Share a booking link

Make your first link

1. In the mello webmail, open Calendar.
2. Choose Booking links, at the top right.
3. Choose New booking link (or press n).
4. Give it a Title that tells people what they’re booking, for example “30-minute call” or “Project review”.
5. Pick a Length: 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90 or 120 minutes.
6. Set when you’re available: the Days, the Hours and the Time zone (see below).
7. Fill in Where if you like: a video link, an address or a phone number. The Description box below it is shown on the page.
8. Choose Create link.

The link appears at the top, with a Copy button. Paste it into a message, your signature or your website. When you paste it into a chat, it shows a preview with the title, your name and the length.

Days, hours and time zone

Tick the Days you take meetings, Monday to Friday at first. Then set the Hours, for example 09:00 to 17:00. The same hours apply to every day you ticked.

The Time zone is filled in with yours. It is the zone your hours are in, written as a name such as Europe/Zurich or America/New_York. Your hours stay the same local time when the clocks change. The people who book see the times in their own time zone, so a 09:00 slot in Zurich shows as 03:00 in New York.

Start times follow the length: a 30-minute link offers 09:00, 09:30, 10:00, and so on.

The webmail has one block of hours per link. To keep a lunch break free, add a repeating “Lunch” event to your calendar: like any event, it takes those times off the page.

Notice, how far ahead, and buffer

Under Rules you decide how close together and how far out bookings can be:

• Notice stops someone from booking a call that starts in ten minutes.
• Days ahead keeps your calendar from filling up months in advance.
• Buffer keeps free time before and after your other events, so a booking doesn’t start the moment a meeting ends.

If you have more than one calendar, a Calendar menu chooses where bookings are written. Your other own calendars are still checked for conflicts.

What counts as busy

A time is free when it’s within your hours and nothing in your own calendars overlaps it. Free times are worked out from your calendar each time the page loads, so a new event takes its time off the page at once.

• Repeating events count, including every week, every month or “the last Friday”.
• All-day events block the whole day, so a holiday in your calendar closes the page for that day.
• Events marked free, and cancelled events, don’t count.
• Calendars others share with you don’t count. Only your own calendars are checked.

The page shows nothing else about your events. Someone who opens it learns only which times are open.

What the other person sees

The page shows your title, “with” your name, the length, the place and the description. Below that are the free times of one week, day by day; Earlier and Later move between weeks.

1. They pick a time.
2. They enter their Name and Email, and an optional note.
3. They choose Book.

They don’t need a mello account, or any account. If someone else took the same time a moment before, the page says so and shows the times that are left: a time can’t be booked twice.

What happens after a booking

• The event is added to your calendar, titled with your link’s title and the person’s name, with their note in the description. They’re listed as a guest who has accepted.
• They get an invitation from your address, in the language of the page they used, with the event attached so their calendar app can add it.
• You get a short notice. Reply to it, and your answer goes to the person who booked.

If plans change, open the event in your calendar. Deleting it sends the person a cancellation.

Change it, pause it, or delete it

Open Calendar → Booking links and choose Edit next to a link. Change what you like and choose Save. The link itself stays the same, so the one you’ve already sent keeps working.

• To pause a link, untick link on and save. It shows as off, and the page can’t be opened until you tick it again.
• To end it for good, choose Delete. The link stops working and can’t be brought back. Bookings already made stay in your calendar.

You can have up to 20 links, for example a short call and a longer meeting. Each has its own link, hours and rules.

Good to know

• The name on the page is the part of your address before the @. The webmail can’t change it yet. The calendar API can set a different name, a maximum number of bookings per day, start times that don’t follow the length, and which calendars to check; saving the link in the webmail again resets those to their defaults.
• A booking link sends mail from your address. Anyone with the link can book, and each booking sends an invitation from you. mello limits this to 20 bookings a day per link and a few attempts per hour from one network. Pause or delete links you no longer use.
• The page isn’t listed by search engines. Only people you give the link to can find it.