How do I make appointment slots that can only be booked by one customer company
We are using Calendly to let customers browse the open appointment slots and choose their preferred time for their appointments. I expected to give them a link to my booking calendar, then they would choose an appointment that they preferred, and no other customer would choose that one. What I have right now is- all of the different customers can choose the same appointment, and none of them are even aware that they are adding themselves to an appointment with someone from another company. How do I make the appointment unavailable to other company’s users, while allowing them to add several of their company users to the same appointment?
Just to give an example to make sure it’s clear. I pick 10 time slots in a week when I’d like to have appointments. I set up Calendly with those slots available for appointments. If customer Joe from Acme chooses to set up his appointment as the first one of my week, Jeff, who doesn’t work for Acme, wouldn’t be able to book that same appointment, but Sally, who works for Acme would. Right now, I have three different customers from three different companies who are all on the calendar entry for tomorrow morning’s meeting. I need to fix this, so please help.
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Hey @Randy33213!
Thanks for reaching out on this, I think we have a solution that should work for you in this case!
At this time, there isn’t quite a way to limit specific slots to specific companies - However, one way you can workaround this is by using our Routing Forms feature. Routing forms will allow you to create a questionnaire that can be sent to your customers, then, once they fill it out, they can be routed to a specific event based on their region, company, ect (Completely customizable by you!).
So by using routing forms, you’d create an event for each company you would be working with, then those users would get routed to the booking page that lines up with their information. (Acme customers would get sent to the Acme Company Booking Page)
We have a help center article that goes into more detail on this as well, you can find this here: How to create a Routing Form
I know that I can make the invitation a one-time use, but I actually need it to make it only possible for one customer/company to schedule a given appointment time - without pre-selecting the specific times. I want slots each day that each customer can be pointed to, so they can pick any slot that they want. Once they select a specific slot, nobody else can choose that slot. These aren’t public events, but I want my customers to have full flexibility to choose any slot that’s open, but not the ability they currently seem to have - to choose to add themselves on someone else’s appointment, without even knowing that someone from another organization is already scheduled in that time slot.
I actually thought this was the default way that Calendly worked when I set it up in a previous job. did I change some setting that enabled this? How do I make this work in a reasonable way for my application? I want it to manage appointment slots for individuals, assigning their slot to them and preventing others from scheduling the same time slot once it is taken. Ideally, I’d be fine with others at the same company being able to add themselves or others at their organization, but not other random people who have also been invited to schedule their own appointment.
Can we make this work?
Hey @Randy33213!
In this case, you’ll want to ensure you’re using the one-on-one event type. I took a look at the event you’re offering, which appears to be created as a Group Event - This means the slot will remain open until the limit is reached. However, by creating a One-on-one event, only one person can book the slot before its blocked off for other users. (This article walks you through that process: How to set up an event type)
As an added, anyone that signs up for a one-on-one event has the option to add guests to the event as well, so they can invite other users in the organization as well.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Thanks, @David . I’ll have a look at the routing feature, but I’ll admit that it sounds more complicated than I was hoping for. I’m not sure that even the thing you describe really does give any help. I have 14 1-hour time slots that a customer who is working with me can choose each week. Some of those will be taken away by other meetings , but outside of that, there is no need to narrow it down. If I don’t already have a meeting Wednesday at 10AM, whoever wants that time can get it by getting there first. If I do already have a meeting at 10AM Wed with customer A, then customer B shouldn’t see that as available or be able to schedule it. Right now, anyone who shows up can schedule that same time slot- effectively adding someone else to Customer A’s meeting. Isn’t that the default?
The most important things to me are these:
I want to establish a standard schedule that any customer can choose any slot from.
I want to have a generic invite URL that I can send to any customer, so they can go look at every time slot that I have currently available, and once they choose one, no other customer can add themselves. Ideally, that would be everybody at a given company - but I’ll be OK with just inviting one customer, as long as their appointment isn’t still available for others once scheduled. ( I often have one contact at that company, but they often want to invite several other people who are part of the project. I don’t know who they will want to invite, so I can’t send individual invitations)
Truly, I can get by with only one contact being scheduled, and telling them to share the WebEx information with others. My big problem, which I do have to solve very soon, is that giving someone my calendar link lets them choose the same slot that someone else has already scheduled- and they don’t seem to see anything that tells them it’s already scheduled.
So, I’m ending up with what I just dealt with - I had a meeting scheduled to help 3 different customers simultaneously , during the same 1-hour time slot. This isn’t a presentation/webinar, it’s one-on-one help for that customer ( though it may include a group ). I’m hoping there’s a more direct way to manage this. Any further ideas?
Randy
In this case, my most recent post would be the best way to go about this!
It looks like whats causing this is that your event is set as a Group Event - instead I would go ahead and create a new one-on-one event, this way, only one customer is allowed to book per slot, but also have the option to add guests from their organization if needed, but at the same time, preventing users from other companies from booking that slot. I believe this would solve each issue you’re running into here!
Let me know if you have any other questions!
I can see you were recommended to switch events from group to individual one on one, but in your initial message you shall said you could have several people from the same company added to the same slot or event for their company. Is that right? Because in that case one on one wouldn't work. I think the easiest solution in this case would be to clone the event and share a different line to every company. This way the fitters people to book from a company would make it so that the slots can't be seen by people in a different company using a different link once it's taken, but people who book it would still see the event and could continue adding people to it because they would have the link for them exclusively. Does that make sense?
