Calendars

Calendars define when your business can accept appointments and show the Jobs scheduled for those times. A Calendar can be used by your team when scheduling manually and by the text or voice AI when Built-in Booking is selected.

Getting here

In Auto-Respond, open CRM → Calendars.

What a Calendar controls

Each Calendar belongs to one business and stores:

• A name and display color.
• The timezone used for availability and appointment times.
• Weekly working hours, including multiple time ranges on the same day.
• Appointment length: 30, 60, 90, or a custom whole number of at least 5 minutes.
• The customer information the AI must collect before it can book.

Create separate Calendars when teams, services, or locations have different working hours or appointment lengths.

Creating a Calendar

Click Create new calendar, then complete the three sections.

Basic information

• Business — required; determines where the Calendar and its Jobs belong.
• Name — required; use a recognizable name such as Estimates or Standard service hours.
• Timezone — required and used when showing and booking slots.
• Calendar color — identifies the Calendar’s Jobs in the combined view.
• Appointment length — sets the duration of every available slot.

Availability

Under Weekly hours, enable the days you accept appointments and add one or more time ranges to each day. For example, you can set 8:00 AM–12:00 PM and 1:00 PM–5:00 PM to leave a lunch break.

Only complete slots that fit inside these hours are offered. Past times and times occupied by active Jobs are excluded automatically.

Information to collect

This section controls what the AI asks for before making a Built-in Booking.

• Name is always collected and cannot be turned off.
• At least one of Phone or Email must be required.
• Address can be required when the appointment happens at the customer’s location.
• Add custom fields for information such as service type, gate code, or property size. Each custom field needs a unique name and description.

Unchecked fields are not requested as part of the booking.

Viewing the schedule

Use the Calendar selector to show All calendars or one Calendar. A selected Calendar also shows a summary of its working days, timezone, and appointment length.

The schedule has three views:

• Month — a compact overview of scheduled Jobs across six weeks.
• Week — Jobs placed on an hourly grid for seven days.
• Day — one day’s hourly agenda with appointment duration.

Use the left and right arrows to move between months, weeks, or days. Calendar colors identify which Calendar owns each Job. Jobs without an assigned Calendar appear with a neutral style in All calendars.

Click a Job to open its details. Click an empty day or time area to create a new Job with that date prefilled. When one Calendar is selected, the new Job is also prefilled with that Calendar and its business.

Completed and canceled Jobs do not appear on the schedule.

How available slots are calculated

Auto-Respond combines:

• The Calendar’s timezone.
• Its weekly working hours.
• Its appointment length.
• Scheduled, in-progress, and on-hold Jobs already using the Calendar.

Only future slots that fit the full appointment length are offered. Auto-Respond checks availability again when saving, which prevents two people from reserving the same slot at the same time.

Using a Calendar with Built-in Booking

After creating the Calendar, select it in the scheduling settings that should use it.

Text AI Assistant

Go to Sources → select a source → Messaging Settings → Conversation Setup → AI Assistant → Appointment Scheduling. Enable scheduling, choose Built-in Booking, and select the Calendar.

Voice Agent

Open an Agent → Scheduling → enable Appointment Scheduling → choose Built-in Booking → select the Calendar.

The AI checks the Calendar’s open slots, collects its required information, and creates a scheduled Job after the customer agrees to a time.

Editing or deleting a Calendar

Open the Calendar selector and click the edit icon next to a Calendar. Saving changes updates future availability calculations.

Deleting a Calendar requires confirmation. Existing Jobs are not deleted, but the Calendar is disconnected from any Sources and Voice Agents that use it, which disables their Built-in Booking configuration until you select another Calendar.

Related topics

Questions? Email support@auto-respond.com.