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Our new Appointment Scheduler takes the hassle out of booking meetings with your customers and prospects. It fits seamlessly into everyone’s day-to-day use of Pipeliner — linking with emails, and also with Automatizer — to streamline the scheduling process and ensure that vital customer interactions are managed consistently and easily.

Appointment Scheduler is a paid-for add-on for our customers on all Pipeliner tiers except Unlimited.

The Appointment Scheduler allows users to schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails by sharing availability with one, or more, contacts/attendees via a link to an external Booking Page. Attendees can select from the displayed available times based on their preference(s).

You can create scheduler pages for all of the different types of appointments that you generally set up:

There are 2 elements to this feature:

NOTE: Appointment Scheduler must first be running in the Automation Hub. If you don’t see it under the Tools menu, ask your Pipeliner Administrator to enable it from the Admin Module › Automation Hub.

Select "Appointment Scheduler" from the "Tools" menu. Click on the “Create New” button and then choose whether you want to set up a Scheduler page for a "One-on-One" meeting or a "Group" meeting ⤵

A One-on-One meeting is between you and your Contact whereas a Group meeting allows you to set up the page to include other Pipeliner users as Attendees. Your choice will affect how the scheduler calculates your availability for the meeting on the Booking page that your Contact will see.

Availability is calculated based on both the availability settings configured in the Appointment Scheduler › Availability tab and also by taking into account all Appointments that are already scheduled for that individual user in Pipeliner for One-on-One meetings or all Pipeliner users added as Attendees if it’s a Group meeting.

If users also use an external calendar such as O365 or Google, it’s important to activate the relevant Calendar integration so that all meetings are synchronized to Pipeliner to avoid double booking.

NOTE: Recurring Appointments are currently supported only for O365 (as of Jan 2022)

Selecting "One-on-One" or "Group" will open up the "Scheduler Appointment" dialog for you to begin creating the options for the type of appointment that you’re creating a scheduler page for.

First give your "Scheduler" page a descriptive name (this will show in the list of pages once you’ve created a few different types) ⤵

Start by adding some basic information about the type of meeting that you’re creating ⤵

The Scheduler Appointment Name is the meeting name that will display for your Contacts when they’re viewing the "Booking" page.

Scheduler Page Link is a shareable URL link to the Appointment Scheduler Booking page.

Appointment Owner will be you!

If you chose to create a "Group Appointment Schedule", you’ll be able to select additional Pipeliner Users as Attendees for the meeting type.

You can either type in a "Location" (this will populate the Location field of the Appointment when it’s created in Pipeliner as well as display on the Booking page) or select from one of the integrated "Video Calling" options to add a link to a Microsoft Teams or a Zoom meeting.

Add your agenda, conversation starters or discussion points into the Description field.

NOTE: Remember that you can use Rich Text options!

Next, select the options that govern availability for this meeting to be scheduled by your "Contact(s)" ⤵

Duration is how long this type of meeting usually lasts.

You can then choose some dynamic options for How long in the future the appointment can be scheduled.

Select one of:

"Availability Settings" cover your personal preferences for when this type of appointment can be scheduled with you.

You need to confirm your "Timezone" and then choose the days of the week and time period within those days that should be available to book the appointment with you (depending on what other meetings you already have in your calendar).

"Advanced Availability Settings" allow you complete control over your calendar. Use "Buffer time before Appointment" and "Buffer time after Appointment" to make sure that meetings are not booked back-to-back leaving you no time to prepare or follow up. "Minimum notice time" prevents an imminent appointment from suddenly appearing in your calendar at very short notice. Finally, "Appointment time increment" determines the available start times of meetings — e.g. just on the hour (60 minutes) or every 30 minutes etc.

These options govern how the appointment will be saved into Pipeliner as well as what the Contact will see (and need to complete) when confirming the appointment booking ⤵

Save appointments to Pipeliner as will display all Appointment Types that are available in Pipeliner so you can select which option (if any) the appointments should save as.

Save appointments with subject lets you choose whether to populate the subject line of the appointments that will be saved in Pipeliner with the "Same as Scheduler Appointment Name" or something different which you can enter in "Custom Subject".

Under "Fields" for the invitee to fill in, you’ll see that we’ve added 3 new fields into Pipeliner — "Invitee First Name", "Invitee Last Name" and "Invitee Email" — and these are mandatory on every booking confirmation page. You can choose how you label them on the form however.

In addition to these mandatory fields, you can select from any additional fields that have been added to the Appointment form in Pipeliner by your Admins. You can also set these additional fields as “Required” which means that the Contact will have to fill them in on the "Booking Confirmation" page.

All fields — including any custom fields — that you add to the booking confirmation form can be used in Automatizer processes as personalisation options.

NOTE: You can only select and add custom Appointment fields that are Single Line Input, Long Text, Phone, or Email fields.

Once a time has been selected by the Contact and they’ve confirmed the appointment, you can choose to "Display confirmation page" or "Redirect to an external site". If you choose this second option, you’ll need to enter the URL of the site that you want them to be directed to ⤵

You can choose to enable an automatic appointment reminder and how many minutes in advance of the meeting the reminder should be sent ⤵

Also on this page, if you have Automatizer, you can click straight through to some sample processes that you might choose to integrate into your appointment management.

Finally, click on “Create” to save your settings.

You’ll be able to see a list of all the "Appointment Schedules" that you have created ⤵

You can monitor:

You can drill down into each of these statistics to see the actual appointments saved in Pipeliner ⤵

You can also copy the page link directly from the list so you can share it with a contact. The drop arrow on the right lets you Preview page so you can see what the scheduling page looks like for your Contacts. You can also edit, copy, or delete the entire appointment schedule ⤵

NOTE: You can also Preview Scheduler Page, once you’ve created it, when editing the Appointment Schedule details

In the "Email editor" there is a new option to use “Appointment Scheduler Links” to embed the selected meeting booking link in your email directly ⤵

You can copy and paste the shareable "Scheduler Page Link" directly into an email or chat application.

When a contact accesses the "Appointment Scheduler" booking page, they will see the appointment creator’s availability (for one-on-one meetings) or availability across all Pipeliner users added as Attendees for group meetings ⤵

When your contact selects a date on the form, they’ll then see all of the available times (the start times they see will depend on the option you chose in Appointment Time Increment in the Availability tab) ⤵

Selecting a time prompts them to “Confirm Time” ⤵

When they click to confirm, they’ll be directed to the confirmation form and will need to fill in the 3 mandatory Invitee fields — along with any other custom fields that have been added ⤵

Once they select “Schedule Meeting”, they’ll see a confirmation page (if you selected that option under the Confirmation Page tab) or will be redirected to the external site URL you entered instead ⤵

A meeting invitation will be sent automatically to the "Contact" as well as an "Appointment Confirmation" email that allows them to "Reschedule" or "Cancel" directly ⤵

NOTE: you'll also receive a confirmation email so that you will immediately know that a contact has used your link to schedule a meeting with you.

When the meeting is confirmed by the Contact it is automatically created for the user or all attendees (in case of group meeting) in Pipeliner ⤵