Calendar Setup 101
Managing time and appointments efficiently can greatly influence your success, be it personal or professional. With IUL Insiders ‘s advanced calendar features, you are empowered with versatile tools to set up, customize, and handle your schedules. This guide covers every facet of calendar management, ensuring you won’t miss a beat.
Calendar Varieties in IUL Insiders :
- Simple (Unassigned/Event Calendar): Ideal for general events that don’t require specific assignees.
- Round Robin (Group Calendar): Distributes appointments evenly among team members, ensuring a balanced workload and availability.
- Class Booking: Tailored for single-session classes, workshops, or seminars.
- Collective Booking: Events where the presence of multiple team members is mandatory.
- Service Calendar: Tailored for creating services, grouping them by categories, and displaying them in a single scheduling link – the service menu
The Blueprint of Setting Up Your Calendar:
Getting Started:
- Navigate to Calendars in the Settings menu.
- Click on Create Calendar.
- Specify your desired calendar type.
Designing Your Calendar:
- Logo: Enhance brand visibility by uploading an appropriate logo.
- Name: Provide a suitable name.
- Description: Give a concise overview.
- URL: Customize your calendar link for easy sharing.
- Appointment Title: Set a meaningful title. Utilize {{contact.name}} for personalized touches.
- Event Color: Designate a color for quick identification.
Configuring Availability:
- Date Specific Hours: Adjust your schedule for specific dates. Override your regular weekly hours
- Duration & Interval: Set the time frame for meetings and the frequency of their occurrence.
- Buffer Time: Allow a cool-down period between appointments.
- Pre Buffer: Additional Time added before an appointment.
- Post Buffer: Additional Time added after an appointment.
- Max Bookings: Define daily appointment limits.
- Scheduling Protocols: Dictate prior notice and lead time requirements.
- Office Hours: Define your general availability or specify it for unique dates.
- Recurring Appointments: Choose the rhythm of repeated sessions.
Availability Type Selection
- Standard Availability: Ideal for routine appointments with fixed hours.
- Date Specific Hours: Perfect for unique timeframes, such as webinars or one-off events.
Delving into Availability Settings
- Meeting Duration: Designate the length of your appointments (e.g., 30 minutes, 1 hour).
- Meeting Interval: Specify how often appointments can be scheduled.
- Pre-Buffer Time: Input a downtime period between bookings. For instance, with a 15-minute buffer after a 30-minute appointment booked from 10:00 am to 10:30 am, the subsequent appointment can be scheduled at 10:45 am.
- Post-Buffer Time:
- Max Bookings Per Slot: Define the upper limit of appointments for each time slot. In cases where the set threshold is exceeded, the system either moves on to the next user in the round-robin or marks the slot as unavailable.
- Max Bookings Per Day: Set a ceiling for the total number of appointments on this calendar daily.
Scheduling Notice & Date Range Configuration
- Minimum Scheduling Notice: Choose the lead time required before an appointment.
- Date Range: Define how far ahead appointments can be scheduled.
Handling Recurring Appointments
Toggle to enable or disable regular meetings. Define the frequency, count, and measures to undertake when slots are unavailable.
Office Hours Configuration
For Standard Availability:
- Select Days: Blue signifies selected days with checkmarks, while Gray indicates unselected ones.
- Adding Extra Hours: Click on “+ Hours” to append more hours on specific days.
- Applying Hours: Use “Apply All” to replicate the hours across all selected days.
- Recurring appointments can also be fine-tuned in this section.
For Date Specific Hours:
Determine distinct dates and times apt for special events or one-time sessions.
Click “Save & Continue” once you’ve tailored your settings.
Important Tip:
When your personal timezone differs from the company’s, particularly for event calendars, ensure your availability mirrors your timezone rather than the company’s. For instance, if you’re active from 8am-5pm PST and the company operates in EST, adjust your availability to 11pm-8pm EST for accurate reflections.
Forms, Payments, and Guest Inclusions:
- Use a default or curated form for the booking widget.
- Pre-Populate Fields: Enable the system to recall previous attendees with the Pre-populate fields(sticky contacts) toggle to remember your contact information.
- Consent Checkbox: Toggle this option to allow obtaining consent from contacts when they provide their phone number during the appointment booking process.
- Add Guests: Allow main participants to bring in additional guests, streamlining group schedules.
- Name and mailing address: Include the data of the guest to be able to attend.
Note: In many cases, attendees are required to fill in the information before the appointment so that service providers can use that information for the appointment. An example can be a Medical Appointment: This could be allergies, any genetic ailments, past medical issues, etc.
- Count Option for Adding Guests: This is particularly useful in cases where the primary attendee may not have the email addresses of the guests, but still wants them added to the appointment.
- Pixel ID Tracking: Seamlessly incorporate scheduling into your analytic journey.
- Auto-confirm New Meetings: Activate this feature to instantly confirm new appointments on available calendar slots, ensuring users receive immediate booking confirmations.
- Billing Integration: If charging, integrate with reliable payment gateways like Stripe and turn on the accept payments feature, fill out the price and description.
- Accept Partial Payment: Enable partial payments by toggling the “Accept Partial Payment” option if you want to charge the clients partially. Specify the deposit amount or percentage required during the appointment booking process.
- Stripe Payment Gateway: Seamlessly bill for appointments by integrating with Stripe. Key configurations include setting the amount, deciding the currency, selecting between Test/Live environments, and customizing charge descriptions.
Custom Notifications & Management
Notification Types:
- Determine your desired acknowledgment, be it a simple appointment confirmation or an update.
- Decide who gets notified: the contact, an assigned user (especially for round-robin calendars), or specific emails.
Google Calendar Integration
- Permit Google Calendar to send appointment invitations or update emails to attendees.
- Assign contacts to their respective calendar team members upon appointment booking.
Booking Features:
- Facilitate flexibility with options for clients to both reschedule or cancel.
- Include additional notes that provide links to reschedule, cancel, and any other relevant information such as client’s phone number and email address.
Connection to Other Calendars
- Link your IUL Insiders calendar to an existing one or navigate to set this up as per your needs.
- Please Note: The menu shown in this screenshot is only for simple calendars
Widget Customization & Appearance
- Style Selection: Opt between the contemporary Neo or the classic design for your widget.
- Primary Color: Select the color for buttons, dates, time slots, and actions
- Background color: Set the background color for the date and time slots and the form.
- Button Text: Add the text that you want to display on the scheduling button.
- Calendar Title: Toggle on the calendar title to display the nameof the calendar
- Calendar Description: Toggle on the calendar description to display the description of the calendar.
- Calendar Details: Includes information such as duration, date & time, recurring details and timezone
Customization
You can insert the custom css code to customize the calendar in your desired way.
Staff Selection:
Allow staff selection during bookings, letting contacts choose which user or staff member they’d like to schedule with.
Management & Oversight
Viewing & Editing Your Calendar:
- Access all saved calendars in your account settings.
- Utilize the ‘…’ option to: duplicate, retrieve the embed code, share scheduling or permanent links, edit calendar settings, activate/deactivate, or even delete from your account. You can also move calendars to specific groups if needed.
Appointment Management:
- Head over to Calendars > Appointments to sift through appointments based on the Calendar, Status, and Date.
- Make the most of manual appointment booking when required.
Spotlight on the “Add Guest” Functionality
One of IUL Insiders ‘s distinguishing features, the “Add Guest” function, ensures users can effortlessly invite additional participants.
Activation:
- When setting up or modifying your calendar, navigate to the ‘Forms & Payment’ section.
- Spot and activate the ‘Add Guests’ feature.
Configurations:
- Define the maximum number of guests a user can bring in.
- Ensure guests, similar to primary participants, receive adequate notifications about the event.
Conclusion:
With the right tools and insights, calendar management can be more than just a routine task; it can be transformative. Let IUL Insiders ‘s features guide you through effortless scheduling, ensuring you remain at the forefront of every appointment, class, or meeting. Upgrade your calendar management experience with these comprehensive steps, and watch productivity soar!