Getting started with booking calendars

Set your availability 

To access booking calendars, click on the Booking calendars icon on the left-hand side toolbar on the OnceHub homepage.

Figure 1: The booking calendar icon

You may have already configured your availability during onboarding. If you're satisfied with the rules you set for your availability, you can skip this.

Every user can set their own availability, which OnceHub applies to all the booking calendars they own. You can adjust your availability settings by selecting your work days, available hours or timeslots, and override your recurring available hours for once-off engagements. 

You can update your user availability in your profile by doing the following:

1. Selecting your profile picture or initials in the top right-hand corner. This will take you to the overview page. 
2. On the left-hand side, hover over the Availability icon (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Availability settings

        3. Depending on the settings you wish to update, select Scheduled meetings.

        4. Here you can set your availability. Remember to click Save when you're finished!

Connect your calendar 

You can skip this if you've already connected your calendar during onboarding.

With a connected calendar, OnceHub knows not to offer the times when you're busy to people booking with you. It also adds all booked appointments to your connected calendar automatically. 

If you didn't already connect your calendar in the onboarding wizard, or want to amend your calendar settings, you can do this at any time in your profile settings. In the top right-hand corner, select your profile picture or initials → Calendar connection, (figure 3) and follow the prompts to connect. You can connect your existing Google, Office 365, iCloud, and Exchange/Outlook calendar to OnceHub. 

Figure 3: Calendar connection settings

By default, OnceHub reads busy time from your main calendar. If your connected account has multiple calendars—for instance, one for work and another for personal events—you can opt to have OnceHub read busy time from them as well.

Connect your video conferencing

If you connected your video conferencing app during onboarding, you can skip this part. 

Booking calendars seamlessly integrates your booking activities with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, or Webex Meetings through all phases of the booking lifecycle. When a booking is made, video conferencing session details are integrated with all booking calendars notifications and a video conferencing session will be created automatically. 

Your customer will be given a choice to meet via any of the video conferencing apps you have connected to. For example, if you have linked your OnceHub account with Zoom and Google Meet, your customers will be able to choose between those two apps. Your customer will receive all connection details in the scheduling confirmation email and calendar invite.

If you're taking video meetings, you'll need to update your booking calendar to reflect this. 

If you didn't already connect your video conferencing app in the onboarding wizard, or want to amend your virtual conferencing settings, you can do this at any time in your profile settings. In the top right-hand corner, select your profile picture or initials → Video conferencing, and follow the directions to connect your video conferencing app. 

Create a new booking calendar

If you have no booking calendars yet, follow the directions below to create one.

1. First, click the Booking calendar icon on the left-hand side of any OnceHub page.
2. Click the Create booking calendar button in the middle of the booking calendars home page (Figure 4) 
3. Enter the name you'd like to give the calendar, and click Create.
4. Fill in your booking settings, which are explained below.

Figure 4: the Create booking calendar button

Settings

Meeting subject: This is the external name of your booking calendar, which your customer will see.

Meeting host: This is the host of the booking calendar. The host is the user who will receive bookings. There can be more than one host, as in a panel meeting, or you can choose for the meetings to be distributed among a team of the users in your account. 

Duration: Choose the meeting's length from  15-60 minutes, or choose your own custom meeting duration.

Lead time: Sets a custom time frame within which customers are unable schedule meetings with you. This is useful if, for example, you are offering a meeting which requires some time beforehand to prepare for. 

Time frame limit: Sets how far into the future your availability is shown to customers. 

Buffer time: Sets a buffer before the start and end of meetings. This is useful if you need time in between two meetings to prepare.

5. Once you're done, click Save to create your new booking calendar.