New: Schedule Meetings with the Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant

The Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant helps you schedule 1:1 meetings and move meetings on your work and personal calendars using your voice. When scheduling a meeting with a contact who has shared their calendar availability with you, Alexa will suggest times that show as ‘available’ on both of your calendars, which saves you time and effort of doing this manually. When moving a meeting, Alexa will ask you for a new date and time for the meeting, warn you when you select a time that would double book your calendar, and send updated invites to all participants.

The Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant expands on Alexa’s calendar management capabilities that currently include browsing the calendar, creating new events, and canceling appointments. The Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant supports Gmail, Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Exchange 2013 (or higher) calendars. It is available to Alexa for Business customers and Alexa consumers in the US.

Let’s walk through the steps you need to take to get setup, and then how to use Alexa to schedule and move meetings.

Scheduling a Meeting with a Contact

1. Link a supported calendar with Alexa. For more information about how to link your calendar, see Connect Your Calendar to Alexa.
   1. If you’ve previously linked your Microsoft Office 365 account, you will need to relink your calendar in the Alexa app.
   2. To link Microsoft Exchange, you need to be an Alexa for Business enrolled user. You will need to talk with your IT department to get access.
2. Add work or personal contacts to your Alexa app. For more information about how to add your contacts, see Add and Edit Your Contacts to the Alexa App.
3. Say ‘Alexa, schedule a meeting with John’.

Let’s walk through an example showing how you would use Alexa to schedule a 1-hour meeting with John. Note that if you are a user enrolled with your company’s Alexa for Business account, your meeting will default to 30 min to make it easier to find time on busy calendars.

User: Alexa, schedule a meeting with John.

Alexa: You and John are available today from 11:30AM. to 2PM. and tomorrow from 9AM to 11AM. What date and time should I schedule?

User: 9AM.

Alexa: What’s the name of the event?

User: Finance Review.

Alexa: I’ll schedule Finance Review on Friday May 11th at 9AM and send an invite to John at john@example.com. OK?

User: OK.

Alexa: I’ve added that.

John then gets an email invite for the event. Alexa suggested up to two free time slots for you and John by looking at your linked work and personal calendars and your contact’s linked work calendar.

Now, let’s look at other scheduling utterances that you can use.

If you want to schedule a meeting at a specific time, say “Alexa, schedule a meeting with John today at 3PM.” The Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant will inform you about the availability for both you and your contact and will book your requested meeting, even if you have a conflict.

If you want to schedule a meeting on a specific day, say “Alexa, schedule a meeting with John today.” If Alexa can’t find available time for you and your contact, Alexa will try to find time where you’re busy but the participant is free. Alexa assumes that you’ll be willing to make time to meet with the participant because you picked that specific day, signaling that this is an important or urgent meeting. If the participant is busy on that day, then Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant will look for availability over the next seven days and offer suggestions.

Moving a Meeting

1. Link a supported calendar with Alexa. For more information about how to link your calendar, see Connect Your Calendar to Alexa.
2. Say ‘Alexa, move my 9AM meeting’ or ‘Alexa, move my Finance Review meeting to 4PM tomorrow’.

Let’s walk through how to have Alexa move your meeting.

User: Alexa, move my Finance Review meeting to 4PM. tomorrow.

Alexa: OK. I’ll move the Finance Review meeting tomorrow from 9AM to 4PM. Just so you know, you have another event named ‘Anaya’s Soccer Match’ at this time. Should I go ahead?

User: Yes.

Alexa: Ok. I’ll move the Finance Review meeting to Friday May 11th at 4PM.

The Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant was able to find the meeting by its title, inform you of a conflict on your personal calendar, and with your approval, move Finance Review to 4PM the next day. Alexa will also send an updated invite email to notify meeting participants of the change.

Summary

With the launch of the Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant, you can more easily use Alexa to manage your calendar. You can simply ask Alexa to schedule a meeting with a contact whose calendar availability you have access to, or ask Alexa to move a meeting. The Alexa Smart Scheduling Assistant feature requires no action to enable if you’re already using Gmail or Google G-Suite. Microsoft Office 365 users will need to relink their calendar in the Alexa app. Microsoft Exchange 2013 (or later) is only available to Alexa for Business enrolled users. Talk to your IT Admin to get access.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us in the AWS Forums or through AWS Support.