How To Use Book Me in the Chrome Extension¶
Sharing your calendar availability periods (Book Me)¶
The Share Calendar Availability (Book me) feature allows parsing your and your colleagues’ availability periods based on Google calendar data to be sent to your business contacts, for example to negotiate a meeting time convenient for all participants involved or to schedule a series of meetings with different contacts. The unoccupied time slots from meeting organizer calendar(s) are parsed to be saved as a link to an interactive scheduling table webpage. When building availability tables to be saved, LPC parses unoccupied time slots from calendar(s) over a 365 day span. This limit can be adjusted by request sent to our CSM team.
On link generation, Book Me availability is parsed as a “static shot” that includes the organizer’s availability span, so the resulting booking page table does not display calendar slots which got reserved after the link was generated.
However, any reservations added to their calendar later are also considered by the Book Me system. As soon as a recipient clicks on their preferred slot, LinkPoint Connect(ME) checks if the slot is still available in the organizer’s calendar. In case it is was occupied by another reservation, the recipient is suggested to pick another slot. In addition, by refreshing booking page browser window, the recipient can actualize the availability table after such checks.
To share your availability periods with your contacts¶
1. Open the LinkPoint Connect(ME) sidebar for a relevant opened or new created email message in Gmail by clicking the Open LinkPoint Connect(ME) icon.
>>> Click to see a screenshot <<<
2. In the Sidebar, click the Book me icon in Smart actions bottom toolbar.
3. Fill in the key meeting details – Meeting subject, Location and Duration, Body (Description), and the optional ones:
- Save to Salesforce record
- Days of the week and from/until according to your weekly schedule
- Required internal attendees (the attendees from your company to attend the meeting)
- From date and To date – the period over which the meeting is valid
- Note that the time zone of the generated selection page will be defined automatically for each recipient based on their email client’s settings
Tip
You can hide the advanced Book Me dialogs fields and controls which you do not use when creating meetings, just click the v (collapse) icon next to the Advanced options section title
The Meeting subject field is prefilled with the subject of the related email (if any) and your can edit it according to your needs. In the Location picklist you can select a location from your rooms resources or manually enter a location. The minimum meeting Duration as well its increase step is 15 minutes.
Next, you can also select a Business record (e.g. Account or Opportunity) to associate the event with, via the Save to Salesforce record field. Please note that if you leave this field blank, the event will not be auto-saved in Salesforce.
In addition, there is the Save to Lead or Contact field that allows you to link Salesforce events created this way to specified People records (e.g. Leads or Contacts), besides Business records.
The Body (Description) box is used for specifying additional event information for its participants, to be used as meeting description in Google calendar and in Salesforce. Note that it will not be included into the text of the share calendar availability email generated by Meeting Scheduler.
Then fill in the optional meeting parameters put under Advanced options tab:
Reminder. Here you can define if you want a reminder to be auto-set up in your Google calendar to notify you before the meeting starts; it can trigger from several minutes to hours or days, up to two weeks prior to the meeting.
The Minimal span between booking & actual start field below (values range from 30 minutes to 2-48 hours) ensures that the meeting organizer will have enough time to react and get prepared for the meeting after a slot has been picked by Book Me link recipient.
Finally, there are the From date and To date fields. This meeting validity span is set if you (or other involved people from your Org) will only be available during a limited calendar span, e.g. a conference, a field visit, or an overseas trip.
Important
Note that in the latest LinkPoint Connect(ME) updates the dialog was augmented with focused availability limits – the Available on (days of the week) selector and the From and Until picklists - their default values are from 8am until 5pm. Use these controls to set your availability spans specific to your regular work schedule, for example if you are available for meeting customers only on Mondays and Thursdays from 4pm until 6pm, or you could arrange a business meeting out of your working hours or on a weekend
Another Book me feature improvement introduced in the latest LinkPoint Connect(ME) updates is the Internal attendees field. This field allows you to add the schedules of your colleagues (they must belong to your Google Workspace (G Suite) space) whose presence is required at the meeting to the resulting parsed availability table, this way ensuring that a slot convenient for all key in-org participants will be selected. Note that only the meeting organizer’s working hours/time zone are considered when the booking table is generated, so in-org attendees located in other timezones might turn out to be unavailable at the time selected by the recipient.
4. LinkPoint Connect(ME) will generate a short link leading to a Meeting Scheduler web page with a table showing your availability periods based on your calendar data. Click on the corresponding icons to copy the link or open it in your web browser, if needed, or click Finish and the link will be automatically inserted into the message.
Tip
If you want to set a custom share calendar availability message template, refer to this article
Note
In the latest LinkPoint Connect(ME) updates, a standard reCAPTCHA v3 anti-bot check was introduced on accessing the Calendar availability slots reservation webpage to prevent calendar spamming activities
In Compose mode, the Attendees list in create Book me dialog is auto-populated with recipients from the To and CC fields of the composed message; the sender will be set as the Organizer. When the recipients open the link, they can select their preferred time slot by dragging the Book a meeting control or clicking at their preferred slot. Once a time slot is selected and confirmed by the attendee (see below), it will be automatically reserved in your calendar and you will receive a corresponding notification.
Tip
In the latest LinkPoint Connect(ME) updates it is possible to set the default (prefilled) Meeting Location and Duration, which will also be preset for links generated with Quick Send Availability. To set the default Meeting Location and Duration to be used, submit a corresponding request to our CSM team
Important
Please note that by default generated Book me links expire 365 days after their creation date. This period can be adjusted on request
Book Me Dialog Auto-Filling¶
To enhance use convenience, after the Autumn 2021 LinkPoint Connect(ME) update, LPC Meeting Scheduler includes a possibility to configure automatic prefilling of any Book Me / Time Slots dialog fields according to the customer’s preference. For example, the Subject field can mirror relevant email’s subject or include a custom text or a combination of email’s subject and a custom text. This option can be enabled for big Enterprise customers; to get it configured please send a detailed request to our Support team.
How to Book a Slot (Recipient Side)¶
When the recipients open the link, they can select their preferred slot by dragging the Book a meeting control or clicking at their preferred slot. As soon as a slot is selected and confirmed by the attendee (see the screenshot below), it gets automatically reserved in your calendar and you will receive a corresponding notification.
After an invitee selects a slot on the Meeting Scheduler page, he/she also needs to fill in their full name and email address in the Booking confirmation dialog.
>>> Click to see new interface screenshots (New View) <<<
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The Extra Fields: Phone Number and Notes¶
Starting with the Autumn 2021 update, the Booking page also includes optional fields Phone number and Notes. These fields allow meeting attendees to let the Organizer as well as other participants know their phone numbers for direct connection or provide extra details prior to the meeting.
>>> Click to see a screenshot <<<
\booking-fields.png)
Important
Since entered Phone number and Notes get appended to the meeting’s Description, they also get conveyed to all required as well as optional meeting invitees. For this reason, the recipients should always consider if the Phone number is worth including in their specific privacy and discretion circumstances and what information can be listed in meeting Notes
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