How to Share Your Availability in Slack, Teams, and Group Chats

Last updated: March 2026

Someone in a Slack channel asks "when are you free this week?" and now you're alt-tabbing to your calendar, squinting at three different days, trying to mentally merge your work calendar with your personal one, and typing it all out in a message that you'll probably get wrong anyway.

Scheduling in messaging apps is uniquely annoying because the tools designed for scheduling — Calendly, Google Calendar invites, Outlook's scheduling assistant — are all built for email. They assume you're composing an email, not responding to a Slack thread at 2pm on a Tuesday.

Here's how to share your availability in Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, and other messaging apps without installing plugins or sending booking links.

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The Problem with Scheduling in Chat

Chat-based scheduling has a few specific challenges that email doesn't:

1. The conversation is real-time. When someone asks when you're free in Slack, they expect an answer in minutes, not hours. There's pressure to respond quickly, which leads to checking your calendar in a rush and missing conflicts.

2. Booking links feel wrong in chat. Sending a Calendly link in a Slack DM is the messaging equivalent of handing someone a business card in the middle of a conversation. It breaks the conversational tone.

3. Calendar tools don't integrate with chat. Gmail's "Propose Times" feature only works inside Gmail. Outlook's scheduling assistant only works inside Outlook. Neither of them helps when you're scheduling in Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, or LinkedIn messages.

4. You can't attach a calendar invite. In email, you can attach an .ics file. In most messaging apps, you can't — or if you can, it's awkward and the recipient has to download and open a file.

The solution for all of these is the same: generate your availability as plain text and paste it into the chat.

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How to Share Availability in Slack

Option 1: Use ShareAvailability (Fastest)

ShareAvailability connects to your Google Calendar and generates a copy-paste list of your free times. Open it, click "Generate," and paste the result into Slack.

The output looks like this:

Here's my availability this week (EST):

Wed (3/19): 9-11am, 2-4pm
Thu (3/20): 10am-12pm
Fri (3/21): 1-3pm, 4-5pm

Paste that into any Slack channel, DM, or thread. It reads naturally as part of the conversation and takes about 10 seconds from start to finish.

Because it checks all your Google Calendars simultaneously, you won't accidentally offer a time that's free on your work calendar but blocked by a dentist appointment on your personal one.

Option 2: Type It Out

If you're only sharing one or two time slots, typing is fine:

I'm free tomorrow 2-4pm or Friday morning. What works for you?

But once you need to share more than two options across multiple days, the manual approach breaks down. You have to open your calendar, scan each day, check for conflicts across calendars, and type it all into Slack without making a mistake.

Option 3: Slack's Built-in Scheduling (Limited)

Slack doesn't have a native "share availability" feature. You can set your Slack status to show your working hours and set a "Do Not Disturb" schedule, but there's no way to generate a list of free times from within Slack itself.

Some teams use Slack integrations like Clockwise or Reclaim that sync with Google Calendar, but these are team-wide productivity tools, not quick ways to share your personal availability in a chat.

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How to Share Availability in Microsoft Teams

Teams has a scheduling assistant built into the meeting creation flow, but it only works when creating a formal meeting — not when you're chatting with someone and need to share when you're free.

For quick availability sharing in a Teams chat, the approach is the same as Slack: generate your availability as text and paste it in. ShareAvailability works here too since the output is plain text that works in any messaging app.

If both you and the recipient use Microsoft 365, you can also use the FindTime add-in for Outlook to propose times. But this only works through email, not Teams chat.

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How to Share Availability in WhatsApp, iMessage, and SMS

Text-based messaging apps are the simplest case. There's no rich formatting, no integrations, and no plugins. The only option is plain text — which is exactly what ShareAvailability generates.

Copy your availability text and paste it into the conversation:

Hey! Here are some times that work for me this week (PST):

Tue (3/25): 10-11:30am
Wed (3/26): 2-4pm
Thu (3/27): 9am-12pm

Let me know what works!

This works in WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS, Signal, Telegram, and any other text-based messaging app. The recipient doesn't need to download anything, click anything, or create an account.

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How to Share Availability on LinkedIn

LinkedIn messaging is one of the most common places where scheduling happens in professional contexts — and one of the worst places to send a booking link. If you're networking, responding to a recruiter, or following up after a conference, a Calendly link in a LinkedIn DM can feel presumptuous.

Instead, paste your availability as text directly in the LinkedIn message:

Would love to connect! Here are a few times that work on my end (CST):

Mon (3/24): 10am-12pm
Tue (3/25): 2-4pm
Thu (3/27): 9-11am

Happy to work around your schedule if none of those work.

This keeps the tone conversational and puts the other person at ease. They just reply with what works.

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Formatting Tips for Chat

When sharing availability in messaging apps, keep these formatting principles in mind:

Keep it short. Chat messages shouldn't read like emails. Offer 3-5 time slots, not 10.

Include the timezone. This is easy to forget in casual chat but critical if there's any chance the other person is in a different timezone.

One line per day. Even in chat, vertical formatting is easier to scan than a paragraph. Most messaging apps preserve line breaks, so use them.

Add a casual opener and closer. In chat, your availability should be wrapped in conversational language. A raw list of times without context reads like a form letter.

Use the day and date together. "Tuesday" is ambiguous — which Tuesday? "Tue (3/25)" is not.

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Why Plain Text Works Better Than Links in Chat

Booking links were designed for email. In a chat context, they introduce friction:

• The recipient has to leave the conversation, open a browser, navigate the booking page, and come back
• It breaks the conversational flow of the chat
• It signals "schedule yourself into my calendar" instead of "let's find a time together"
• Many people on mobile won't click external links from messaging apps

Plain text removes all of that friction. The recipient reads your times, replies with what works, and you're done — without either person leaving the chat.

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The Bottom Line

The fastest way to share your availability in any messaging app is to generate it as plain text with ShareAvailability and paste it in. It works in Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, iMessage, LinkedIn, Discord, and anything else that accepts text. No plugins, no integrations, no booking links — just your free times, ready to paste.