recipient is, we can insert $FIRSTNAME and have her intelligently personalize the email based on the context of each given execution. There is extra prompting to ensure Lindy addresses your recipient and does not accidentally address you, the user.

This prompt instructs Lindy to suggest three times for your recipient, if possible and to include the timezone.

Customize this prompt as needed! We have a Lindy Prompt Guide you can find here to help with effective prompting.

Customize the Calendar Event

Click the Google Calendar Create Event action to customize how events are created on your Calendar.

Please note, you have the option to configure many parameters within this action. We find that adding prompts to the event name and description, while leaving all other fields as 'Auto' (allowing Lindy to define the inputs), is an optimal starting point for configuring this step.

Remember, Lindy will have full context of any event details included in the email exchange. You can reference these details in the prompt to further customize your events.

Example:

For meetings that can be either in-person or virtual, you can specify this in the email (or have Lindy confirm with the recipient).
Based on the agreement reached via email, Lindy will include the meeting location for in-person meetings or add a meeting link only if the meeting was agreed to be virtual.

Confirmation

The second Lindy Mail Send Reply shows how Lindy will confirm the meeting invite with the recipient.

The default prompt is:

Reply with a confirmation that the invite has been sent, the reply should look like this:

“Sounds great, I just sent the invite! Let me know if there is any other way I can be helpful.

--Lindy"

Personalize the email where you see fit based on the general context, but do not vary the response far from the suggested response.

You can customize this prompt to have Lindy include the event details in the confirmation email or adjust the friendly sign off.

Rule Handling

The final Condition in the workflow allows Lindy to handle if a meeting needs to be rescheduled after it has been scheduled.

Lindy will delete the previously scheduled Calendar event and list updated available times if this Condition is met: Only continue if... The other party is asking to reschedule / find a new time

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Test!

The fun part! Use a personal email address to send Lindy an email suggesting a meeting.

Example: "Hey Bob, would you be open to chatting next week over coffee?"

Send this from a separate email address that you use with Lindy. Respond to the test email and CC your Lindy's Lindy Mail address (from step one). If you do not have it, you can always re-copy it by opening up Lindy's Flow Editor, clicking the Lindy Mail Email Received trigger, and copying the address.

An example response could be one of the two options:

"Sure, sounds great. CC'ing Lindy to send an invite for Tuesday 11:00am" Or "Sure, sounds great. CC'ing Lindy to help find time"

You can add specific context and respond in a natural way that fits your style. Remember, any context you include in this email with Lindy will be shared across the steps of her scheduling.

After you CC Lindy on your email, you will see the below in Lindy's thread view:

The trigger email received
The condition that defines Lindy's next action
Lindy looking for available times
Lindy's response to your test email

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Lindy will then send you an email reply based on your previous instruction from the test email.

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Respond and either: Agree on a time or suggest a new time. Lindy will confirm the available time to meet and schedule the meeting on your calendar. Once the time is confirmed, you will see Lindy create the event, send the invite, and confirm with the recipient (your test email)

In the thread view, you will see:

The email response
The condition that defines whether the time is confirmed or if more times need to be found
The event creation
The response to confirm the invite has been scheduled

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Example calendar invite:

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Lindy’s confirmation response:

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Guides

Meeting Prep: 102

Transform Newsletter Content Into Tweets

Knowledge Base

Building a Slackbot: 101

Getting Started With Lindy: 101

Meeting Scheduler: 101