Sistava

Lindy AI: How to Set Up Automatic Meeting Scheduling

How-to — — by Mahmoud Zalt

Set up scheduling in Lindy: three ways it books a meeting, the availability rules on the Routines page, meeting prep, and the trigger rule people miss.

Scheduling is the job people hand to an assistant first, because it is the one that never gets less annoying. Three emails to find a slot, one to confirm, one more when somebody moves it. The reason it survives automation attempts is that the rules are personal: your buffers, your no-meeting mornings, the calls you take late and the ones you never take at all.

So before you open anything, write your rules down in one sentence each. When will you take calls, how long is a default meeting, what gap do you need between them, and what is never bookable. Lindy has a field for each of those, and the configuration goes quickly once you have made the decisions. It goes very slowly if you make them while staring at the form.

Where do you configure Lindy's scheduling rules?

The settings live on the Routines page, under the Personal tab, in a card called Meeting scheduling. Their documentation lists what you can set there: preferred working hours, buffer time between meetings, blocked times, default meeting length, and meeting type configurations. It also states that changes apply across every scheduling method, so you configure once rather than per channel.

That single set of rules is the important design point. Whether a time is offered inside an email draft or produced because you texted a request, it comes from the same availability logic. If Lindy proposes a slot you did not want, the fix is almost always in this card rather than in the message you sent.

How does Lindy actually book a meeting?

Their documentation describes three routes to a booked meeting. In drafting, Lindy notices a meeting request in an incoming email and offers times inside the draft reply it prepares for you. In ad hoc scheduling, you ask it directly, by text or iMessage or in the web app at chat.lindy.ai. A third route puts the assistant on the CC line of a scheduling thread, and at the time we read the page it was described as coming soon, so treat it as not yet available until their documentation says otherwise.

What comes out the other end is consistent across those routes. The documentation says Lindy produces three open slots as clickable links, drawn from your availability rules, and that the recipient books with a single click. When a time has already been agreed in the thread, it books the meeting directly instead of offering options.

  1. Connect your calendar first — Scheduling needs the Google or Microsoft account connected during setup. Nothing on the Routines page will behave correctly until that connection exists.
  2. Open the Meeting scheduling card — Go to the Routines page, switch to the Personal tab, and open the card named Meeting scheduling.
  3. Set your working hours and default length — Enter the hours you actually take calls and the length a meeting should default to. These two fields shape most of what it will ever propose.
  4. Add buffers and blocked times — Buffer time keeps back-to-back calls apart. Blocked times protect the parts of the week that should never be offered, such as a focus morning.
  5. Configure your meeting types — The card supports meeting type configurations, which is where a fifteen minute intro and a sixty minute working session stop sharing one set of rules.
  6. Test with a real request — Ask it in chat to find time for something specific, then check the three slots it returns against your own week before you let it answer anyone else.

Why does the CC route sometimes do nothing?

Because two conditions have to be true, not one. Lindy's documentation is explicit that the assistant activates only when its address is on the CC line and the thread clearly shows scheduling intent. Adding the address to a thread that is about something else will not start anything, which is deliberate rather than a fault.

The practical consequence is that vague threads underperform. A message that says let us find time next week gives it something to work with. A message that says let us catch up soon, buried under three paragraphs about a project, may not read as a scheduling request at all. If nothing happens, say the scheduling part out loud in the reply.

Can it reschedule and manage the calendar too?

Yes, and this is where the assistant framing earns its keep. Their documentation describes changing the calendar by message, with an example along the lines of moving a two o'clock to Thursday, and it describes recurring requests such as auditing your calendar every week. It also notes that Lindy can see shared teammate calendars within your workspace, which is what makes internal scheduling less painful than external.

One more detail from the same page is worth knowing because it is unusual. The documentation says it can pull meeting details out of a screenshot of a text conversation. If you agree a time in a messaging app and screenshot it, that can become a calendar entry without you retyping anything.

What should you turn on alongside scheduling?

Two neighbouring routines make a booked meeting more useful than a booked meeting. Meeting prep, configured from its own card on the Routines page, produces a briefing with the meeting time and title, the attendee list, details on external attendees including job title, company and LinkedIn, and a summary of previous meetings with the same people when the meeting recurs.

You choose when it arrives and where. Their documentation describes a daily digest at a set time, or delivery a set number of minutes before each call, with either or both enabled, and delivery by email or by SMS and iMessage. You can also narrow it to external meetings only, which spares you a briefing before your own team standup. The Daily briefs card covers the wider morning summary, delivered as a Slack message, a text, or in Lindy chat.

Configured properly, this is one of the more convincing parts of the product, and the single shared rule set across every route is a good design decision. The work is front-loaded into the Routines page, which is exactly where it should be.

It is also the part of the job we took a different route to at Sistava. An AI Employee that owns your calendar takes the same rules as a paragraph of plain English rather than a set of fields, and asks you when a request does not fit them. Both approaches work. The question is whether you would rather write the rules down or fill the form in.

FAQ

How many time slots does Lindy propose?

Their documentation says it generates three open slots as clickable links, based on your availability rules, and that the recipient books with a single click. When a specific time has already been agreed in the conversation, it books that time directly instead of offering options.

Where do you change Lindy's working hours and buffers?

On the Routines page, under the Personal tab, in the Meeting scheduling card. That card holds preferred working hours, buffer time between meetings, blocked times, default meeting length and meeting type configurations. Their documentation states the changes apply across every scheduling method, so you only set them once.

Why did Lindy ignore an email you copied it on?

Most likely because only one of the two required conditions was met. The documentation states the assistant activates when its address is on the CC line and the thread explicitly shows scheduling intent. A copy on a thread with no visible scheduling request will not start anything. Note also that at the time we checked, the CC route was described as coming soon.

Can Lindy reschedule a meeting after it is booked?

Yes. Their documentation describes changing the calendar by message, using a request such as moving an afternoon meeting to another day. It also describes recurring calendar requests, for example asking it to audit your calendar weekly, so rescheduling is not limited to one meeting at a time.

Can Lindy see your colleagues' calendars?

Their documentation says it can access shared teammate calendars within your workspace. That is what makes internal scheduling faster than external scheduling, because it can reason about more than one person's availability rather than proposing times and waiting for a reply.

Do you need to build a workflow to get scheduling?

Not for the built-in routine. Scheduling is configured from a card on the Routines page rather than assembled on a canvas. If you want scheduling as part of a larger custom flow, the Google Calendar integration exposes actions including Check Availability, Find Available Times and Create Event that you can use in a workflow you build yourself.

Sources