To start, click Settings on the left menu, and then click Calendar settings on the top menu.
Here we see the calendar team we created in the first article, New Admissions. But there's a problem - it doesn't have any calendars attached.
Let's add a calendar to this team by clicking on the New Calendar button.
The window that opens has three tabs, and we'll go over each one.
The first tab is Team and Event setup.
In this tab, our first option is to set up the priority of appointment distribution among the team members. As you can see, the two team members we added show up here.
The first distribution option is to optimize for availability. What this does is let us set which team members have higher priority for scheduled appointments. And we set that priority using the two dropdowns. When you click the dropdown, you can select a priority level of low, medium, or high.
If we set Alfa's priority as high, this means that Alfa will always be checked for availability first before moving to another team member.
You can also add a meeting location like a zoom or google meet link here.
The second distribution option removes priorities and equally distributes all appointments. However, we're going to leave the optimize for availability option selected for now.
Below the appointment distribution section, we have a field for the new calendar's name. We'll call our calendar, Admissions. Add your calendar’s name.
In the next field, we can add a description for our calendar.
In the Calendar URL field, you can specify a slug URL to be used.
The Appointment title field has contact name as a default, but you can add a different appointment naming scheme here if desired.
At the bottom of the first tab, you can set a specific color for the calendar's events. This color setting also syncs with any integrated Google calendars.
We're done with the first tab, so let's click Save & Continue to move on to the next tab.
The second tab is Availability, where you’ll set up your scheduling parameters.
The first field is slot duration, which lets you set the amount of time you allot to each appointment. Your slots can range from 10 minutes to 8 hours. Let's set our slot duration to 15 minutes.
The next field is slot interval, which lets you adjust how frequently you want your appointment slots to appear. For example, if you set a slot interval of 30 minutes and a slot duration of 15 minutes, you'll have 15 minute slots occurring at 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, and so on.
You can also use the buffer duration field to avoid back-to-back appointment situations. Simply enter the number of minutes you would like to be appended to the end of each appointment here.
For team calendars, this next field is more accurately described as appointments per team member per slot. A setting of 1 means each team member can have 1 appointment per slot.
With the Appointments per day field, you can restrict the total number of appointments allowed each day.
We've selected 5, which means that no more than 5 appointments can be booked each day.
Below the appointment slot settings is an area for Scheduling Notice. By requiring advance notice, you can avoid last-minute appointments with no time to prepare.
We'll add a minimum notice of 1 hour. From a booker's perspective, if it's 3pm now, the earliest available appointment slot will be at 4pm.
The next field is date range and it lets you set how far in advance someone can book an appointment. So if you select 7 here, what you've got is a 7 day window when appointments can be scheduled. That means that your users would only be able to schedule appointments within the next 7 days.
The next section is office hours. This is where you can set your actual hours of availability.
In the first area, choose which days you'd like to be available and select them.
For each day, you can set a range of available hours. The first field is your start time, and the second is the end time
You can also add breaks like a lunch hour by clicking the "+ hours" button. This gives you a second range of working hours. As you can see, we've given ourselves a 1 hour break from 1pm to 2pm on Monday. No appointments can be booked during this hour.
You can set each day's hours individually, or simply apply a single day across the week by clicking Apply All. Here we've copied our Monday schedule to all other days.
Once your Office Hours are complete, click Save & Continue to move on to the final tab.
The last tab is Confirmation, which is the last step you'll do to create your team's new calendar.
The first section of the Confirmation tab is Form Settings. Generally, when you go through a booking widget, it asks you for typical information like name, email, and phone number. However, you can also use custom forms on your platform to capture more data. Let's do that now.
Click on the custom form dropdown and select a previously-created custom form you'd like to use for your appointment bookings. We'll select our Contact form.
The next section is Notifications and additional Options. Let's go through these settings one-by-one:
The first option is auto-confirmation for each appointment. If you check this box, any appointments made in this calendar will automatically become confirmed. If left unchecked, you'll need to manually confirm each appointment.
The next option automatically sends appointment alert emails. If checked, the assigned team member will receive an email with the day and time for each new booking. You can also leave this option unchecked and build more detailed notifications using triggers.
If this next option is checked, Google Calendar will send invitations or update emails to appointment attendees. As before, you can also leave this unchecked and use triggers for a more customized solution.
The next 2 options are Allow Rescheduling and Allow Cancellation. As you might have guessed, these options allow your appointment bookers to reschedule or cancel their appointment.
In the Additional notes field, the custom links related to rescheduling and cancellation are entered. You can also add custom messages in this field.
The next area is a field to add your Facebook pixel ID. This lets you create conversions in Facebook Business each time a new appointment is booked.
Under your pixel ID, you can add custom HTML or Javascript code to be loaded with your calendar.
Finally, at the bottom of the tab, form submission gives you the option to control what happens when a new appointment is booked. You can either redirect them to a URL or display a custom Thank You message.
All settings for your new calendar have been configured, so click Complete to create the calendar.
As you can see, the new calendar now appears under our Admissions column on the Calendars view. Click the URL and let's see what happens.
The link takes you to a page where all the calendars for the team are listed. We've only created the Admissions calendar, so let's click it now.
This opens our new Admissions calendar and completes the entire process.
In the next Creating Calendars article, we'll explore additional features included in your platform's calendars.