Calendar workflows are generally designed to automatically send communications to clients following a change in their appointment status, ensuring timely and consistent updates. The first step to creating a calendar workflow is ensuring you have a calendar to associate with your workflow.From your account dashboard, click "Calendars", then "Calendar Settings" and either create the calendar you need or verify the name given to the desired calendar.
Once that is done, return to the main menu and choose "Automation".
When you get to the Automations page, click the "Create Workflow" button located in the upper right corner. From there, you can either select a recipe or choose the start-from-scratch option.
There are five recipes that can be adjusted to suit your appointment needs; however, we will walk you through the process of creating the workflow from scratch in this guide.
The first step in creating any workflow is to rename it. Click on the existing name, delete it, and then enter a clear and concise name that accurately reflects the workflow's purpose, making it easy to identify from the list. Once you've entered the desired name, click anywhere within the builder to exit the name editor.
Next, choose the trigger. Available Appointment triggers include: Appointment Status- which activates the workflow when there are changes in the status of the appointment, and Customer Booked Appointment- which activates the workflow when the appointment was booked using the calendar link.
In this case, I am going to choose the "Appointment Status" trigger with the filters "In Calendar" and "Appointment Status Is" to only activate the workflow for confirmed bookings on the selected calendar. You can tailor this according to your preferences.
Note: The Event Type filter is added by default to configure whether the automation should be activated for single or recurring bookings or both.
Browse the other available filters, to further refine the criteria, then save the trigger!
Once you have the workflow created, named, and the Trigger set, it is time to add some functionality to it. Optionally, you can assign the contacts who enter the workflow to a user. This is particularly beneficial when a single user is responsible for managing the calendar or scheduling appointments. By making this assignment, the "from" fields in email forms will be automatically populated, eliminating the need for manual entry. If multiple users are selected, choose how you wish to split the traffic.
Next, Add a system tag if needed to group contacts who book in a particular calendar together.
You can then send an Internal Notification to the Assigned User to inform them of the confirmed appointment on their calendar.
Now, we are going to send a text message to the contact letting them know the appointment is confirmed. To do this, simply choose the "Send SMS" action, type out your message, or choose a snippet, and then save it.
Add a one-minute wait step immediately after the SMS step. This allows the system to pause and makes the interaction seem more natural.
Now you can add the "Send Email" action. Fill out the subject and the body of the email appropriately. Like the “Send SMS” action, you can choose an available template or craft the message from scratch.
To send appointment reminders to the contact to prevent no-shows, you can add additional wait steps and email reminders. Here is how you would configure the wait step:
Add the “Wait” action.
Update the “Wait For” field to the “Event/Appointment Time” option.
Choose whether the wait step should wait until before, after, or at the appointment time, and set the period for which it should wait.
Select the desired action for scenarios where the timing of the wait step falls in the past. For instance, if a contact schedules an appointment for tomorrow but the wait step is set to trigger two days before the appointment (which would have been yesterday), you can specify how the workflow should proceed. The recommended approach is to skip all outbound communications in such cases to prevent sending irrelevant messages to contacts. This ensures that contacts are not overwhelmed with notifications that do not apply to their current situation.
Add the relevant communications, and repeat this process as necessary to send reminders before, at, or after the appointment time.
Remember to publish and save your workflow to activate it!
You now have a simple appointment workflow which you can build to any level of complexity you require. Happy automating!
