What This Does
This guide describes how to go live with your Booking Agent. It shows you how to connect your Booking Agent to your scheduler, which it will reference to know your availability, to a trigger like a lead being parsed, a sign up form being completed, or someone texting in a keyword.
This will cause your AI Booking Agent to text the contact and attempt to book a meeting per the training you configured.
Required Components
Before you launch, two things need to be in place. The agent can't do its job without both.
Scheduler - this gives the agent access to your calendar availability so it can offer and confirm appointment times. Without this, the agent has no way to book. If you haven't created one yet, see Getting Started with the VipeCloud Scheduler.
Booking Agent Training Template - this controls how the agent communicates with your leads, including its tone, messaging, and follow-up behavior. If you haven't built one yet, see our guide to configuring your Agent Training Templates.
How the Booking Agent Collects Missing Information
When the agent reaches out to a lead, it checks whether the required fields on your scheduler are already filled in for that contact. If any fields are missing, the agent will ask for them conversationally before proceeding to book.
For example, if your scheduler requires name, phone number, email, and brand interest, and a lead comes in with everything except brand interest, the agent will ask the lead which brand they're interested in before offering appointment times. It only asks for what it doesn't already have.
This is worth keeping in mind in two places:
When building your scheduler - the required fields you set determine what the agent will ask for. Only require fields that are genuinely necessary to book the meeting.
When choosing which scheduler to connect - if you have multiple lead sources with different data quality, consider whether the scheduler's required fields match what those leads typically come in with.
Tip: this can be used as a seamless way to gather a little qualifying data before your first interaction with a lead.
How to Connect the AI Booking Agent to a Parsing Rule
Use this method when you want the agent to automatically reach out to every lead coming in through a specific lead source that comes in via email parsing.
You must complete this setup separately for each parsing rule that you want the Booking Agent to reach out to. This means you can assign different training templates to different lead sources, which matters if you're working with multiple brands or audiences.
Click Automations in the left sidebar.
Click Parsing in the menu.
Open an existing parsing rule or create a new one.
Scroll to the bottom of the parsing rule editor to the Automations card.
Click Add Automation.
Select Booking Agent as the action.
Choose your Scheduler.
Choose your Booking Agent Training Template.
Click Save on the automation.
Click Save on the parsing rule.
How to Connect the AI Booking Agent to a Sign-Up Form
Use this method when you want the agent to reach out to anyone who submits a specific form - for example, a lead magnet, a contact page, or a landing page form. The agent fires as soon as the form is submitted.
You can set this up from two places: the main Automations menu, or directly from within the form's settings. Both paths produce the same result - use whichever feels more natural to you.
From the Automations menu:
Click Automations in the left sidebar.
Click Automations in the menu.
Click Create.
Select Sign-Up Form Completion as the trigger type.
Choose your sign-up form.
For the action, select Booking Agent.
Choose your Scheduler.
Choose your Booking Agent Training Template.
Click Save Automation.
From within the form settings:
Click Automations in the left sidebar.
Click Sign-Up Forms.
Open the form you want to connect.
Click the Automations tab inside the form editor.
Click Create Automation. You will land directly on the action selection step.
Select Booking Agent.
Choose your Scheduler.
Choose your Booking Agent Training Template.
Click Save Automation.
How to Connect the AI Booking Agent to a Text Keyword
Use this method when you want the agent to activate when someone texts a specific word or phrase to your VipeCloud phone number. This is useful for print materials, QR codes, or any situation where you want someone to self-initiate a booking conversation by texting in.
Keywords are not case-sensitive, so contacts can text the keyword in any capitalization and it will still trigger the agent correctly.
Click Communications in the left sidebar.
Click Text.
Click Keywords.
Click Create.
Enter the keyword that a contact must text in to trigger the agent.
Under Keyword Action, select Start Booking Agent.
Choose your Scheduler.
Choose your Booking Agent Training Template.
Click Save Keyword Action.
Key Notes
These triggers need to include a mobile number for the AI Booking Agent to know who to text. Make sure your parsing rule has a mobile number field which is properly mapped, or that your Sign Up Form requires a mobile number.
If a contact texts in the keyword and their name, email, or other required information is not already in your VipeCloud account, the agent will collect that information conversationally before attempting to book. The fields it asks for are determined by the required fields on your scheduler.
Each parsing rule requires its own booking agent connection. If you have three active parsing rules, you need to add the booking agent automation to each one individually.
Different parsing rules can use different training templates. If you work with multiple brands or lead sources that need different messaging, you can customize per rule.