Appointments: the calendar and appointment types

Appointments keeps your customers' bookings in one calendar. You start by adding an appointment type, such as "Consultation", which sets the length, the working hours and who it is with. Your team then books from the calendar or from the conversation, and the customer gets a confirmation and a reminder before the appointment.

Before you start

• Appointments are part of the Growth and Business plans, and of the CRM and sales individual feature. If your plan does not include them, you see a page about the feature instead of the calendar.
• Only administrators add appointment types. Every agent can open the calendar.

Add an appointment type

1. In the sidebar, open Appointments, then Appointment settings.
2. Select New type (1).
3. Enter the Name and the Duration (min), and pick the Colour it shows in on the calendar.
4. Under Working hours (2), give each day one or more windows with Add a window, or mark it Closed. The hours are in your account's time zone.
5. Under Agents, choose who offers this appointment. Leave it empty when the appointment has no specific agent.
6. If you need to, set Buffer between (min), Bookings per slot, Earliest booking after (hours) and Furthest booking (days).
7. Select Create (3).

What the customer receives

In the same form you write two messages, inserting the name, date, time and type with the buttons next to Insert:.

• Confirmation message: sent the moment the appointment is booked. Left empty, a ready-made text with the date and time is sent.
• Reminder message, with Remind before (hours): sent that long before the appointment. The customer can reply "confirm" to confirm it, or "cancel" to cancel it.
• WhatsApp template for the reminder: once 24 hours have passed since the customer's last message, WhatsApp only delivers an approved template. Choose the template and what fills each of its variables.

Note: the confirmation and reminder go out in the conversation the appointment was booked from. An appointment booked from the calendar without a conversation sends no messages.

Book an appointment

1. Open Appointments, then Calendar. Choose Day, Week or Month (1), and move with Previous, Next and Today.
2. Select New appointment (2), or click a day in the calendar.

3. In Book an appointment, choose the Contact and the Appointment type, then the Agent, or leave Any available agent.
4. Choose the Day; only the free times appear under Time. Pick one and select Book.

To book from a conversation, open the contact panel next to it and, in the Appointments section, select New appointment. The contact is already filled in, and the appointment is linked to the conversation, so the confirmation and reminder reach the customer.

Follow and change appointments

• Filter the calendar with All types and All agents, and watch the counters: total, upcoming, completed and cancelled or missed.
• Click an appointment to open it. Change the Status (Scheduled, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled, No-show), add Notes or a Cancellation reason, then Save. Delete removes the appointment for good.

Note: a type cannot be deleted while it has appointments. To stop bookings on it, turn off Active in its form.

To let customers book by themselves in the chat, add a booking step to a flow: Booking from flows.