How to Prepare your Calendar for an Automatic Scheduler
If you use an automatic scheduling system, you may occasionally be worried that your people will schedule time that you have set aside for other things or maybe you need to be able to open up time for your extra special clients.
How do you avoid this worry?
You can ease your mind by using your scheduling program in tandem with your primary calendar. This takes a bit of setup and most likely a change in the way you manage appointments in your calendar.
Would it surprise you if I said that according to my automatic scheduling program I am available Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm?
I can guarantee that you will never see that kind of range open if you clicked through one of my scheduling links.
But why not?
The answer is because I control my schedule through my primary calendar and not the other way around.
Let’s walk through how this works.
I use Calendly, but this strategy should work with other schedulers as well. As I mentioned above, I set my availability in Calendly to Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm. Then I make sure I have Calendly properly talk to my primary Google Calendar. This also works if you have Outlook 365, Outlook Online or iCal.
Next, I go to my primary calendar and block out time. I make sure I have time in the morning blocked for the morning routine. Time in the afternoon is also blocked out for lunch. On certain days I do my weekly planning, content creation and “focus time”. Throughout the month I have regular meetings I attend. All these things are blocked out in my primary “body” calendar.
This leaves a limited amount of blank space for random appointments to be scheduled. When I give out my scheduling links I know how much time is available for my people by simply glancing at my regular calendar. I can also open up or save time for my favorite clients and still use the automatic confirmation and reminder features of my scheduler.
How do you make sure it works?
Once you have it all set up be sure to test it. Often the initial setup requires a bit of tweaking. Go to your scheduling links and see what shows up.
Common things to troubleshoot are:
- Make sure your scheduler is pointed to the right calendar. If you use multiple calendars this can be overlooked.
- Make sure the appointments in your primary calendar are set to BUSY. (or FREE if you have something that you need to be aware of but does not affect your scheduling time can be rearranged)
- Most schedulers will allow you to set before and after time to make sure you have time to prepare and wrap up between appointments. Make sure these times are set the way you want them. (Hint: if you have 15-min on either side of your appointments you will have 30-min between sessions)
- AM and PM matter (so do time zones).
