Requesting More Availability

Turn on Requesting More Availability so candidates who can't find a slot that works can see more of your availability — or propose their own times — instead of dropping off. This guide walks through configuring it, what candidates experience at each step, and how to review and schedule from what they submit.

Who this is for

• Recruiters and scheduling admins who own scheduling templates
• Anyone who's noticed candidates dropping off because none of the offered slots work for them

Before you begin

• Requesting More Availability is configured per template, not account-wide. If you manage multiple templates, you'll need to repeat these steps on each one.
• You'll need edit access to the template.
• The settings covered here live under the template's Meeting Details tab, near the bottom — not under the Scheduling tab.

Part 1: Configure Extended Availability

Extended availability is the pool of additional slots (beyond your normal booking window) that candidates can see if your regular availability doesn't work for them.

1. From the left navigation, open Scheduling.
2. Go to Templates and open the template you want to update.

3. Select the Meeting Details tab 3 dot menu and click edit.

4. Scroll down to the Extended Availability section and turn it on.

5. Choose how it should display:

• Include When None — shows extended availability only when there are no slots available under your future limit. This is the existing, default behavior.
• Include Always — shows extended availability even when regular slots are still available under your future limit. This is the new option.

6. Under Select future Extended Availability, set:

• The number of additional hours, days or weeks to make available
• Whether that window should be counted in working days only

7. Select Save.

Quick reference: Extended Availability fields

Part 2: Turn on candidate availability requests (optional)

This lets candidates propose their own times when nothing you've offered — regular or extended — works for them, instead of just logging a reason and going silent.

1. On the same Meeting Details tab, scroll to Candidate's Preferred Date & Time.

2. Turn on Allow candidates to provide their availability.

3. Set Minimum days candidates must provide — the minimum number of distinct days their proposed times must be spread across.
4. Set Minimum hours candidate must provide — the minimum total hours of availability they must submit.
5. Select Save.

Candidates can submit availability outside your configured booking window — Sense still accepts it.

Quick reference: Candidate availability request fields

Part 3: What candidates experience

Here's the sequence a candidate goes through, depending on how you've configured the two settings above:

1. The candidate opens your booking link and sees your regular availability first.
2. If a slot works, they book it as usual — nothing changes here.
3. If nothing works:

• With Include Always on, they've already been seeing extended availability alongside regular slots, and can keep browsing further weeks.
• With Include When None (the default), extended availability only appears once regular slots run out.

4. If the candidate reaches the end of everything you're showing (regular plus extended) and still hasn't found a match:

• If Allow candidates to provide their availability is off, they can log that none of the slots work for them and submit a reason. If there was no availability at all and Extended Availability is off, they see a Notify Host option instead.
• If Allow candidates to provide their availability is on, they instead see a Propose Time Slots option.

5. In the Propose Time Slots flow, the candidate enters their own available dates and times, meeting the minimum days and hours you configured, plus a comment.

6. If any time they propose already matches a slot in the availability you originally shared, they're prompted to book that slot directly instead of submitting a request.

7. The candidate submits the request. They can only submit one every 24 hours from the same email address.

Part 4: Reviewing and scheduling from candidate requests

1. When a candidate submits a request, you — as the template host — receive a notification in Sense.
2. Select the notification to go straight to a filtered view of requests for that template. Alternatively, go to Scheduling > Events and select View Requests.
3. Use the template filter to narrow the list to requests from a specific template.

4. Open a request to review the candidate's proposed availability.
5. From here, you can:

• Schedule a meeting using one of the candidate's proposed slots
• Replace an interviewer who isn't available at that time with someone who is
• Discard the request if you don't want to proceed

6. If you discard a request, it closes without notifying the candidate. If you want to schedule with them later, they'll need to submit a new booking through the template link.
7. If you schedule from the request, standard meeting notifications go out to everyone involved, the same as any other booked meeting.

Things to know

• Candidate availability requests aren't available through chatbot yet. The extended-availability "none of these slots work" flow is — it works via chatbot when a scheduler node is attached.
• If Allow candidates to provide their availability is off, candidates who run out of slots still get the option to log that none of them work and provide a reason. They just can't propose their own times.
• Reasons candidates' logs are captured in chatbot disposition data, which is currently only viewable within the chatbot context.