Events steps in Ashby's People Ops Workflows take the manual work out of onboarding scheduling. Event steps automatically create and send calendar invites for key meetings (from manager 1:1s to I-9 verifications) so nothing falls through the cracks. Ashby even handles the complexity of new hires who don't yet have a work email, staging those invites as pending and converting them into real calendar invites once a work email is provisioned.

To add an Events step, you need view and edit access to the workflow. Your permission set grants this access to either all workflows or specific workflows.

To add an Events step, navigate to Ashby's People Ops module and complete the following steps:

You see three Events step types, each configured independently:

When the Schedule Event step runs, Ashby finds an available time within your configured constraints and creates the event. It respects organization-wide working hours  and personal working hour settings , and doesn't schedule over existing calendar events.

When setting up a Schedule Event step, configure the following:

Select the calendar where the event should be created.

You can choose either:

If you select a shared calendar, Ashby creates and manages the event as the Organizer configured for that shared calendar in People Ops Admin's Event Organizers  settings.

If you select a personal calendar, Ashby creates and manages the event as that calendar's owner.

Add everyone who should attend the event, including the organizer if they're participating.

For recipients, choose how Ashby handles their email address:

Automatic: The email used depends on the workflow type and recipient.

Choose where the meeting will take place:

The location appears in the calendar invite just as it would for any other event.

Optionally assign a physical room for the event. Select from specific meeting rooms synced from your calendar integration, or from Meeting Room Pools  configured in Ashby Recruiting. When the step runs, Ashby checks room availability alongside attendee calendars and books an available room.

Set the event duration either in minutes or hours.

Define the scheduling window relative to a reference date in your workflow (e.g., on the start date or up to 10 days after the start date). Ashby searches day by day from the earliest eligible date.

Set a preferred time-of-day window using the organizer's time zone. Ashby tries to schedule within this range. If no availability exists, the step fails and an admin is prompted to edit and retry. Learn more in Events that failed to scheduleEvents That Fail To Schedule.

The Minimum Notion option allows you to set a delay to the event's scheduled time to avoid new hires being scheduled same-day if the step runs at a point within the scheduling window.

For example, if you had a scheduling window with a Start range of 0 days after the start date and an end of 10 days after the start date, if the step runs 2 days after the new hire's start date, then the event could be scheduled for the same day. If you have a one day minimum notice set, then the event would be scheduled three days after the start date at the earliest (so the following day), ensuring there are no last-minute events being scheduled.

The minimum notice can be set in days or hours. Click Submit to confirm your minimum notice and add it to the event step settings.

You can add buffers pre- and post-event to avoid back-to-back events on your calendar. Add in the number of minutes before and after the event, then click Submit to confirm.

Set the title and description for the calendar invite. Both support tokens for personalization. Calendar services (Google Calendar, Microsoft 365) have limited and inconsistent support for rich text formatting in invite descriptions.

Write the email subject and email body using your organization's tokens to personalize the message, for example, pulling in the workflow enrollee's name or answers from an earlier survey step.

The email editor supports the following features:

Add substitution tokens

Substitution tokens allow you to pull information about the workflow enrollee into the emails you send out from Ashby. They can be added to both the email's subject and body.

To add substitution tokens, click the T icon in the toolbar either by the subject line or in the toolbar under the body of the email. From here, search for the specific token you need.

Once the step runs, if the organizer is also added as an attendee, they receive an email summary of the scheduled event from Ashby.

If a participant's email is set to Work but no work email has been entered in Ashby yet, their invite is staged as pending. The event is still created on the host calendar, and pending invitees are listed in the event description so the organizer has visibility. These pending invites are converted into real invites when a Finalize Event Invites step runs later in the workflow.

Many onboarding meetings already exist on a recurring schedule, like a weekly new-hire orientation or a Monday IT training. The Add To Recurring Event Instance step adds an employee to the next instance of one of these meetings, so you don't have to schedule a one-off event or add people by hand.

Ashby finds the recurring event by its exact title on the selected calendar, and treats every recurring event with that title on that calendar as the same meeting. Give the calendar event a unique title so this step works consistently and correctly.

When the step runs, Ashby looks at the calendar you selected, finds the recurring event with the title you entered, and adds your attendees to the earliest instance that starts on or after the date you set. Attendees are added to that single instance only, not to the whole series or to any later occurrences.

When setting up an Add to Recurring Event Instance step, configure the following:

The calendar Ashby searches for the recurring event. Choose a shared calendar or a personal calendar. For a shared calendar, Ashby sends the invite as the calendar's configured organizer; configure the organizer in Admin > Event Organizers. For a personal calendar, the specific employee you choose owns the event, and it lands on their calendar.

To prioritize adding employees to the first instance of an existing recurring event, set the timing (delay) of the Add To Recurring Event Instance step to run at least one hour before the scheduled run time of Schedule Event. Otherwise, Ashby may schedule the employee for a new, separate event that conflicts with the recurring event, delaying them to the next instance of the recurring event.

The Finalize Event Invites step converts any pending invites from earlier Schedule Event or Add to Recurring Event Instance steps into real calendar invites. It's designed to run after work emails have been provisioned for participants who didn't have one when the Schedule Event or Add to Recurring Event Instance step ran.

Select Finalize Event Invites when adding an Events step. Aside from configuring a step title, no additional configuration is required. The step automatically identifies and finalizes any pending invites from earlier steps in the same workflow.

We recommend scheduling this step at a point in your workflow when you're confident work emails will exist (e.g., three days before the start date, or at midnight on the start date in the participant's time zone).

After the step completes, you can view which invites were finalized in the step summary for that individual.

Once the step has run for a specific enrollee, you can verify the event in two ways:

If a new hire does not yet have a work email address when the Schedule Event step runs, and their email type is set to Work, they appear as a pending attendee.

This is because Ashby cannot add a calendar invitation to their calendar until their work email has been created. The pending status is automatically removed from the list of attendees once the Finalize Event Invites step successfully runs.

The event is still created on the host calendar, and pending attendees are listed in the calendar event description so the organizer has visibility into who will be invited once the Finalize Event Invites step runs.

To reschedule a successfully scheduled event, navigate to the Schedule Event step in the enrollee's Workflow, select Actions in the upper right corner, then select Reschedule Event.

When prompted "Are you sure you want to reschedule the calendar event?", select Yes.

Ashby deletes the previously created event and automatically finds a new time based on current availability and constraints.

The configured organizer, or anyone with write access to the host calendar, can edit or reschedule the event directly in Google Calendar or Microsoft 365. Any changes made there are reflected in the Schedule Event step within Ashby.

You can re-run a completed or pending Add to Recurring Event Instance step to re-review and potentially adjust the recurring event instance the new attendee will be added to. This can be used in the following cases:

If nothing has changes and you re-try the completed step, then the attendee list and date will remain the same.

If Ashby can't find an available time slot within the configured Date/Scheduling Hours, the step fails.

To update the Calendar Event settings and retry the step:

Attendees receive standard calendar invites through Google Calendar or Microsoft 365, just as they would for any other meeting. If an attendee's invite was staged as pending, they receive the invite once the Event step runs.

Calendar owners and configured organizers are not automatically invited to the event. Add them as an attendee if they should receive the invite. To keep organizers informed, Ashby sends a separate email summary when the event is scheduled.



Once the new hire's work email has been provisioned, it must be entered into Ashby before the Finalize Event Invites step can run successfully. You can add it in one of two ways:

If the work email is not in Ashby when the Finalize Event Invites step runs, the step fails.

No. Shared calendars configured in People Ops are completely separate from recruiting calendars. Changes in one module do not impact the other.

The configured organizer, or anyone with write access to the host calendar, can edit or reschedule the event directly in Google Calendar or Microsoft 365.

If you want someone to be able to reschedule directly from their calendar, either:

For example, if you're using the Schedule Event step to automate a 1:1 between a manager and a new hire, and you want the manager to be able to reschedule directly from their calendar, either set the manager as the organizer using their personal calendar, or host the event on a shared calendar the manager has edit access to.I

No. The step adds attendees to a single instance: the earliest one on or after the date you configure. To add employees to every instance of an event, such as weekly standups or monthly team-wide meetings, use native calendar functionality such as Google Groups.

Ashby treats same-titled events on one calendar as the same meeting. It looks at the next upcoming instance of each event and adds your attendees to the soonest one.

Ashby matches the event by its exact title. If the title no longer matches what's configured on the step, Ashby can't find the event and doesn't add anyone to it. Check the step in the workflow builder: if it doesn't show "Event Found," update the recurring event title until Ashby finds the event, then re-run any needed steps.

Ashby automatically re-runs the scheduling steps. For an Add to Recurring Event Instance step, it removes the attendees from the instance it picked previously and adds them to the instance that matches the new start date. For a completed Schedule Event step, the step is set back to Pending, its dates are recalculated, and it runs again. When it runs, it cancels the event it created before and schedules a new one.

Ashby adds invites in the background, which can take five to ten minutes. The summary fills in as invites are added. Refresh the page after ten minutes if it's still empty.

Only users with permissions to edit the workflow and access to the employee can re-run these steps. Attendees and organizers don't have access to these steps in Ashby unless granted workflow access via Configure Permission Setspermission sets. For ad-hoc rescheduling, we recommend granting edit access within the native calendar application.

The step completes successfully. It's safe to include a Finalize step in your workflow even if some or all new hires already have work emails.