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Booking Flow

Guest experience

  1. Visit the booking page — /u/host/meeting-slug
  2. Pick a timezone — auto-detected from the browser, changeable via dropdown
  3. Browse available slots — displayed as a week view, navigate with Previous/Next buttons
  4. Click a slot — opens the booking form
  5. Fill in details — name, email, optional notes
  6. Submit — booking is created
  7. Confirmation page — shows booking summary
  8. Email — guest receives a confirmation email with an .ics calendar invite attached

Available time slots

Booking form

Booking statuses

StatusDescription
confirmedBooking is active. Slot is blocked. Emails sent.
pendingAwaiting host approval (when requires_confirmation is on).
cancelledCancelled by host. Slot is freed.
declinedDeclined by host (pending booking rejected).

Confirmation mode

When an event type has requires confirmation enabled:

  1. Guest submits booking → status is pending
  2. Guest receives a “pending” email (no .ics yet)
  3. Host receives an “approval request” email with Approve and Decline buttons
  4. Host can approve/decline in two ways:
    • From the email — click the Approve or Decline button (no login required, token-based)
    • From the dashboard — go to Pending approval section and click Confirm or Decline
  5. On confirm: status becomes confirmed, guest receives confirmation email with .ics, booking is pushed to CalDAV
  6. On decline: status becomes declined, guest receives a decline notification with optional reason

Note: The email action buttons require CALRS_BASE_URL to be set. Without it, the host must use the dashboard.

Cancellation

From the dashboard, click Cancel on an upcoming booking:

  1. Optionally enter a reason
  2. Confirm the cancellation
  3. Both guest and host receive cancellation emails with a METHOD:CANCEL .ics attachment
  4. If the booking was pushed to CalDAV, the event is deleted from the calendar

Conflict detection

Before a booking is accepted, calrs checks for conflicts:

  • Calendar events — from synced CalDAV sources
  • Existing bookings — confirmed bookings on any event type
  • Buffer times — the buffer before/after is included in the conflict window
  • Minimum notice — slots too close to the current time are rejected

CalDAV write-back

When a booking is confirmed (either directly or via approval), calrs can push the event to the host’s CalDAV calendar. See CalDAV Integration > Write-back for setup.

Email notifications

If SMTP is configured, calrs sends emails at these moments:

EventGuest receivesHost receives
Booking confirmedConfirmation + .ics REQUESTNotification + .ics REQUEST
Booking pending“Awaiting confirmation” noticeApproval request with Approve/Decline buttons
Booking declinedDecline notice (with optional reason)—
Booking cancelledCancellation + .ics CANCELCancellation + .ics CANCEL

All emails are sent as HTML with plain text fallback. They include event title, date, time, timezone, location, and notes. The HTML templates are responsive and support dark mode in email clients that honor prefers-color-scheme.

Timezone handling

  • Guest’s timezone is auto-detected via Intl.DateTimeFormat in the browser
  • A timezone dropdown lets the guest change it
  • Slots are displayed in the guest’s selected timezone
  • The booking is stored in the host’s timezone
  • The timezone is preserved across navigation (week picker, booking form)

CLI booking

calrs booking create intro \
  --date 2026-03-20 --time 14:00 \
  --name "Jane Doe" --email jane@example.com \
  --timezone Europe/Paris --notes "Let's discuss the project"