Slots and Valid Appointments

Two of the most important concepts in Scheduler are Slots and Valid Appointments. These work together to ensure that telephone agents are only shown appointment times that are genuinely available and that meet your business's specific requirements.

Slots

Slots are the bookable time windows that are presented to the telephone agent during the booking process. As an administrator, you have complete control over how these slots are generated. You can configure:

• Weeks in Advance: Define how far into the future your agents can book appointments (e.g., the current week plus the next four weeks).
• Appointment Times per Day: Specify the exact times of day that are available for bookings (e.g., 10:00, 13:00, 16:00).
• Default Duration: Set the standard length of an appointment (e.g., 60 minutes). This is used to calculate the end time of a booking and to determine if there is sufficient time between existing appointments.
• Search Constraints: Impose rules on the slot search, such as the maximum travel time allowed between appointments. This prevents field agents from being booked for appointments that are geographically too far apart to be feasible.

Valid Appointments

To determine whether a field agent is free at a particular time, Scheduler needs to know what constitutes a "booked" appointment in your CRM. You define this by setting up a Valid Appointment Filter.

This filter is a rule that is applied to your destination module. For example, you might define a valid appointment as any record in the Deals module where the "Deal Stage" is one of "Booked", "Confirmed", or "Ready".