Buffer Time (aka Lead Time).

These easy to use URL parameters allow you to add a number of Days or Hours relative to the current time to any Appointiv webform link (including prefilled flow links).

Who is this for?

Say you want to have multiple different lead times or buffers for different combinations of appointment, location, category, or Service Provider. (basically anything you can group into one URL using a Pefilled Form). You can use the Lead Time in Hours on the Configure Tab but that is a global setting which means you don’t get the flexibility to change it for different scenarios.

The new Relative Lead Time Parameters feature allows you to set the lead time for all appointments on any Appointiv webform URL.

Sample Use-Case:

Pretend you offer 2 types of tours through your amazing facilities.

On one hand, you offer group tours that take a bit of planning so you would like to have a 1 week lead time on all the group bookings to give you enough time to gather some data from your group tour leader and do some internal planning to make sure the group tour is amazing? Perfect! Set up a prefilled form URL with 7 days lead time.

But wait, you also want to allow Self-Guided tours to be able to book same-day and you only need 2 hours notice - no worries, set up another prefilled form URL with 2 hours lead time.

To finish it off, you make it nice and easy for customers by adding a couple of booking buttons on your Facilities Tours landing page. Make one for Group Tours and one for Self-Guided Yours and use the prefilled form links for each type of booking. Too easy!

Now your customers don’t have to search through any selections on the booking form and each prefilled form has the correct Lead Time built-in!

Characteristics of this feature:

• Times will all be relative to the current time

  • Adds Days or Hours of buffer time to the current time when the link is opened by the customer.

• Lead Time covers any appointment selected by the customer on the webform

  • This means that you can add a buffer time to any webform link and the end customer can still make their own selections for an appointment

  • Location, Category, Appointment Type, or Service Provider can all still be chosen by the customer and the resulting available times will include the buffer.

  • This also applies to Prefilled Forms where some of the selections in Location, Category, Appointment Type, or Service Provider have already been included as parameters in the URL.

• Great for iFrame or pop-up scenarios

  • Works great when the Appointiv webform is embedded in an iFrame because the customer doesn’t see any of the parameters you might have added

Versions and usage:

• Version 1

  • LTD “Lead Time Days” also known as the “Days Version”

    • This version adds blocks off full days on the booking calendar

    • Format ?ltd=n where n = Lead Time in Days

    • Example

      • If you want the first available time to be one week in the future from today’s date.

      • Then the URL would look like this: http://companyname.appointiv.com/?ltd=7

      • The Customer would see the following:

        • ASSUME for the example that the current time is 1:00 PM on Monday and it is the 10th day of the month

        • IF the customer opens the webform on their browser and the URL parameter is set to ?ltd=7

        • THEN any available time slots that would have been seen before Monday the 17th day of the month will be unavailable for the user to select

        • NOTE- When figuring out what number to put into the parameter, consider the following:

          • Be sure to count today as day 1. (you might have mistakenly counted tomorrow as Day 1 but it’s today)

          • So, in this example, we’re creating Lead Time = 7 days

          • So counting today, that means 1 Mon (today), 2 Tues, 3 Weds, 4 Thurs, 5 Fri, 6 Sat, and 7 Sun are all skipped.

          • Monday of next week will be the first day that shows any availability.

• Version 2

  • LT “Lead Time” also known as the “Hours Version”

    • This version adds blocks of hours of buffer time to the current time on the booking form

    • Format ?lt=n where n = Lead Time in Hours

    • Example

      • You want the first available time shown on the webform to be 3 hours in the future from the current time

      • Then the URL would look like this: http://companyname.appointiv.com/?lt=3

      • The customer would see the following

        • If the customer opens the webform on their browser and current time is 1:00 PM on Monday

        • All available time slots in the future starting from 4:00 PM onward will be visible for the user to select

        • We’re skipping three full hours so we skip 1-2, 2-3, 3-4.

        • The Hours Version is a bit easier to conceptualize than the Lead Time Days version for some reason…just sayin'