Appointment scheduling service Calendly has redesigned its browser extension in an effort to improve its scheduling features and make scheduling faster.
The new extension, available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Outlook, has a “Meetings” tab that hosts your meetings and lets you join, cancel, or reschedule them. However, it only shows meetings booked through Calendly. The company said it will study expanding the extension’s functionality based on customer feedback.
There’s also a new “Contacts” tab that lets you see your upcoming meetings with the people attending them, as well as the history of your meetings with them.
The extension also lets you share links to different meeting types (longer or shorter meetings, for example) or instantly book a follow-up call with someone in the current meeting.
Image credits: Calendar
Calendly is also expanding its overall feature set. The service now allows users to book multiple meetings in the same time slot, and even prioritize one meeting over another. You still have to prioritize your meetings manually, but the company said it plans to add some sort of intelligence to provide suggestions to make prioritization easier.
Calendly is also introducing a Teams feature that allows sales or marketing team members to book a call on behalf of their teammates. To do this, teammates must authorize the group to modify their calendars.
Image credits: Calendar
The company said that with this extension, as well as integrations with tools like Gmail and LinkedIn, it aims to reduce the time users spend switching between websites and apps.
Beyond planning
Calendly Chief Product Officer Stephen Hsu told TechCrunch in an interview that Calendly aims to evolve beyond scheduling and become a useful product throughout the meeting lifecycle. In particular, he noted that the company wants to focus on helping people prepare for meetings and providing information during and after meetings.
Hsu also said the company wants to get into the meeting transcription space. “We have customers who use tools like Otter or Zoom Assistant, but they are not necessarily easy to integrate, and (are) managed separately,” he said.
Hsu said the company wanted to give users more information about the participants and the meeting agenda by gaining insights through its integrations with platforms such as Salesforce and LinkedIn. Additionally, Calendly could also incorporate insights from historical meetings and action items, he added.
Currently, you need to open the web app to take notes with Calendly. The company wants to move this feature to an easily accessible location like the extension, Hsu said.
Tools like Notion Calendar, Vimcal, Akiflow, and Amie have made it easier for users to provide availability across multiple time zones. Calendly said it was looking to revamp its guest experience and make it easier to book meetings across time zones.
Using AI to make meeting tools smarter
There are many meeting-related tools, ranging from large companies like Zoom to startups like Limitless (formerly Rewind AI), that aim to leverage AI to better understand information generated during meetings.
Calendly also wants to leverage AI to improve its product. The company said it wants to create a model that can leverage meeting data along with insights from systems such as CRM platforms to provide a more complete picture of a meeting.
“If we have a world where we can create a model that allows the user to access any type of information throughout the lifecycle of a meeting, from anywhere, that whether in Slack or a new conversational interface in Calendly, it will be extremely powerful,” Hsu says.
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