Meeting Request
A Meeting Request in Salesforce is the action a sales rep takes to propose times and send a calendar invitation to one or more attendees, then track the responses (Accepted, Declined, or Tentative).
Definition
A Meeting Request in Salesforce is the action a sales rep takes to propose times and send a calendar invitation to one or more attendees, then track the responses (Accepted, Declined, or Tentative). In the current Salesforce stack, that action is the Insert Availability feature inside Salesforce Inbox, which runs as part of the Outlook Integration and the Gmail Integration. The rep picks open slots from their own calendar, the recipient clicks a time that works, and a calendar event is created and logged against the related Salesforce records.
The phrase also covers an older, retiring path. Salesforce for Outlook, the legacy desktop add-in, exposed a New Meeting Request button that sent invites from Outlook into Salesforce. That product is retiring in December 2027, and Salesforce points customers to the Outlook Integration with Inbox plus Einstein Activity Capture instead. So when you read "Meeting Request" today, the modern reading is Insert Availability, and the legacy reading is the Salesforce for Outlook button on its way out.
How a meeting request actually gets sent and tracked
Insert Availability: the modern meeting request
Insert Availability is the feature most people mean by a meeting request today. It ships with Salesforce Inbox, which is the productivity layer that sits on top of the Outlook Integration and the Gmail Integration. While a rep composes or replies to an email, they open the side panel, choose the Availability option, and the panel reads their connected Microsoft or Google calendar. The rep clicks one or more open time slots, sets a title, a duration, a location, and a description, then sends. The recipient sees selectable times in the email body and picks the one that suits them. That single click books the slot and creates the calendar event without a chain of back-and-forth replies. A useful detail is that the proposed times stay live. If the rep's calendar changes after the email goes out, the suggested slots update so the recipient never books a time the rep already lost. The recipient does not need a Salesforce login or any plugin, which is what makes the feature work well with external prospects who only have an email client.
Why the calendar event lands back in Salesforce
A meeting request is only half useful if the booked event lives in Outlook or Gmail and never reaches the CRM. The link back to Salesforce is Einstein Activity Capture, the sync engine that connects a rep's Microsoft or Google account to their Salesforce activity data. When a time is booked through Insert Availability, the resulting calendar event syncs to Salesforce and shows up on the activity timeline of the records it relates to, such as the Contact, Lead, Account, or Opportunity. Salesforce represents that meeting as a record on the standard Event object, with WhoId and WhatId fields tying it to the person and the deal. Sync is not instant. Salesforce documents that events generally appear within a few minutes, though it can take longer under load. Older orgs may still rely on Lightning Sync for calendar syncing, but Einstein Activity Capture is the current recommendation and the one paired with Inbox. Without a working sync layer, the meeting still books in the rep's personal calendar, it just will not appear automatically on the Salesforce record.
The licensing and setup that gates the feature
Insert Availability is not part of the free Outlook Integration or Gmail Integration on its own. It belongs to Salesforce Inbox, which is a paid capability included with some Sales Cloud and Service Cloud editions and available as an add-on for others. The practical rule for an admin is that three things must line up before a rep sees a working meeting request. The integration has to be enabled and assigned. Inbox features have to be turned on for that user. Einstein Activity Capture has to be configured so booked events sync back. Skip the sync piece and reps will book meetings that quietly never reach the CRM, which is a common and frustrating support ticket. Setup happens in Salesforce Setup under the email and calendar integration pages, where you assign the Inbox permission set or permission set license and connect user accounts. Because the recipient experience depends on the rep's connected calendar, the rep also has to authorize Salesforce to read their Microsoft or Google calendar during first run. Treat that connection step as part of onboarding, not an afterthought.
Salesforce Scheduler is a different kind of booking
People often conflate Insert Availability with Salesforce Scheduler, but they solve different problems. Insert Availability is a rep-initiated, one-off meeting request embedded in an email thread. Salesforce Scheduler is a separate, licensed product for structured appointment booking, the kind you see for financial advisor consultations, in-branch banking visits, or healthcare appointments. Scheduler models services, resources, work types, and locations, then exposes Lightning components and flows so a customer can self-serve a booking from a website or community. It matches the customer to an available person with the right skills and a free slot, then books the appointment as a record. The two are not competitors. A rep firing off a quick prospect call uses Insert Availability, while an operations team standardizing thousands of customer appointments uses Scheduler. If your requirement includes routing rules, multi-resource scheduling, or a public booking page, that is Scheduler territory, and Insert Availability will feel too lightweight. If your requirement is "let my sellers stop emailing back and forth about times," Insert Availability is the right tool and Scheduler is overkill.
The legacy New Meeting Request button and its retirement
Before the Inbox era, Salesforce for Outlook was the desktop add-in that connected the Outlook client to Salesforce. It carried a New Meeting Request button and a Request a Meeting flow that let a user send a calendar invite and have the response tracked against Salesforce records. That product is being retired. Salesforce has set the full retirement for December 2027, after pushing the date back more than once, and the official guidance is to move to the Outlook Integration with Inbox plus Einstein Activity Capture. Inherited orgs sometimes still show references to the old button or to Lightning Sync, and admins should treat those as historical rather than as the path to build on. The important takeaway for anyone documenting or training on meeting requests is that the legacy meeting request is a sunset feature, not a supported design choice. If you are migrating off Salesforce for Outlook, map each old habit (sync contacts, sync events, send a meeting request) to its modern equivalent so reps do not lose a workflow they depend on during the cutover.
Group meetings, time zones, and other real-world edges
Real meeting requests rarely stay simple. Insert Availability supports adding more than one attendee, so a rep can propose times to a small group rather than a single contact. The person addressed in the email is added as an attendee by default, and the rep can add others before sending. Time zones are a frequent source of confusion. The proposed slots reflect the rep's calendar, and the recipient sees times rendered for their own context, so always sanity-check the duration and time zone before sending a cross-region invite. Because the email body renders selectable slots, very long lists of proposed times can clutter the message and hurt readability, so a short menu of good options beats dumping a whole open day. Booked events flow to Salesforce through Einstein Activity Capture, which means the same sync considerations apply: private events, repeating events, and large attendee counts can all behave differently than a plain one-to-one meeting. Test the exact pattern your team uses, including how a declined or rescheduled meeting updates the Salesforce Event, before you roll the feature out widely. The defaults are sensible, but the edges deserve a dry run.
Set up and send a meeting request with Insert Availability
Insert Availability is the supported way to send a meeting request in current Salesforce. An admin enables the pieces, then a rep sends the request from their email. Here is the setup-and-send path.
- Turn on the integration
In Salesforce Setup, open the Outlook Integration or Gmail Integration settings and enable the integration. This is the side-panel foundation that everything else builds on.
- Assign Inbox to the rep
Insert Availability is an Inbox feature, not part of the base integration. Assign the Inbox permission set or permission set license to the users who need to send meeting requests.
- Configure Einstein Activity Capture
Set up Einstein Activity Capture so booked events sync back to the activity timeline. Without this, meetings book in the personal calendar but never reach the Salesforce record.
- Send the request from email
The rep composes a reply, opens the side panel, chooses Availability, clicks open time slots, sets a title and duration, and sends. The recipient picks a slot and the event books automatically.
The host environment for the side panel where Insert Availability appears. Enable and assign it before anything else.
The paid productivity layer that actually provides the Insert Availability feature. Included in some editions, an add-on for others.
The calendar sync engine that returns the booked event to Salesforce and onto the related record's timeline.
Each rep authorizes Salesforce to read their Microsoft or Google calendar so proposed slots reflect real availability.
- The base Gmail or Outlook Integration alone does not include Insert Availability. You need Salesforce Inbox on top of it.
- If Einstein Activity Capture is not configured, booked meetings will not appear on the Salesforce record, which reps read as the feature being broken.
- Double-check time zone and duration before sending a cross-region invite, since the recipient sees times rendered for their own context.
- Do not design new workflows on the Salesforce for Outlook New Meeting Request button. That product retires in December 2027.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Meeting Request in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Meeting Request.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Meeting Request.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. Which best describes a Meeting Request feature in Salesforce?
Q2. How does a modern Meeting Request sync between Salesforce and external calendars like Outlook or Google?
Q3. What is the value of a Meeting Request being tied to a Salesforce record?
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