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Date/Time Picker

Updated

  

1. Intro

The Date/Time Picker node is used for giving your visitors the option to request or schedule appointments with your team without requiring you to connect to you Google of Office 365 calendar. (For a node that gives your visitors realtime calendar availability directly in the bot, check out our Schedule-a-Meeting node)

Check out our blog post for a great overview of this feature!

For example, below is a screenshot of a bot that gives visitors the option to request a meeting that is:

  • 30min long
  • no earlier than 2 days from today
  • for any day of the week
  • for any time of the day between 9AM and 5PM EST
  • every hour, on the hour

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To get started, there are just two easy steps:

 

2. Configure your appointment or meeting types

A meeting type is a generic placeholder for what your visitors are actually picking a date/time for. For example, if you're a doctor's office you might create a meeting called "quick checkup", or if you're a HR recruiter you might create a meeting called "intro phone screen call".

 

To configure your first meeting, go to Integrations --> Date/Time Picker, and click "Add new Availability". On this page, you will see a variety of settings that serve to describe the characteristics of your meeting.

 

Below is a screenshot showing:

  • (left) - sample meeting configuration
  • (right) - what this meeting configuration would look like to your visitors when they interact with the date/time picker node

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  • a. Availability Description
    • This is the name of your meeting
  • b. Timezone
    • This setting allows you to set the timezone of your availability
    • If the visitor's timezone is different than the meeting's timezone, the available timeslots will be shifted to reflect the timezone of the visitor
    • For example, if a visitor is talking to your bot in PST (UTC-7), and you configure your timeslots to 10 - 11AM EST (UTC-4), your visitor will see timeslots for 7 - 8AM PST (UTC-7)
  • c. Day of week and time availability
    • This setting allows you to set specific days or portions of the week, and/or specific times or portions of the day when this meeting can be requested for
    • For example, if you set to "Weekdays, 9AM - 5PM", your visitor will only see timeslots on weekdays from 9AM to 5PM (local to the visitor's timezone)
  • d. Duration of the meeting
    • This setting allows you to set the duration of your meeting
  • e. Availability increments
    • This settings allows you to set interval in which timeslots will be available within an available time-block
    • For example, if you set to "45min", your visitor will see timeslots for 9AM, 9:45AM, 10:30AM, ....
  • f. Minimum notice time
    • This setting allows you to set the earliest day where your visitors will be able to book a meeting
    • This is useful for avoiding sudden and last minute meeting requests
    • For example, if today is Wednesday, Sept 25, and you set to "2 days", the earliest the visitor will be able to select a date/time is 2 days from today --> Friday, Sept 27
  • g. Email address field
    • This field is to gather the visitor's email at the same time they select a date/time so that you can followup with them
    • NOTE - Instabot only collects the visitor's email address from this field. Instabot does not automatically send them an email confirmation. If you want to automatically send them an email confirmation after they pick a date/time, please add a send-an-email node into your bot

 

3. Add the Date/Time Picker node into your bot

Now that you've successfully configured your first meeting type, let's add a date/time picker node into our bot!

In the bot-builder, add a node --> Advanced --> Date/Time Picker

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  • a. Node message
    • This field is what the visitor will see when they see this date/time picker node - try something like:
      • Please pick a day and time for a 30min intro call that's convenient for you!
  • b. Meeting type
    • This is where you select the specific meeting that the visitor will be booking
  • c. Meeting preview

 

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