How YCBM's Time Zone Scheduler Makes Bookings Easy When Traveling

Fighting jet lag, packing clothes that don’t wrinkle, maybe even learning a few words in a new language. These are all things we worry about when traveling for work. 

Scheduling across time zones? That doesn’t need to even make the list! 

YouCanBookMe handles every part of multiple time zone scheduling, making sure that: 

• your availability is correct, no matter where you are
• your clients can schedule appointments with you as usual, even in different time zones
• all your notifications have the right information every time

In this article, we’re going to look at three common multiple time zone scheduling scenarios that, without YouCanBookMe’s expertise with scheduling across time zones, might have you grabbing for the oxygen mask!

This scenario will be familiar to anyone who travels a lot for conferences, or needs to spend extended time at a different office. 

Leo normally works out of Chicago. His YCBM booking link is added to his email signature, and most of his colleagues have bookmarked it for when they schedule appointments with him.

Every 6 months, Leo travels to his company HQ in Berlin. He loves meeting up with his German colleagues while he’s there, so he sends his booking link ahead of traveling so they can find a time to meet with him. He knows his timezone will be different when he’s there, but he doesn’t want to impact his availability for his day-to-day back home. What to do?

One of the YCBM time zone scheduler’s most flexible features is that you can create more than one booking link, and each one can have entirely separate settings. This means you can create a stand-alone booking link for the time that you’re away. 

You can create a booking page that is:

• a different link to keep availability separate
• set to the time zone that you will be in when you’re away
• in the language of people booking you there
• showing only the dates you’ll be in town (you can even create a custom message that instructs them what to do outside those dates). 

Leo uses a different link, https://leo-berlin.youcanbook.me/, to take bookings that are set for his working hours in the Berlin timezone, even if the booker is back home in Chicago, so he knows there won’t be any middle of the night calls! 

This can work in one of two ways:

He can link the booking page to his regular work calendar, and block off his Chicago hours during the day. Appointments made on the Berlin link will be added on those dates at what seems like the middle of the night because of the 7 hour time difference. But, as soon as he travels to Berlin, his calendar will update to the new timezone and all those appointments will automatically slot into the right time of day. 

Or, he can create a new calendar on his Google or Outlook account that is in the other time zone, and link that to his page to hold just those bookings.

In-person meetings at conferences

Conference scheduling can also create confusion in a unique way. Most attendees travel from different time zones. They may schedule the meeting when they’re in London, but they’re going to meet with you when you’re both in Las Vegas! 

How to make sure the start time is the same for everyone? 

YouCanBookMe lets you disable the auto-detect booker timezone option, so when your prospect schedules, they will only see local Winnipeg time and no one has to do the math of “how many hours ahead will we be?”

Of course, the customization for conference meetings doesn’t end there! 

You can also:

• Create different confirmation and reminder emails specifically for the event
• Use the Tentative feature if you want to be able to accept or reject meeting requests
• Set a limit on the number of meetings you can have in one day so you have time to enjoy the new town!

Creating a separate booking link specifically for events and locations gives you huge amounts of flexibility so you can create a bespoke booking experience even when you’re scheduling across time zones.

Managing your schedule for more frequent travel between multiple time zones

If you only spend a few days away, or if you’re traveling to more than one location in the same trip, you may not want to have a separate booking link for each stop. 

Our Calendar Managed Availability feature gives you ultimate control over what days - and what timezone - you can be scheduled in.  It allows you to set your meeting schedule across time zones, all on the same linked calendar. 

It works by adding events to your Google or Microsoft calendar, using the key phrase you've designated on your booking page. YouCanBookMe will only show times as available when they include that key phrase.

Find out how to set it up in this quick video:

When it’s all set up, you can add those key phrase events to your calendar at the times that you will be available. 

Gina is based in New York, but she’s often on the road, and she tries to combine her trips to reduce the back and forth of flying. She has an upcoming trip that will take her to visit a client in London, then to a conference in Paris, then an industry expo in Dubai. She’ll only be in each place for a day or two, but each one would mean clients have to schedule a meeting in different time zones. 

Using Calendar Managed Availability as part of YouCanBookMe’s time zone scheduler takes away all the guesswork and creates a super smooth experience for Gina, and the people who book with her!

Before she goes, Gina just needs to set her working hours to accommodate all the time zones she'll be taking bookings in.  

At the beginning of the week she’s available between 10am - 2pm in New York. The next day, she’s off to London (which equals 5am-9am in NY), then Paris (4am-8am in NY), and finally Dubai (2am-6am in NY). So she sets the calendar key phrase events for those differences.  

When she travels between time zones, her calendar time zone updates automatically. So the Calendar Managed Availability times shift - and make perfect sense in the correct time zone.

The magic happens even before she steps on the plane, when people from those time zones view Gina’s booking link. Since YoUCanBookMe detects their time zone, they will automatically see the times that are right for them.

Managing team schedule across different time zones

More and more companies are moving to distributed teams, meaning you can have colleagues who live across the street, or across the country! Good thing we’ve got a meeting time zone scheduler that does the hard work of organizing times to meet!  🙌

YouCanBookMe handles time zones seamlessly. On our Customer Team, for example, Annie is in the US, Radu is in Romania and Lili is in Australia. But we have just one booking page for customers to schedule support calls. 

Like Gina in the example above, the team uses the Calendar Managed Availability feature to set the times they are free. Customers don’t know who they are scheduling time with; they just see times that suit their own schedules. So, a customer in New Zealand is going to see Lili’s times as much more suitable than Radu’s. But someone in San Francisco will see that Annie’s times are better for them.  

Importantly, emails about each booking will contain the information you need about where your bookers are located. While their email only shows the local time for them, yours will show both your start time and theirs, so you know how early or late it is if someone is overseas.

No more worrying about separate links for different team members!  Everything is on one page, creating a smooth experience for your customers - and an easy experience for you as the team manager. 

Want to find out more? This article walks you through the step by step of setting up calendar management for your team. 

Wrapping up

Social media and video conferencing mean every business’s reach now extends beyond their neighborhood, and across the globe! There are no limits for where your clients can be, so make sure your meeting scheduler doesn’t have any limits either. 

YouCanBookMe’s extensive customization and time zone management ensures you can provide the best scheduling experience for your clients, no matter where in the world you—and they—are.