Scheduling with booking calendars

Availability

You should have set up your availability during onboarding, but if you need to tweak your settings, you can learn how to do that in this article. Here, you can adjust your availability by selecting your work days, available hours or timeslots, and override your recurring available hours for once-off engagements. 

Figure 1: Profile settings

Read on below in the section Customizing your availability and meeting location to learn how to change these settings for a specific booking calendar. 

Meeting subject

The same meeting subject will be visible to you and your customer, so name your calendar something appropriate and relevant to the meeting. This is the only name that you and your customers will see, so be sure to clearly communicate the nature of the meetings scheduled by this calendar. (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Naming your meeting subject

Individual scheduling

To set an individual meeting host, select one user from the Meeting host dropdown menu. This means that the user selected will be the sole owner of the meeting. (Figure 3)

Figure 3: A meeting hosted by an individual user

Scheduling with multiple users

There are two types of team-scheduled meetings: Multiple host and distributed, which are detailed below.

Multiple host meeting

This setup allows your customers are able to book a time to meet with multiple team members simultaneously. (Figure 4)

To create a meeting hosted by a team of users, also termed a panel meeting, you must select multiple hosts. Click on the Meeting host dropdown menu, and select the meeting owner. Then, to add more hosts, click on Add team members under the heading Additional team members. From the dropdown menu, select the team members you would like to have in the meeting, and press Done to add them. 

Figure 4: A meeting with multiple hosts

Distributed meeting

This setup uses dynamic distribution to select a meeting host from a team of members.

In order to setup a distributed meeting, you will first need to make a team. 

If you have already grouped users into a team, you can skip this part.

To make a team:

Figure 5: The Teams option under account settings

1. Click the gear icon on the top right of the OnceHub screen 
2. Select Teams (Figure 5)
3. On the Teams page, select Add team to create a new team
4. Name your team
5. Select the users you would like on the team from the dropdown menu 
6. Click Add and then Save to finalize the creation of your new team

Now that you have made a team, you can create a distributed meeting.

Back on the booking calendar creation page, select the Meeting host dropdown menu. At the bottom of the list, select the option A member of [your team name]. This will create bookings among any available members of that team, and offers a choice between two distribution methods. (Figure 6) 

• Using any available team member displays every user in the team's availability to the customer, and allows them to choose a time most convenient for themselves, maximizing the availability offered.
• Using Round robin (equal distribution) distributes bookings among your team with a priority that all members of the team will have equal opportunities for meetings. This prioritizes a fair distribution among your team, but can result in less availability being shown to visitors.

When using any available team member for distribution, you can select Manage priority and booking limit which will bring up a menu that allows you to select the priority of each team member. Increasing someone's priority level will mean that they will be selected over other potential hosts who have the same availability but lower priority. 

Figure 6: A meeting hosted by a team, showing options for distribution

Managing booking limits

You can set rules which manage the workload of a team or individual users by setting a limit to the amount of bookings that can be made with a user or a team.

To create or edit booking limits, you have to be in the booking calendar builder, on the Booking settings tab. 

For meetings with an individual host

Follow these steps to manage booking limits in a booking calendar with an individual host:

1. Below an individual meeting host's name, click Edit next to the heading Booking limit below the host's name
2. Add a number to indicate the maximum amount of bookings they will be able to take, and then select whether that applies per day, week, or month
3. Click Apply to finalize the settings

For meetings hosted by a team 

Follow these steps to manage booking limits in a booking calendar hosted by a team:

1. Click Manage priority and workload rules, or just Workload rules if the meeting is distributed using round robin
2. On the pop-up, select the checkbox for the host whose availability you would like to edit.
   1. If you'd like to apply these limits to all members, select the checkboxes for each relevant member.
3. Add a number to indicate the maximum amount of bookings they will be able to take, and then select whether that applies per day, week, or month
4. Click Apply to finalize the settings

Reassigning the meeting host and rescheduling on behalf

Reassign the meeting host

Admin users can reassign the host of an upcoming meeting. If the host of an upcoming meeting is unavailable, a new host can be selected to take the meeting. 

To reassign a meeting host, follow these steps: 

1. On the activity stream, find the meeting in question
2. Beneath the title, click Reassign
3. A pop-up will open where you can select the new host of the meeting. Pick from the list, or click in the filter bar and type the name of the desired user. 
   1. If the new host has multiple video conferencing option connected, including the original location, then you will be able to keep the same meeting location, or choose a new location from a list.
      OR
   2. If the new host's location settings differ from the original host (for example, if the original location is physical, but the new host is only available to meet on Zoom) you will be able to choose to offer a Zoom call to the customer. or have no location details displayed at all.  
4. Once you have completed the Review and confirm page, click Reassign to finalize your changes. 
5. The meeting is now reassigned. Your customer will be informed of the changes.

Reschedule a booking on behalf of someone else

If you or your customer is unable to make the original booking time, you can reschedule the booking yourself on your customer's behalf. This can be done even if the original meeting time has already passed.

To reschedule a meeting, follow these steps:

1. Find the booking in question in the activity stream.
2. Click Reschedule
3. A pop-up will appear, allowing you to choose between rescheduling the meeting yourself, or asking your customer to reschedule. Both of these options cancel the original meeting.
4. On selecting either option, you will be prompted to provide a reason for the rescheduling which will be shared with your customer. 
   1. Selecting Reschedule on behalf of the customer will direct you to the relevant calendar, and display availability for rescheduling the meeting. 
   2. Selecting Ask the customer will provide them with the relevant calendar, and allow them to choose a new time for the meeting.
5. Once you have selected a new time, click Reschedule. The confirmation will be shared with your customer. 

Customizing your availability and meeting location

Customizing availability and meeting location for a single host 

When creating a booking calendar, you are able to customize the hours of availability and location options displayed to your customer. If the booking page has a single host, you can choose between the following two options:

• Retrieve availability and conferencing information from user profile settings

• Customize availability and location for this booking calendar only

"Retrieving availability from user profile settings" will mean that the booking calendar will show your customer the available hours and the video conferencing options available per the user's profile.

When you select Customize availability… you will be able to edit your recurring availability, or add a date-specific override for once-off availability and location changes. You can extend your hours of availability, or reduce them; you can also use it to add a physical location. This is useful, for example, if you are sharing the booking calendar with a high-value client who you're happy to extend your hours for.

To customize your availability and meeting location, follow these steps:

1. In the booking calendar set-up, under the Availability and location heading, select Customize availability and location for this booking calendar only.

2. Click between Recurring availability and Date-specific overrides to view the existing availability configuration.

3. Click Edit availability to make changes to this configuration.

1. Under the heading Working hours, you can change the times you are available for

2. Under the heading Meeting location, you can change the location you wish to display to a customer

4. Click Apply to save these changes
   
   

Customizing availability and meeting location for a team-hosted calendar

If the booking page is hosted by a team, you are given the following customization options:

• Retrieve availability and conferencing information from user profile settings

• Customize this booking calendar’s availability and location for all users

• Customize this booking calendar’s availability and location for some users

"Retrieving availability from user profile settings" will mean that the booking calendar will show your customer the available hours and video conferencing options available per the user's profile. 

You are also given the option to edit the availability for an entire team, or just for members of the team. Adjusting availability and location for all users would be useful if, for example, you had a team that catered to in-person meetings by default, rather than video conferencing. Using that option, you could add a physical location for the entire team. 

Adjusting ability for some users would be useful if, for example, two members of your team were on leave for the week. You want to block their availability for the duration, so that no meetings are mistakenly made with them, but keep the booking calendar active for the rest of the team. 

Once you have selected whether you would like to add custom settings for all users or for some users, follow these steps to edit availability:

If you select some users, you will need to select the user whose availability and location settings you would like to customize before continuing. 

1. Click between Recurring availability and Date-specific overrides to view the existing availability

2. Click Edit availability to make changes in the pop-up menu

1. Under the heading Working hours, you can change the times you are available for

2. Under the heading Meeting location, you can change the location you wish to display to a customer

3. Click Apply to save these changes

Time slot settings

There are four options for customizing the time slots of meetings.

• Duration: Choose the meeting's length from  15-60 minutes, or enter your own custom meeting duration.
  
  
• Lead time: Set a custom time frame within which customers are unable to schedule meetings with you. This is useful if, for example, you are offering a meeting which requires some time beforehand to prepare for. Select the number and unit of time measurement from the dropdown menu to configure lead time.
  
  
• Time frame limit: Set how far into the future your availability is shown to customers. This is useful if you don't want customers to book meetings so far in advance that the meeting is forgotten about. Select the number and unit of time measurement to configure the time frame limit.
  
  
• Buffer time: Set a buffer before the start and end of meetings. This setting is useful if you need time in between two meetings. Select the number and unit of time measurement to configure the buffer time. 

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