The Booking settings tab

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 this article to learn in detail how to change your availability and location settings for a specific booking calenda or at the profile level. 

Meeting subject and duration

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

Duration 

Choose the meeting's length from 15-60 minutes, or enter your own custom meeting duration. For additional time slot settings, click Time slot settings at the bottom of the screen.

Individual scheduling

To set an individual meeting host, select one user from the Host and co-hosts dropdown menu. This means that the user selected will be the sole owner of the meeting.

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 users simultaneously.

To create a meeting hosted by multiple users, also termed a panel meeting, you must select multiple hosts. Click on the Host and co-hosts dropdown menu, and select the team members you would like to have in the meeting, and click Add to add them. Note that only users with active licenses will have their availability displayed.

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:

1. Click on the Host and co-hosts dropdown menu, then click on Create new team.
2. Give the team a name and select the Users you would like to be on the team.
3. Click on Save to finalize the creation of your new team.

Now that you have made a team, you can create a distributed meeting by selecting the team in the Host and co-hosts dropdown menu. At the top of the list, under the heading Member from a team(s), select the option A member of [your team name], then click Add. This will create bookings among any available members of that team, and offers a choice between two distribution methods. Click Change to choose between the distribution options which are described below.  

• 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 next to Priority and workload 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. 

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 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 next to Priority and workload, or just Workload 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

Time slot settings

There are five 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.
  
  
• Time slot spacing: Sets the interval between available times. For example, 15-minute time slot increments may offer available times at 12:00, 12:15, 12:30, 12:45, etc. Choose between the default time slots, or add a custom time by clicking Custom at the bottom of the drop down menu, and adding your own value (Note: you can only space time slots in multiples of 5)
  
  
• 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.