Calendly revamps its browser extension as it seeks to do more than schedule meetings

Appointment scheduling service Calendly has redesigned its browser extension in a bid to improve schedule management and make scheduling faster.
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Appointment scheduling service Calendly has redesigned its browser extension in a bid to improve its schedule management features and make scheduling faster.

The new extension, available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Outlook, has a ‘Meetings’ tab that houses your meetings and lets you join, cancel, or reschedule them. However, it only shows meetings booked through Calendly. The company said it will explore 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 who’re in them, as well as your meeting history with them.

The extension also lets you share links to different kinds of meetings (longer or shorter meetings, for example), or instantly book a follow-up call with someone in the current meeting.

Calendly is also expanding its overall feature set. The service now lets users book multiple meetings in one time slot, and even prioritize one meeting over another. You still need to prioritize your meetings manually, but the company said it is considering adding some kind of intelligence to provide suggestions to help with prioritization.

Calendly is also introducing a feature for teams that lets members of sales or marketing teams book a call on behalf of their teammates. For this, teammates have to give the group permission to edit their calendars.

The company said that with this extension, along with integrations to tools like Gmail and LinkedIn, it aims to reduce the amount of time people spend switching between websites and applications.

Looking beyond scheduling

Calendly’s chief product officer, Stephen Hsu, told TechCrunch in an interview that Calendly aims to evolve beyond scheduling and become a product that’s useful throughout the meeting lifecycle. In particular, he noted that the company wants to focus on helping people prepare for meetings, and provide insights during meetings as well as after they’ve ended.

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 easily integrated, and [are] managed separately,” he said.

Hsu said the company wants to give users more information about attendees and the agenda of the meeting by grabbing knowledge via its integrations with platforms like Salesforce and LinkedIn. Plus, Calendly could also carry in knowledge from historical meetings and action items, he added.

Currently, you have 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 their availability across time zones. Calendly said it is looking to revamp its invitee experience and make it easier to book meetings across time zones.

Using AI to make meeting tools smarter

There are plenty of meeting-related tools from major corporations like Zoom to startups like Limitless (previously Rewind AI) that are aiming to leverage AI to make better sense of the information that was generated during meetings.

Calendly, too, wants to tap AI to improve its product. The company said it wants to create a model that can leverage meeting data along with knowledge from systems like CRM platforms to provide a fuller picture of a meeting.

“If we have a world where we can create a model that allows the user to tap into any type of information across that entire meeting lifecycle from anywhere, whether it’s in Slack or a new conversational interface in Calendly, that’ll be super powerful,” Hsu said.