Here's how to set up a meeting time in Gmail

Making and scheduling one-to-one appointments is not always as easy as it sounds. It often starts with going through your agenda and typing all the free moments into an email message. A tedious chore that we spend a lot of time on and then get into trouble if you accidentally have a double booking. So this needs to be easier and less error-prone.

And you can feel it coming: Google launched a new feature for this, to make this process a lot more efficient.

Here's how to set up a meeting time in Gmail

When composing an email, you will see a new calendar icon 'Suggest a meeting time' appear at the bottom of the toolbar. If you click it, you can take two calendar-related actions:

1. Offer times you're free: This option opens your Google Calendar in the right side panel. Here, you can select the time slots you want to propose to the other person. Once you are done, add these suggested meeting times to your message. The recipient of your email will now be able to schedule an appointment with you directly, by selecting one of the options you have offered.
2. Create an event: This is a quick way to schedule an appointment and include all the info about the appointment in your email at the same time. When you choose this option, your Google Calendar will open in the side panel on the right. This time, however, you create an appointment with all email recipients included as guests, and the title being the same as the subject of the message. A summary of the appointment is automatically placed in the email.

By the way, you used to find this function in the three-dot menu at the top of the email conversation.

You can read more about scheduling appointments from Gmail here.