Automatically block of 15 minutes before and after each meeting
It is my manual task to always block some time before and after meetings, lot's of extra clicking in Outlook. I would love to see a feature or someone explain to me how I can tell Outlook, to by default make my meetings appear to start 15 minutes earlier and stop 15 minutes later, than they actually do, so no one can book back to back through my entire schedule.

27 comments
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Jim Bob Howard commented
Yes! Buffers would be great!
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Aaron Mason commented
It’s possible to do this with Emma.ai (https:/:emma.ai) that adds automatic travel buffer time in your Outlook calendar for you.
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Rita commented
This would be very very helpful!!!! Thanks for solving this problem!
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Anonymous commented
Could not agree with this suggestion more; also with commenters who have asked for mulitple buffer times (15 min, 30 min, 5 min, etc.). I also am always manually adding these blocks. I also would like the attached blocks to move with the appointment/meeting when it is rescheduled. Right now I move three appointments for a reschedule: the meeting itself and the before/after blocks I've added around it.
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Anonymous commented
I am still hopping for this
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Zeal OCS commented
I was hoping for this.
But, i have ended up using Power Automate to auto block 15min, 30min, 1hr or even longer before and after each meeting via
- automatic schedule and
- manual button trigger from mobile.Hope this help.
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Azorel commented
537 votes and nothing?
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Anonymous commented
The current option to end appointments early just shortens them, but doesn't block out the time to prevent others from setting up meetings to start immediately after that shortened meeting. What it needs is to automatically create a blocked buffer after the set meeting time.
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Anonymous commented
I need Travel time (Idealy automatically updated from my current location) before and after each meeting where a location for a meeting has been set.
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Anonymous commented
Need to add travel time for appointments - before and after instead of creating an extra appointment.
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Anonymous commented
Should be able to set the amount of time, but I like the idea.
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N K H commented
I have a "transport"-button that will add x number of minutes before/after an event to book my calendar with out of office time needed for transportation to/from a meeting.
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KDigger commented
Desktop: Close your software
Mobile: put in silent mode or turn on Airplane mode. -
Steve commented
Would like this feature for Resources as well. I used to have this feature in an meeting booking system. It enabled a room to be set-up/set-down in preparation for the meeting. Feature needs to have a variable time, default of 15 min would be fine, but often need 5 to 10 min to get from one meeting to another.
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Michael Graff commented
Would Power Automate be able to help here?
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Dennis commented
right now you can work the other way. Plan an appointment e.g. for 60mins and outlook will shorten it to 50 mins... This gives you some freedom. It is a std. option you can configure in the menue
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Anonymous commented
What Jacques Detroyat commented on April 28, 2020 11:39 is what I would also go with. Sometimes it's just a little slack but for me there's also two aspects to an appointment: 1. The actual time of the appointment which is important to the user; 2. The time during which they are unavailable, sometimes because it's an external meeting that requires some time to get to and from. Need to be able to handle both within a single appointment.
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John Wyatt commented
Should be provided as a "rule" for calendars or a button on/off selection for all and single settings.
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John commented
A lot of what is being requested in uservoice is a feature in the add-in 'UnTEdious' by opusflow. this is one of those features.
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Jacques Detroyat commented
From a user experience perspective, it would definitely be nice to have in the appointment creation dialog header two additional checkboxes (close to "All day" amd "Time Zones" checkboxes :
- Add slack before
- Add slack afterOnce ticked a default time (e.g. 5 minutes) would display and could be adjusted +/- to cover for various cases (travel time, prep time, closure/wrapup time...).
This "slack time" would obviously not be part of the "appointment time" so the grey stripey area or a larger rectangle line exposing this additional duration is a nice idea.