Take bookings in chat while you get on with your day
Your chatbot can offer your free times, book the appointment, move it or cancel it, all inside the conversation. You decide when you are bookable and how much room to leave between appointments.
This is for you if people ask for appointments by message and you end up going back and forth over times. You connect either Google Calendar or TidyCal, and the chatbot handles the rest of the conversation.
Step by step
Choose your calendar
Both integrations live under Settings > Artificial Intelligence. Google Calendar keeps the booking rules in the panel; TidyCal keeps them in your TidyCal account. Pick the one your appointments already live in.
Connect Google Calendar
Activate the integration, then complete the Google synchronization. The chatbot can then book, update, cancel and list events, and show people the times you have free.
Say when you are bookable
Set your availability at Settings > Miscellaneous > Scheduled Office Hours. Then set Slot duration for how long each booked event runs, Buffer time for the minutes to leave between bookings, and Minimum booking time for how far ahead the earliest bookable slot sits.
Or connect TidyCal instead
Activate the integration, create a Personal Access Token in TidyCal under Integrations > Advanced > API Keys, paste it into the integration's Access token and save. Then enter the Booking type title and save again. Your availability, buffers and slot duration stay in TidyCal.
Settings reference
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scheduled Office Hours | At Settings > Miscellaneous, this sets the availability the chatbot books against when you use Google Calendar. |
| Slot duration | The length of the event the chatbot books in Google Calendar. |
| Buffer time | The minutes left between bookings, so you are not booked back-to-back. |
| Minimum booking time | The minutes required before the earliest slot a person can book. |
| Access token | The Personal Access Token from your TidyCal account that lets the chatbot work with your bookings. |
| Booking type title | Names the TidyCal booking type the chatbot uses when it books someone in. |
Good to know
TidyCal remembers your booking type for a day
The selected booking type is cached for 24 hours. If you need a change to apply straight away, create a new booking type, or rename the existing one and update the setting.
Paid booking types are not supported
With TidyCal, only booking types without a price work. If your booking type charges people, the chatbot cannot use it.
Availability lives in two different places
With Google Calendar you set the hours, slot length and buffers in the panel. With TidyCal all of that is configured in TidyCal itself.
Manual Google sync is a bigger job
If you are not on automatic mode, you need your own Google Cloud project: enable the Cloud Natural Language API, Cloud Translation API and Google Calendar API, set up the OAuth consent screen as External with the cloud-language, cloud-translation and calendar scopes, add your Google account as a test user and publish (no review needed), create an OAuth client ID for a Web application using our redirect URI, paste the Client ID and Client Secret into the panel, click Synchronize and paste the Refresh token back.
Google Workspace re-authentication
On Google Workspace, set the re-authentication policy so it never requires re-authentication. Otherwise the connection can stop working.
It works wherever people write to you
Both integrations are conversational and multilingual, and work on any messaging channel.
Common questions
Can the chatbot change or cancel an appointment, not only create one?
Where do I stop people booking me back-to-back?
I renamed my TidyCal booking type and nothing changed. Why?
Does this work on WhatsApp and other messaging channels?
Can I use a paid TidyCal booking type?
Do I need my own Google Cloud project?
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