As some who occasionally has to gather small groups (~5 people) --we all work remotely (pre-covid too), so one can't just swing around the corner-- I would be quite bothered to find my colleagues booked every last minute of their time, such that it would become impossible to schedule 30 minutes sometime in the next 2 weeks. Especially knowing that this was used, I would then have to ping everyone and see if they actually are free at such-and-such a time. I suppose that's the tool's intent.
Everyone should block off 1-2 hours a day for themselves. Consistently blocking your entire day could slow down the organization, if meetings are a place for reaching consensus and decision-making.
Quite the opposite in fact: we built this for manager-types who have many meetings and for the very reason you cited need to appear available.
It purposely makes the slots of time that we book “free” until the day is too full, and only then changes it to busy.
The result is that my calendar, for example, appears free from 11am to 2pm, but if suddenly that time starts filling up, some time (30-60 mins by default) gets held for lunch.
In other words: it does exactly as you prescribe (blocks off 1-2 hours), except without the rigidity of fixed events, making it easier for people like you to call (hopefully good) meetings.
The lunch use case animation might be a simpler way of conceptually explaining the product, just my 2 cents. Thanks for clarifying there.
Corner case: let's continue the idea of a flex lunch of 30 minutes between 11:30 and 2pm. If my work calendar has no events, and someone schedules a meeting from exactly 11:30 to 2pm, does it automatically reject? The person scheduling that meeting would've thought my schedule was free because the time was marked free, since the flex lunch time is only "claimed" once I'm down to 30 minutes of unscheduled time between 11:30 and 2pm.
My personal intent of blocking this 30 minute slot is never publicly visible on the work calendar, since it has no concept of that.
It sounds like Google Calendar (or whatever meeting software companies use) needs to build in these sort of features, since there's no way to do so. Reclaim helps, but if I'm booking my meeting within Google Calendar, and some of my meeting participants use Reclaim, I can't see the sorts of constraints participants are setting on their time.
Re: your corner case... Currently we defer to the incoming invite and remove the block IF you accept the 2.5+ meeting invite the overlaps. One exception: if the invite happens to mention lunch is being served we auto remove it. In the future we will likely offer the option to auto reject, but we don’t today.
Re: your other comments, you are right that the core platform (mostly dictated by the iCal standard) cause some of the limits on these workflows. But we designed Reclaim to do most (all?) of what you’d expect both for you (a Reclaim user) and others (non-Reclaim users who just stick on the core platform).
Everyone should block off 1-2 hours a day for themselves. Consistently blocking your entire day could slow down the organization, if meetings are a place for reaching consensus and decision-making.