Scheduler: Getting Started

Drew Ross: Hey everybody, my name is Drew and today we're going to talk about how to use the Viploud scheduler and how to create your own scheduleuler links. These links are things that you can send to people or put it into your email signature or whatnot that allow contacts of yours to be able to book meetings directly on your calendar and have them not conflict with other events that are on your calendar. It also makes coordinating meetings across different time zones a lot easier as well. And what's great is because this is all a part of your VipCloud account, they are integrated into your account and can just uh wield all sorts of advantages to having auler that is deeply integrated into your CRM. And we'll go through that today. So, let's get the screen share going and show you how to do this. It's all really pretty straightforward stuff. So, um first of all, schedulers are under your automation tab in that left sidebar. So, you can click on automation and then in that lead capture section in the navigation, you'll see schedulers.

Drew Ross: Click on that. Now at the very top here you can see choose a calendar integration and we have integrations with Google. So Google workspace as well as your Gmail accounts and then also Microsoft 365 calendar which will integrate with Outlook accounts as well as professional uh 365 accounts as well. Um, for the purposes of this, I'm not going to really show you how to or we're not going to walk through the integration. It's really pretty straightforward stuff. Just put in your login credentials, agree to the permissions, and you'll be rocking and rolling. Now, an integration is not necessary in order to use theulers. So, if you choose to not use the integration with a an external calendar, what you can still use the schedulers and what'll happen is it'll we call it a VIP cloud virtual calendar. It will just simply not conflict with other meetings that people have booked on with your link. So it is aware of the meetings that are that come just through that link but it will not see any conflicts that might be on your external calendar.

Drew Ross: Great. So to create youruler you hit this green createuler button and you'll see individual and group options. So, an individual scheduler is a one-on-one scheduler with just a single person. And then group, you'd kind of think like class, maybe even webinar type events where you'll have multiple unrelated parties who can book meetings at the same time. And you're able to set meeting capacities. Like for instance, if you only want to limit an event to 10 people who can sign up, then you have options to to set those kinds of limits. For here, we're going to go through individual since when in doubt, that's what most people use these links for. So when we create that individual meeting, you will see a bunch of options here like the event name. This is going to be something that is external facing. So make it give it a name that people will uh will be receptive to that'll be really clear to them. So we'll say uh intro call with Drew. Now label this is your internal reference name.

Drew Ross: So this is something that they that external people will not see. So for instance uh you could give it a name like something like that. Scheduler URL slug. You'll get a default one right here, but you can set any kind of un a slug that has not been previously used. By the way, slugs are what this will be is vipcal.com slash whatever you put into here. So, you can set what'll follow under after that slash. Be sure to not include any spaces in there since URLs can't have spaces. Duration, self-explanatory. This is the duration of the meeting. We have a bunch of options here, but you can also set a custom meeting duration. So, um, if you want a 20 minute meeting, just hit custom and you can choose that. Let's give this 30 minutes. Now under connected calendar we can see that this is where you are going to be choosing what calendar this is going to reference. So in this case since I don't have in in this demo account I haven't connected any external calendars.

Drew Ross: I'm not going to see that as a drop down here. I'm only going to see that BCloud virtual calendar that I referenced earlier. But if you have connected it with your Google or Microsoft account or or calendar, then you're going to want to choose that right here. But you can toggle with the same scheduleuler back and forth based on what calendar it's going to look to for uh conflicts. The conferencing here, now this is going to be where this meeting is going to take place. And we've got an integration with Google Meet. So, if you're using a Google calendar, it'll generate a Google Meet link for you. Zoom, you're going to need to use a Zoom PMI link if you're going to use that. Uh, which is what we tend to do here at at ViveCloud. Um, basically the PMI link, it's a static Zoom link where it's just it's always that same link every single time for every meeting. You just simply create, you just tell Zoom like launch meeting using PMI and it'll just go right into that same meeting link every single time.

Drew Ross: We have a help article that that discusses in detail how exactly to do this and it walks you through it with a video. And um for the help article that this is going to be posted on, we're going to make sure to include that link to that help article if that's something that you want to do. But once you've made your Zoom PMI link, just paste it right there and it'll be included in the invites that are sent to your recipients. And then phone call, pretty self-explanatory. Just make sure that you are asking people for their phone uh for the phone information when they're creating the scheduler, which is uh on a page after what we're looking at right here. But in this case, I'm just going to go with none. And uh and then under description, this is going to be just what displays to the um to your recipients after they book the meeting. All right. So, we're going to hit create and continue editing to go into the additional settings right here. And so in these additional settings, this is just like our signup forms where you have these v various tabs that you can walk through to configure this and continue to make it your own.

Drew Ross: But in the in the top right screen right here, you'll see view booking page, which will load up in a new tab or copy booking link. And we do actually have a liveuler at this point. So if you want to preview what you've been building, you can just hit that view booking page button right there. And so under this details tab, that's basically what we have been working on so far. Under scheduling, you are able to decide how many days you want this to be a to be possibly booked out into the future. And date range. This is less frequently used, but the date range is if you want this meeting to be limited to a certain range of of time and then after a certain date, people will not be able to book meetings. Your availability right here is all quite self-explanatory, but basically set the hours that you want people to be able to book. this buffer time before and after meeting. Definitely recommend using this and it just ensures that people are not able to book meetings without a certain amount of time before or after the meeting.

Drew Ross: See, I'll probably probably want to set something minimum notice. This is to make sure that people don't book meetings on your calendar without any level notice that you're not comfortable with. I definitely recommend putting a few hours onto this. And then custom start increments. Um this is what what what this is for is making sure that um like for instance if you have like a like a 60inute um meeting that that people are are are scheduling you know do you want to have people only able to book these meetings in 60 minute increments in other words at you know noon or 1 or 2 or 300 p.m. Whereas if you set 30 minute start increments, then this will make it available to them for noon or 12:30 or 1 or 1:30. And then you can break it down uh however you are comfortable. And then daily limit. This is so that people don't overbook meetings with you on any given day. And then for time zone, you're able to decide whether it's going to be displayed in their contacts time zone or in your time zone when they are booking.

Drew Ross: So the form fields here, this is going to be what information people collect from you or rather you collect from them when they are booking these meetings. This is just like with our sign up forms. Um and uh and then you can for for more information about contact fields and fields for form just check out this help article. But basically if you want information to as collected here to be added to your to your contacts like to the to the people booking with you to their contact pages. Make sure you're using add contact field there instead of field perform. But check out that help article for more information. And then under the form details, this is just the information that or or this is basically like like the style of information on the form page itself. When people are booking with you, you'll very likely want to have a display uh message that is set right there. That's what'll pop up after they book. or you can redirect them to an entirely new page as well, which is pretty cool.

Drew Ross: These automations, um, these automations right here are going to be what is sent after people book with you as well as the reminders as well. So, the the default automations here are to send them a thank you message for booking right after they schedule with you and then also a one hour reminder as well, like one hour before the meeting is uh takes place. So this is all completely configurable and you can set really any number of automations here that you like including if you have an enterprise account conditional autoresponders. So you can send them different information based on the information that you collect from them when they're at the time of booking which is really pretty cool. And also we have automations here too where you can even cancel existing automations for this person because of them booking. So, for instance, if you send them a if this is a contact that's already in your pipeline and they miss a meeting with you, for instance, um, and you're sending them a series to rebook a meeting, you can actually have this the series cancelled to for rebooking when they actually rebook.

Drew Ross: So, like we have a help article on that as well. So, uh, search in our help center for that. It's a really pretty cool automation. The participants are everybody who has signed up uh or who has booked meetings here. So you'll see a list of them right there. And then this admin tab here has just a couple of cool features as well. Like if you want to have different people have this contact assigned to them based on booking, you can do that right there. this assign short link to user merge tag. This is a really cool feature. And I'm just going to give a quick overview here, but there's more information in another help article that is going to be linked on this page. So see a a detailed explanation there. But let's say you have your like let's say you want to have thisuler link referenced through all sorts of different templates you know email templates text templates if you just simply use the URL in all of those templates and you need to update youruler then that means you need to mass update you need to go with a fine tooth comb through all of your content which is really tedious and is prone to But if you use a merge tag that will then hot swap the link into it, sort of like with first name uh merge tags, well then that will mean that you only have to update the setting like the the merge tag setting

Drew Ross: once and then your content will all be mass updated. So just really it's a very futurep proof way of creating your content and getting your links into your content and that's what this is right here. So for instance you could just put in your templates uh initial calluler and once this setting is created once those templates are sent out it'll put thisuler link into your templates when they are sent. Also here you can decide who if you want additional people to get alerted when meetings are booked like a sales manager for instance you can use this right here. And also if you want people to be added to different contact lists based on filling this out like a newsletter list for instance then or nurturing list then this is where you can go to do that on this whole on sign up copy participants to other lists. Just be sure to hit save u admin when you are done. Great. So, we've walked through all of the settings for configuring your schedulers. Now, I just also want to show you what you're seeing when you look at this page full of your schedulers.

Drew Ross: So, each card is a differentuler. You're able to copy your booking links um and as well as just view the page by clicking on those buttons right there. And you can see some additional information like what days and what calendar this link uh or yeah this thisuler is using. The pencil icon is how you can go into edit youruler. And then also by clicking on those three dots at the top upper right of the card for youruler. This is where you can delete it if you need to or also you can pull the embed code for youruler. So if you want thisuler to be displayed on your website then this is where you want to go for that. And on this modal that pops up, you're able to change the background color of your of youruler, the width settings here. And as you can see, you've got a preview right here as well, which is really nice to be able to see exactly what you're doing. And as you make changes to there or to this, the embed code will be updated. And at the very bottom of this modal, you'll see the bottom left, you'll see that copy code button, which is a nice easy way to be able to grab that and either use it yourself or send it to your web person to have them add it to your website. All right. Well, that just about does it. Um, I hope that this has been helpful in learning how to create your schedulers.