OpenSlot · Guides

Sharing availability across time zones without mistakes

Almost every scheduling disaster is a timezone disaster. "3 PM" means nothing without a zone; daylight saving shifts the offset twice a year on different dates in different countries; and mental arithmetic under a full inbox is how a Kentucky 3 PM becomes a London 3 PM.

Rules that prevent the mess

State the timezone once, at the top, and never mix zones in one list. Convert to the recipient's zone — it's courteous and it removes their chance to miscalculate. And never do the conversion in your head across a daylight-saving boundary; the offset you memorized may be wrong for the specific week you're scheduling.

The already-converted list

OpenSlot does the conversion at generation time. Pick any IANA timezone — the recipient's, not yours — and every slot is computed in it, DST handled, with the zone declared on line one:

All times in US/Eastern
• Today 07/08
  03:30 PM - 04:00 PM
  05:00 PM - 05:30 PM
• Thursday 07/09
  09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
  12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
  02:30 PM - 03:00 PM

Because the source is live Outlook free/busy rather than your memory of the calendar, the list is correct for the actual dates involved, including the weeks where US and European clocks change on different Sundays. Scheduling across a 9-hour gap becomes: pick their zone, generate, paste.