Recently, I posted a blog about increasing the efficiency of scheduling a meeting. Studies show it takes up to 7 email exchanges to book one meeting. A solution I espoused was to share your free/busy calendar with the other party to expedite the setting of a date and time.

Google has just released a free Outlook/Google Calendar syncing program. Your problems are solved, and you can now save about 98 hours per year in setting appointments.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Set-up a Google Calendar account if you don’t have one.
2. Create your calendar in your new account.
3. Download the Google Sync program.
4. Run the program
5. Get your calendar link to share with others.
-Next to your new calendar, click the down arrow
-Select Calendar Settings
-On the Calendar Details tab (the tab that opens, scroll down, and right click the HTML icon)
-Copy the URL that opens in the box
-Paste that into a new browser/tab, save as a favorite.

Now, when you share that link with others, they will see your free/busy calendar (they will not see any times, just details like below).

Isn’t the web great?