You can create as many Buffer agents as you like, each one triggered by its own rules for which meetings or events it applies to.
For example you can create these three separate agents:
a 10 minute prep buffer before external meetings with more than 2 attendees
a 5 minute decompression after interviews and
a 15 minutes prep before your 1 on 1 with your manager, are three separate agents with three separate rules.
Creating a Buffer
Click Add at the top of your Agents list, or Create in the top navigation, to open the Agent Library, then choose Buffers from the left-hand navigation. You can also ask the chat assistant, for example, "Give me 15 minutes to prep before every external meeting." Creating a Buffer puts you into Preview Mode first, so you can see where the buffers land before. anything is applied.
There are four pre-configured buffers for Decompression, Travel time, Airport time, and Meeting prep.
Choosing which meetings get a Buffer
In the Agents rules, events to buffer opens the event matcher. This is where you are able to build very precise filters. A new Buffer agent starts matched to "large meetings you've organized" just so there's something there pre populated that you can click on to open the Event Matcher.
The Event Matcher:
From the Event Matcher, you can get granular, defining very specific rules for your Buffers. As you define the filters you will see a list of matching events on the right hand side of the popup.
Describe it in plain language. Type what you mean, such as "15 minutes before every external meeting with more than five people" and Reclaim builds the filters for you.
Or build the filters yourself. This is just a sample list of the things you can match on:
Text: title, description, or location
Attendees: email addresses, names, or who the organizer is
Number of participants
Meeting category: team, external, one-on-one, or personal
Long meetings: meetings over two hours
Specific events: the exact title of something on your calendar
Filters stack, so you can be as narrow as you need.
You can also decide which calendar that you would like the Buffer to consider. You can select either one calendar or have it consider all of your connected calendars.
Buffer examples
What you want | How to set it up |
Collect your thoughts before a one-on-one | 5–10 minutes prep, matched to meetings where that person is the only other attendee |
Get to a room and tidy your screen before a big external call | 15 minutes prep, matched to external meetings with five or more people |
Be well prepared for a meeting you facilitate & present | 15 minutes prep at Critical priority, matched on the meeting title |
Catch up on notes after calls | A buffer after the meeting, matched broadly |
Guarantee a break after back-to-back interviews | 15 minutes after, at Critical priority so it can't be booked over |
Setting a buffer to Critical is what stops it being booked over. Use it for the ones you genuinely can't do without.
Travel time
For meetings you have to travel to, create a Buffer that adds time before and after, matched on the presence of an address or a #travel hashtag in the Title or description.
You would do this by adding an additional filter where the hashtags can be found in the Fields filter:
Flights buffer
Flights work the same way, match the event and give yourself enough time before to get to the airport. You can do this by matching the Category and also the #flight tag:
Naming your buffer agents
Buffers are the agent type people create most of, so give each one a specific name so they're easy to find when you need to fine tune.
Troubleshooting
My buffer didn't appear:
The default for buffers is to "remove it from the schedule" when there's a conflict. So if you accept a meeting on top of a buffer, Reclaim will clean up your calendar and remove it. If you want it there regardless, you can choose to keep it as a conflicting event.
I'm getting buffers I don't want:
Check the agent's events to buffer filter, it could be broader than you intended. Narrowing it to a category or a specific attendee usually fixes it.
I don't want a reminder for my prep time:
Turn reminders off in the agent's event settings.
