Manage Your Appointments & Schedules
What is an Appointment Type?
An Appointment Type is the category of appointment you create, and make available for Contacts to select while booking an Appointment. For example, you can have a "Consultation" Appointment Type for new Contacts, a "Skills Training" Appointment Type for more established Contacts, and more. You can have any number of different Appointment Types so that your Appointments can serve different purposes.
How do I create an Appointment Type?
To get started, navigate to Calendar > Appointment Types, and click +Add Appointment Type.
You will then be required to give a name to your Appointment Type.
You may also add a public description and can customize the success message and button text.
You can choose which Staff Member will be assigned to the booked Events on the Appointment Type, and can optionally select other Staff Members to receive a notification when a booking is created.
You can choose to show this Appointment Type to all Contacts or you can select to Show/Hide for specific Circle(s).
For Example: If you would like to show this Appointment Type to only Circle One and Circle Two, you would select both Circle One and Circle Two in the "Show only for Circle(s)" field. This will hide this Appointment Type for all Contacts that are not in Circle One or Circle Two.
Click 'Configure Automations' to set automation to fire when the Appointment Type is 'Booked, Rescheduled, Canceled and/or Completed'.
How do I manage my Appointment Types?
You can interact with the Appointment Type through the Options menu button in the List View.
Edit: Change the information you set for this Appointment Type.
Baseline Availability: Customize your availability schedule for this specific Appointment Type. By default, the settings you chose for your Default Settings will be auto-generated. Learn more about managing your availability below.
Limit Availability: Specify how this specific Appointment Type should be affected based on other Events & Appointments.
Connect Schedules: Schedule Automations or targeted reminders and correspondence based on your Appointment Date. These can be scheduled 'prior to' or 'after 'the Appointment has taken place.
Notifications: Customize Notifications and Reminders for Appointment bookings.
Target Reminders: Create reminders for the Contact to receive prior to their Appointment.
Styling Options: Choose the background color and upload an icon for this Appointment Type.
Set Inactive: While Inactive, an Appointment Type is hidden and not selectable by Contacts. Newly-created Appointment Types will default to Inactive Status, so that you may configure it before going live.
Duplicate: Duplicate this Appointment Type and all of its Availability Settings. This is a great option when you need to create the same Appointment Type for several Staff Members!
Delete: Remove the Appointment Type.
IMPORTANT: If you set an Appointment Type as Inactive or Delete it, it will remove all related bookings from My Calendar. This cannot be undone.
How do I manage my Styling Options?
Decide which Appointment Type you would like to style and select Styling Options from the list of available Options.
You can select a color or type in the hex code. There is also an option to upload an icon. For best results please ensure that your uploaded icon is square.
How do I customize Appointment Reminders for my Target?
Select Target Reminders from the option list.
Here you can add reminders to be sent to your Contact prior to their appointment.
How do I customize Appointment Notifications?
Select Notifications from the list of options next to your desired Appointment Type.
You can click the dropdown arrows to customize each Notification for booked, rescheduled and deleted appointments, along with email reminders and SMS reminders.
IMPORTANT: SMS reminders are only available when using the SMS integration.
How do I schedule automation and further communication?
You can schedule further communication and automation using your Appointment date as the 'Based on Date'. To create the automation, go to Automation>Schedules and select Dynamic Schedules to create your Automation schedule.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Automation Schedules
When you have created your Schedule, go to the Appointment Type select 'Connect Schedules' from the options list.
Click the dropdown arrow to send your pre-created Schedules to either your Staff Target (the appointment owner) or CRM Target (the Contact).
How do I set my Availability?
To set a Default Availability for your Appointment Types, navigate to Calendar > Appointment Types.
Any new Appointment Types will generate these settings by default, but you can override them individually.
To set an Individual Availability for an Appointment Type, navigate to Calendar > Appointment Types. Then select Baseline Availability from the Options menu button.
Daily Availability
Here you can select your Availability on a weekly basis.
Each day of the week is shown with a configurable Availability Window. Click and drag the buttons on either side of the schedule slider to adjust your available time window. Click Add Availability Window to add an additional slider. To block availability for the day, simply click the red "X".
Appointment Scheduling Settings
These settings control the duration, padding, intervals, and cut-offs related to your Appointment Type. When an Appointment is being scheduled, the Time Slots that are available to choose from will be based on the combination of these settings.
Duration of Appointments: This determines the base duration of each Appointment that is made on this Appointment Type. The maximum is 24 hours or 1440 minutes.
Padding between Appointments: This setting blocks an additional amount of time before and after Appointments, to ensure that bookings cannot be made back-to-back. If you would like to allow back-to-back bookings simply click the X to remove the padding.
Stating Time Intervals: This determines the "chunks" that Time Slots will be broken into. These are the Intervals that will be selectable by your Client.
Prep-Time: When a Client creates an Appointment, this setting determines the soonest available booking. This is to allow adequate preparation time.
Future Availability > Days: This setting determines how far into the future a Client is able to make an Appointment.
Click the Preview button to see what your Staff or Contact will see when they create an Appointment. These Time Slots are generated based on the appointer's settings.
Time Slots that already have Appointments will not show up in the list.
You can customize message text and other settings in Calendar Settings.
CLICK HERE to learn about Calendar Settings