Calendar Setup 101

ABOUT THIS LESSON

Calendars are a useful way for managing appointments in your system. Before creating a calendar, you’ll want to ensure you have an understanding on unassigned vs. group calendars. Please refer to our other articles to learn more about groups and group calendar setup.

Part 1: Creating and Managing Calendars

Step 1: Navigate to Calendars

• Select + New Calendar

Step 2: Calendar Team & Event Setup

• Choose your Appointment Distribution (for group calendars - automatically skipped for individual calendars)- How you want appointment for services to be distributed for the group
• Optimize for availability – Select user, priority level and location for each group member. Availability is based on priority level
• Optimize for Equal Distribution – Select user and enter location for each group member.
•  Sets appointments by sequence, starts at the top of the list of users and works its way down
  

• Calendar – Description on Calendar
• Calendar name – Name for your calendar
• Description – Written representation for event
• Calendar URL - Path Name for your calendar link
• Appointment title – Name for appointment (add title after {{}})
• Event color – Color the event will appear in

• Save & Continue.

Step 3: Managing Availability

• Customize Appointment Slot Settings
• Slot Duration – Duration of each appointment (30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.)
• Slot Interval – Frequency of appointment availability
• Buffer Duration Between Appointment - determines how frequently appointments can be booked in relation to each other (i.e. with a 15 minute buffer, if you have 30 minute appointments, once an appointment is booked for 10:00am-10:30am the calendar will put in a 15 minute buffer so the next appointment could be booked at 10:45am.)
• Appointments Per Slot - Maximum number of appointments permitted per slot for the user (If there are more appointments than the given slot number for that user, then it either switches over to the next user in the round-robin queue or marks the slot unavailable for the prospect to book)
• Appointments Per Day - Maximum number of appointments permitted per day on this calendar

• Choose Scheduling Notice

• Minimum Scheduling Notice – Days to be notified before appointment
• Date Range – Days events can be scheduled in the next entered days

• Set Office Hours

• Select days – Blue = Days selected, Gray = Unselected Days
• Select + Hours to add additional hours to specific days
• Select Apply All to copy hours for the rest of the days selected

• Save & Continue

• NOTE: If the Company time zone is different from your user timezone, you will need to set the calendar availability to reflect the user timezone instead of the company timezone. For example, if a user is available 8am-5pm PST and the company is EST, you will need to set the calendar availability to be 11pm-8pm EST for it to show properly.

Step 4: Confirmation Settings

• Form Settings
• Custom Form - you can set a custom form for the booking widget instead of the default form which having first name, last name, email, and phone fields
• Use Sticky Contact - Follows the contacts journey and keeps information they have entered
• Use Stripe Payment – Must have Stripe integrated on your account. Choose Amount, Currency type, and message for charge description

• Notification & Additional Options

• Let calendar auto confirm my appointment - Auto confirm an open sport on your calendar
• Send appointment alert emails to the assigned group member - Please note that if this is selected sometimes the emails may look like the appointment was not auto confirmed
• Allow google calendar to send invitation or update emails to attendees – Allow google to notify attendees of appointment
• Allow rescheduling – Option for client to reschedule
• Allow cancellation – Option for client to cancel
• Additional notes – Contains link to reschedule or Cancel
• Pixel ID - It will come through as part of your schedule

• Form Submissions

• Form submit Redirect URL - In case you have a confirmation page and want visitors to go on the next level of the funnel
• Customize Thank You Message - Type in the box here if you want something different then the default message

• Click Complete to confirm your changes and save your settings.

Step 5: View Your Calendar

• Calendars that have been saved to the account will appear in the Calendar settings
• Click on … to make changes:
• Edit – Make Changes to Calendar
• Disable Service – Disables calendar until it is enabled again
• Delete – Delete calendar from the account

Part 2: Using the Calendar

Step 1: Access Your Calendars

• From your Dashboard menu, you can directly access your calendar(s) for a visual of your appointments and blocked off time.

• If you have more than one calendar, you can switch between them using the dropdown menu for “My Calendar”
• Under “All” you can filter your calendar to show appointments, blocked time, or both.
• Under “Weekly” you can adjust the display between a monthly, weekly, or daily calendar view.

• By clicking on the ? icon, you can view the Event Guide, or legend, to understand the various color codes for different types of appointments/events in your calendars.

Step 3: Adding Appointments to Your Calendars

• Click into the date/time you wish to schedule the appointment for. Or, click the “Book Appointment” button at the top of the page.
• In the popup window, you’ll see two options. Choose “Book an Appointment”.

• Select the Contact you wish to create the appointment for.

• Fill out the appointment details and click “Save Appointment” to add the appointment to your calendar.

• Your appointment will now appear in your calendar at the date/time you chose.
• You may click into the appointment to edit or delete it anytime.

Step 4: Adding Blocked Time to Your Calendars

• Click into the date/time you wish to start blocking off time. This could be for vacation/PTO, an offsite meeting, or any other reason you want to hold time in your calendar.
• In the popup window, choose “Add Blocked Off time”.

• Fill out the details including timezone, days/times you wish to block off, and a title and description.

• Click “Save Event” to confirm and add this time to your calendar.

Now you should have a general understanding of how to manage and utilize the Calendar section of your system. There are several customizations and features you can set up to make sure this works best for your specific use case. You can navigate back to your Calendar Settings directly from the calendars page, using this icon: