Config Tab 1. Application Settings

Video for this step

Ok so you're the lucky one who is administering Appointiv and will make all the configuration changes - but- you might not be the same person who did all the previous steps like installing the app from the Appexchange and giving users the right permissions so let's quickly double check two things before you start changing anything.

1- The first thing to check is that this button says View Webform.  That means that the Register Me step is done.

2- Secondly, check to be sure the "save" button at the very bottom of the page is dark blue and not sort of greyed out.  That means you have the right Administrator Permission Set so you can save the changes you're about to make.

All good?  Ok so let's focus on the Application Settings configuration.  This is where you set some basic information that will flow throughout your app and your online booking tool.

What are the Calendar View Hours?

This setting determines the hours that will be seen on the Appointiv Calendar.  We recommend that you set times slightly wider than where your appointments will be booked for better views.  ie if you're a 9-5 operation, maybe set this as 8-6 or even later because sometimes people may want to book and see appointments outside your normal business hours.  

Individual service providers might have times that go outside these hours and those times can be booked with the online booking tool but those appointments won't be visible in the Appointiv Calendar view.

How should I set my labels?

Because Appointiv works across so many different industries, we allow you to set your own Labels that get used throughout the app and the online booking tool.  Whatever you choose to call your Locations, Customers, Service Categories etc, we can take and use throughout the app.

Location - could be your "Office" or "Clinic" - you might even include "Online" or "Phone Call" as locations. 

Category - this is the broad type of service you provide.  It could be "Specialty" for a medical clinic, "Service Type" for another.  This will be the heading your end users see when they are choosing from your different Service Types in the Online Booking Tool.

Service Provider - These are the people on your team who are being booked into the meetings to provide the service (ie the meeting).  Most organizations just stick with the name Service Provider.  You can create sub-groups of Service Providers later for things like Therapist, Doctor, Accountant, Attorney, etc.

Customer - this is what you call your customers.  You might call them Clients, Patients, Members etc. 

Setting up External Calendar Sync

You can synchronize your external calendar directly with Appointiv without the need for the Salesforce calendar sync.  This opens up the possibility for you to have non-Salesforce users who are Service Providers and have their calendars synced.   It's also a heck of a lot easier to set up than the Salesforce calendar sync.

The Appointiv Calendar sync works with the 5 major calendars: Outlook, Gcal, Microsoft 365, Exchange Server, and iCal.

The sync is bi-directional and this setup area is where you determine which way information goes and how much information is shared back and forth.

Salesforce to External calendar  - Think of this as data going outbound - tick the box here to send details about appointments that are created in Appointiv to your external calendar.

External calendar to Salesforce - Think of this as data coming inbound (to Salesforce) - tick the box here to pull events from your external calendar into Appointiv.  Events will come into Appointiv and block off time as unavailable for the Service Provider.  This will prevent Appointiv from booking on top of any appointment in the External calendar.  

Note that the "Busy" vs "Free" setting on their personal calendar is recognized.  So if they have "study for medical exam" booked all afternoon but they would still like to take patient appointments, they should set the event as "free" in their Google or Outlook calendar.

Sync with Description vs Sync without Description - This only applies to the inbound info - It is there to protect the privacy of your Service Providers.  It's an organization-wide setting so it's all or nothing for all Service Providers.

Choose "With description" to bring in the subject line from the event in the Service Provider's external calendar.  Choose "Without description" to bring in the event as a blocked time but the name of the appointment is hidden.   Useful if the Service Provider is wanting privacy but also doesn't want double bookings.

Cancellations, Reminders and Appointment Lead time settings 

Letting your customers self manage their appointments is a huge time saver.  Here, you can control how far in advance your customers are allowed to make changes - the "Allow Cancellation up to x Days" sets this timer.  If it is set to one day, they must Cancel at least 24 hours in advance of their appointment.(rescheduling falls under here too since they're canceling one appointment for another) 

The send reminders timer determines how far in advance you send the reminder email.  You can control whether those reminders even include the option to cancel or reschedule in the next step on the Email Template tab.

Appointment Lead Time is in hours so you can be a bit more specific.  You might want to avoid waking up a t 7am to find you have a new customer appointment at 8am that was booked while you slept.  Or maybe not- maybe you want customers to be able to book right before the time they're coming in.  Up to you!

New Customers - Lead vs Contact 

Ok this one is kind of a big deal if you use the Lead object in Salesforce.  If every one of your new customers just gets added as a Contact - you can skip it.

Here's how it works.  Let's say a customer fills in their name and email (the default deduplication fields which you can change- more on that next), and it matches an existing Lead or Contact, then great, we will update that record in Salesforce and not create a new one.  But- if the customer doesn't match, we will create a new Contact (or person account) if that's your selection here or a Lead if that's your choice.

Ok so you want to have NEW customers be added as Leads - and by new we mean those that don't match anyone already in your Salesforce as a Lead or Contact (or person account).  No problem!  Just a few things to note.

Since the appointment booking webform includes whatever fields you decide you want to use, and because we don't know whether they're a Lead or a Contact at the time they fill in the form, we just need to be sure the fields you choose to put on the webform exist on both the Lead and the Contact (or person account) objects.  

Now the super cool thing is that if you choose Leads, we give a big fat warning to show that it's a really important decision and then we go search your fields on Contact and Lead and put the ones that don't match up in a nice table for you to see.  All you need to do next is figure out if any identified fields will be on the webform and make copies on the object that doesn't already have them.   Simple!

Steps in our Walkthrough Setup 

Step 1- change Location to Office/Offices

Step 2- change Category to Service/Services

Step 3- change Service Provider to Advisor/Advisors

Step 4- change Customer to Client/Clients

Click Save

Go to Step 2. Locations