Calendar workflows are designed to automatically send communications to clients when their appointment status changes, keeping updates timely and consistent. The first step is making sure 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 confirm the name of the one you want to use.
Once that's done, return to the main menu and choose "Automation".
Setting Up the Workflow
On the Automations page, click the "Create Workflow" button in the upper right corner. From there, you can select a recipe or start from scratch.
Five recipes can be adjusted to suit your appointment needs, but this guide will walk you through building the workflow from scratch.
The first step is to rename the workflow. Click on the existing name, delete it, and enter something clear and concise that reflects the workflow's purpose, so it's easy to identify in the list. Once you've typed the name, click anywhere in the builder to exit the name editor.
Next, choose your appointment trigger. Some available options include Appointment Status, which activates the workflow when the appointment status changes, and Customer Booked Appointment, which activates it when the appointment is booked via the calendar link.
In this example, I'm choosing the "Appointment Status" trigger with the filters "In Calendar" and "Appointment Status Is" to activate the workflow only for confirmed bookings on the selected calendar. You can adjust this to suit your needs.
📌Note: The Event Type filter is added by default to configure whether the automation should activate for single bookings, recurring bookings, or both.
Browse the other available filters to refine the criteria further, then save the trigger.
Adding the Functionality
With the workflow created, named, and the trigger set up, it's time to add some functionality.
Optionally, you can assign the contacts who enter the workflow to a user. This is particularly useful when one person manages the calendar or schedules appointments, as the "from" fields in email forms will be populated automatically, saving you from entering them manually. If multiple users are selected, choose how you'd like 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 let them know about the confirmed appointment on their calendar.
Now we're going to send a text message to the contact confirming the appointment. Choose the "Send SMS" action, type your message or select a snippet, and save it.
Add a one-minute wait step immediately after the SMS step. This gives the system a brief pause and makes the interaction feel more natural.
Now add the "Send Email" action. Fill in the subject and body appropriately. As with the SMS action, you can choose a template or write the message from scratch.
To send appointment reminders and reduce no-shows, you can add further wait steps and email reminders. Here's how to 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 trigger before, after, or at the appointment time, and set the duration.
- Select the desired action for scenarios where the timing falls in the past. For instance, if a contact books 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 avoid sending irrelevant messages. This keeps contacts from being overwhelmed with notifications that don't apply to them.
Add the relevant communications and repeat this process as needed 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 that you can build to whatever level of complexity you need. Happy automating!