Book appointments with an agent

A workflow agent can read the free times in your calendar and book one of them for the contact it is working on. It always books into your one published calendar and never guesses between two. The voice agent on the phone cannot book: it takes a message, or texts the caller your booking link.

Before you start

• You are an owner or an admin.
• Exactly one calendar is published under Calendars, with your real hours and services. With none, or more than one, the agent refuses to book.
• The contacts it books have an email address on their record. A booking is never made without one.
• A workflow that starts the agent, usually one that starts when A form is submitted, so the agent can read what the person asked for.

Steps

1. Open Calendars and check that one calendar, and only one, is published, with the right opening hours.
2. Open AI Agents › Agents › Workflow agents and open your agent, or press Create an agent.
3. In Instructions, say how to choose a time. Example for Bright Dental: "When someone asks for a check-up on the new-patient form, book the free time closest to the day they asked for and email them the time. If nothing in the next two weeks suits, or they ask anything clinical, hand it to a person."
4. Under What it is allowed to do, tick Read the contact, Find free times and Book the appointment, plus Send an email or Send a text message if it should tell them. Tick Hand it to a person so it has somewhere to go when it cannot book.
5. Turn on Turn it on and press Save.
6. In Try it, choose a test contact who has an email address and press Run it once. The steps show the free times it found and "You would have booked them in at …". Nothing is booked or sent in a test.
7. Open the workflow under Automations › Workflows, add a Run an agent step and choose this agent under Which agent.

What happens next

Each time a contact reaches the step, the agent reads the contact and what started the workflow, looks up free times in your calendar, and books one that fits your instructions. It can only book a time the calendar has offered it. The booking appears in Calendars like any other, with the note "Booked by an automation." To be sure the contact hears the time from you, tell the agent to email or text them and tick that ability.

Every run is listed on the agent's page under Runs, with each step it took, so you can check what it booked and why.

For agencies

Check the client's calendar is published and has their real hours before you switch a booking agent on for them. A client with two published calendars needs one of them unpublished, or a person choosing.

Troubleshooting

"There is no single bookable calendar for this business, so times cannot be offered." No calendar is published, or more than one is. Publish exactly one under Calendars.

"There is no email address on their record, and a booking cannot be made without one." The contact has only a phone number. Ask your form for an email address, or add it to the record, then run the agent again.

"There is nothing free in … in that window." The calendar has no free times in the days it looked at. Check the hours and services on the calendar.

"That time has just been taken." Someone else booked it first. The agent looks again and picks another time on its next try.

Callers ask the voice agent to book and it cannot. The voice agent does not book. In its Instructions, tell it to text callers your booking link, or to take their details so a person can follow up.

Related

• Create a workflow agent and run it from a workflow
• Set up the voice agent to answer your phone
• Read agent logs and usage