Have you ever had an offsite meeting, and someone schedules a meeting right before it or right after it, not realizing that you need that time to get to the meeting?
Clockwise can automatically recognize that a meeting has an external location, determine how far it is, and protect the right amount of transit time on your schedule.
In this article you'll learn:
- How Clockwise uses travel time
- How to set your primary work location
- How to sync travel time to your calendar with Travel Time events
- How Clockwise sets the duration of Travel Time
- Why Travel Time may not be created
- Editing & deleting Travel Time events
How Clockwise uses travel time
Clockwise uses machine learning to identify meetings that require travel, understands how much time to block off, and automatically holds an intelligently determined amount of time on your calendar.
Clockwise protects your travel time in three main ways:
- If a flexible meeting conflicts with a travel time block, Clockwise will try to resolve that conflict automatically
- Clockwise will never move a flexible meeting into a time that conflicts with a travel time block
- Clockwise Scheduler will know which times that appear to be free on your calendar or a colleague's calendar actually have conflicting travel time blocks and won't recommend those times.
Set your Primary work location
In order to intelligently block off the right amount of travel time as it relates to your work address, you'll need to tell us where you work. Set your work location in your Clockwise settings under "Smart Holds" in the "Travel time" section. Click on "Set your work location" and input your work address here:
If you do not input a Primary work location, Clockwise will set a default block of 30 minutes against any meeting that has a location in the event.
Sync travel time to your calendar with Travel Time events
To turn on Travel Time events, go to the "Smart Holds" section in Settings, and scroll down to the Travel Time section.
There are different ways to use Clockwise Travel Time:
- Sync to your primary work calendar – If you choose this option, Clockwise will automatically create travel time events on your work calendar, visible to anyone who has visibility into your calendar like a normal meeting.
- Not visible to your coworkers, but still used in Flexible Meetings & Scheduler – this is the default option – the travel time events will not be visible to your co-workers. Instead, you can see them by toggling on your Clockwise Private Calendar from the list of calendars on the left side of Google Calendar. If you click on one of the Private Calendar travel time events, you can sync individual blocks to your calendar.
- Not used at all – If you don't want Clockwise to utilize travel time for any of your meetings, whether it is synced to your calendar or behind the scenes, you can disable it from the "Hours & Availability" section of Settings.
Travel Time's intelligent suggestions
Your travel time duration will update according to how far your meeting address is from your primary work address. These holds will appear on your calendar in increments of 15 minutes up to an hour.
- If your meeting address is close enough to your primary work address, a walking time is suggested.
- If your meeting address is further away, a driving time will be suggested.
If you have two external meetings in a row at separate locations, travel time will automatically calculate your travel hold from the address of your current meeting to the address of your next meeting.
💡Please note that travel time holds do not take traffic into consideration.
- Travel times are used to prevent meetings from being scheduled back to back when you will be en route.
- It should not be consulted for the exact amount of time it will take to get to your meeting.
Examples of why Travel Time is not created or updated
- The event is outside of your working hours set in Clockwise.
- The event is more than two weeks in the future.
- The address of your meeting was not recognized.
- You have two meetings outside of your primary work address, at the same location, within 3 hours of each other.
- The name of your event assumes you're traveling. Ex: Walk, Commute, Travel or Drive. We will not book travel time on holds that we recognize as manually created travel blocks.
- Your meeting's location is further than 120 miles away or more than an hour's duration.
Editing & deleting Travel Time events
Chrome extension:
- To edit or delete a Travel Time event from your Chrome extension, first, click on the event on your calendar. If you want to change the duration, edit it from the dropdown menu titled "Duration".
Web App:
- If you're using the Web App and want to edit or delete a Travel Time event, click on the event in your calendar and find the link to your homepage from the event details. If you want to change the duration, edit it from the dropdown menu titled "Duration".
