Using guarded availability, you can block your calendar for meetings. You will only be shown available when you have put events with title "#free" in your calendar. This helps you manage your available times for meeting right from your Outlook calendar.
How to block time from Outlook
On your Outlook Calendar, click on the date to create a new event for the times you want to make available for meetings. Set the title of the to “#free” (no quotes). You can also include other text like “#free for office hours” or “Hold for office hours #free” as long as “#free” (no quotes) appears somewhere in the event title. #free MUST be present in the title.
For Outlook
1. Open Outlook Calendar
2. Drag date from the small calendar to create a new event for the times you want to block off. Add a suggestive title, “#free” in our case.
3. Click on the dropdown, mark yourself as “Busy” and make the event recurrent.
4. Click “Save”
You’re done.
Here are the same steps for Google Calendar.
Important Note: FreeBusy will never show times that are outside your work hours or outside the available hours for that Appointment Type.
Limit availability time ranges with work hours and event templates
For example, instead of accepting meeting invites for whenever people send them, you may block off Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for working on tasks and leave Tuesday and Thursday open for people to schedule meetings.
You can do this by configuring your work hours and further fine-tune your availability for every event template if needed.