Finding Open Slots on a Calendar using Power Automate

In this video, we use Power Automate to connect to an Outlook calendar and find all the open or “planning” spots available on a calendar during a date range. We feed this information back to Power Apps and also send it via email and Teams chat.

[@ujjwalaapoorva]

This was a very helpful video. I was hoping to find something like this, and I did. So great.. thankyou.

[@jeffrhodes]

Glad this was useful for you!

[@ujjwalaapoorva]

@@jeffrhodes Could you let me know what changes I could do, if i want to compare 2 or more calendars from my work collegues aswell, and then find the common open slots between us. Thankyou so much

[@jeffrhodes]

@@ujjwalaapoorva - Two approaches that come to mind are: 1) loop through the first calendar. When you find an open slot, immediately check the additional calendar(s). If there is a match, log that to a variable and move forward. 2) loop through the first calendar and write open slots to a variable. Loop through that list and pare if down with matches for the second calendar. Keep going with other calendars until either no slots left in the variable or with the open slots identified. Hope this helps.

[@ujjwalaapoorva]

Could you let me know what changes I could do, if i want to compare 2 or more calendars from my work collegues aswell, and then find the common open slots between us. Thankyou so much

[@jeffrhodes]

Great question. The first thing you would need is to have access to the calendars for each colleague, preferably to see the actual appointment titles so that you can look for planning time. I'd probably loop through your calendar and then check each of their calendars for every open spot on your. If a time is open for all three, then you add it to the open list. Hope this helps.

[@ujjwalaapoorva]

​@@jeffrhodes I think this should help, I was thinking in the same lines aswell, I would try it out today it self. Thank you so much on your quick reply. It was very urgent for me. I mean it.🙂

[@aakankshajoshi7967]

​@@ujjwalaapoorva Were you able to solve this. I have the same requirement where I have to find a common slot between multiple teammates

[@DGTransformer]

informative video thnx ... i can't find these items , like template of 30min meeting book you shared in the beginning + initialize slot found .. is it because I use standard license ? .. or I need to adjust somting

[@jeffrhodes]

I believe that all the actions are available in the standard Power Automate license. Many of the items are variables to keep track of all the logic.

[@ujjwalaapoorva]

I get this error, and the error is coming because of the ticks in the function. is there any other way to do it, other than ticks. I unfortunately do not understand where i went wrong. Unable to process template language expressions for action 'Loop_Through_Days' at line '1' and column '588': 'In function 'ticks', the value provided for date time string '' was not valid. The datetime string must match ISO 8601 format.'. this is the error, but the date which i am entering is in ISO 8601 format. Could you let me know what error to look for here. It would be a great help.

[@jeffrhodes]

I didn't have much luck comparing date/times, which is where ticks() comes in handy. I looked at my Flow again and I am using a Power Apps parameter that is formatted as a date already. I didn't have to put it into ISO 8601 format. I did manipulate it with the addHours(0) and addMinutes() functions. My guess is that you may have a string rather than an actual date. Maybe try formatDateTime() and perhaps Compose() to make into a valid datetime? Hope this helps.

[@timbiggiani1048]

Curious if you found the fix - I'm running into the same issue.

[@timbiggiani1048]

@@jeffrhodes Any chance you can break this down for a novice? I'm not sure how to make corrections needed.

[@jeffrhodes]

@@timbiggiani1048 - thanks for the feedback. I will look to do another example on this topic. If you have a specific use case that you are trying to accomplish, please let me know and I can see if I can address it.

[@timbiggiani1048]

@@jeffrhodes Thanks Jeff! My use case is almost precisely what you've already got designed, only instead of sharing my own calendar, I'm sharing the availability of another user. However, my testing has all been done (and failed) using my own calendar for. Ultimate goal is that this will build an email that can be sent to candidates showing the availability of an interviewer for the next few days for interview scheduling purposes.

[@DeepDeep-zd5jq]

Hello jeff, I am using find meeting time v2 connector in power automate when I am trying to find free meeting time of two different time zone user meeting time suggestion is always null but it is working with same time zone users could you please help me on that thanks

[@jeffrhodes]

I'm not using that FindMeetingTimesV2() action, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Looking at the documentation of that action, it looks to me like it would do the time zone translation for you. So if I am U.S. Central Time and you are U.S. Eastern time and my calendar is open at 10 AM and yours is open at 11 AM, that should match.

[@KSRDA]

Hi Jeff, I have use case is it possible to make a vedio on that

[@jeffrhodes]

I can take a look. What is your use case?

[@KSRDA]

@@jeffrhodes How to build a power automate flow that finds available meeting times and locations for a set of individuals within the organization. The flow should utilize Microsoft Graph. The flow should take as an input the individuals and the date(s) they wish to meet. The output should be a list of available times and locations.

[@KSRDA]

@@jeffrhodes it's almost same what you have done but I need this type of scenario

[@KSRDA]

@@jeffrhodes hey Jeff...did you checked my use case.

[@jeffrhodes]

@@KSRDA - I haven't done much yet with Microsoft Graph. So I'm not much help on this use case at the moment.