Getting Started with StretchSchedule

StretchSchedule turns "what time works for you?" into a link people can book in seconds. This guide walks you from an empty workspace to a live booking page.

What you're building

Three pieces work together to make a working booking link:

1. Availability — the hours you are open to meet, per timezone.
2. An event type — a reusable meeting definition (name, duration, location, questions) that gets its own public page.
3. A shared link — the public URL invitees use to pick a time.

Once those exist, invitees book themselves and the meeting shows up in your Bookings list automatically.

The dashboard

When you open StretchSchedule, the dashboard (above) is your control tower. It shows counts for your event types (total and active), upcoming vs. past bookings, active availability schedules and date overrides, workflows, connected integrations, and routing forms. Use it to see the state of your scheduling at a glance and to jump into any area.

Step 1: Set your availability

1. Open Availability from the StretchSchedule menu.
2. Create a schedule, give it a name (for example, Work hours), and choose its timezone. This is critical — every slot you offer is computed in this timezone and then translated into each invitee's local time.
3. Add weekly windows: for each day, set a start and end time (for example, Mon–Fri, 09:00–17:00). Leave weekends off if you don't take meetings then.
4. Mark this schedule as your default so new event types use it automatically.
5. Save.

You can add date overrides later for holidays or one-off days — see Setting Your Availability.

Step 2: Create an event type

1. Open Event Types and choose New event type.
2. Give it a title (for example, Intro Call) and a short description invitees will read before booking.
3. Pick a duration — 30 minutes is a good default. You can offer a menu of durations (15/30/60) instead of a single length.
4. Choose a location type: Zoom, Google Meet, phone, in person, custom, or none.
5. Confirm the availability schedule is the one you just built.
6. Leave visibility set to public and status set to active so the page is immediately bookable. Save.

StretchSchedule generates a public slug for the event type — the address of its booking page.

Step 3: Share your link

Every active, public event type has a booking page at a URL of the form /public/schedule/<your-slug>. Copy that link and:

• Paste it in your email signature or a follow-up message.
• Add it to a proposal or website button.
• Send a single-use link if you want a one-time, private invitation (see Sharing Booking Links).

Step 4: Watch a booking come in

When someone opens your page, they see your branding, pick an open slot (already filtered by your availability, buffers, and minimum notice), answer any questions you added, and confirm. The meeting appears in your Bookings list as scheduled, and the invitee gets a confirmation with a link to reschedule or cancel.

A realistic first-run example

Maria, a freelance designer, wants a "book a discovery call" link.

• She sets availability to Tue–Thu, 10:00–16:00 in America/Toronto.
• She creates a Discovery Call event type, 30 minutes, location Zoom, with one required question: "What's the project?"
• She copies her booking-page link into her email signature.
• A prospect books Wednesday at 14:00; Maria sees it in Bookings and the prospect gets a confirmation. Total setup time: under ten minutes.

Tips

• Set your timezone deliberately. It's the anchor for every slot; a wrong timezone is the most common early mistake.
• Start with one event type. You can add group calls, round-robin team links, and polls once the basics work.
• Add a minimum notice (say 120 minutes) so nobody books you for "five minutes from now."
• Test your own page in a private browser window before sharing it widely.

Troubleshooting

• My page says "not found." The event type must be both visibility = public and status = active. Drafts and internal event types don't render publicly.
• No times are available. Check that your availability schedule has active weekly windows and that your booking window and minimum-notice rules aren't excluding everything.
• Times look wrong to invitees. The page always shows times in the invitee's timezone; confirm your schedule's timezone is correct and re-test.