When you go to your dashboard, you will find the option to create your Bookable Calendar on the right side of the screen, or under the button "Create" in the top right corner.
If you haven’t already done so, you will be prompted to connect your calendar to Doodle. In order to use Bookable Calendar you need to connect a Google or Microsoft Office 365 calendar in your Doodle account settings. This allows your Bookable Calendar to reflect your availability and sync any booked appointments directly to your calendar.
Setting up your Bookable Calendar step by step
1. Name your Bookable Calendar and set your personal URL
At the very top of the page, you can fill out the title of your Bookable Calendar, and decide what your personal URL is going to be.
2. Add more details
Click the arrow under “add more details” to add an optional description and a location if necessary.
3. Select your connected calendars
Under the “connected calendar” tab you can choose which of your connected calendars should reflect your availability in this Bookable Calendar. You can also check to which calendar your bookings should be synced - Any calendar that you select here will be reflected in the availability of the Bookable Calendar, and have the booked meetings synced to them.
4. Set the meeting rules
Set your personal meetings rules. Select the desired duration of the meetings that can be booked. Avoid last minute bookings or back-to-back meetings and set up a minimum notice and buffer time. Select a future horizon for your available time slots and set your general working hours. Need to gather some information from your participants? Add custom questions - the answers to these questions will appear in the booked calendar event.
5. Customize your bookable time blocks
Does your availability vary depending on the weekday? Extend, shorten, move or delete the green boxes to customize your availability for each day of the week.
6. Check your time zone
Make sure to check your time zone at the very bottom of the page. The Bookable Calendar should be created in your own time zone. Each participant will see the times in their own time zone depending on their Doodle account settings or IP address.
7. Preview your Bookable Calendar
Click on “Preview” to have a look at the time slots that will be available to your participants. At the top of the page you can enable a toggle to simultaneously see your calendar events from your connected calendar - only you will see this, your participants will not see any entries from your calendar. Keep in mind that only events that are marked as "busy" in your connected calendar, will be blocked in your Bookable Calendar.
8. Share your link
Once everything is set, make sure link sharing is on, copy the link and share it as you see fit. When a participants books a slot, you will both be notified via email and a calendar event will be created in your connected calendar.
Best practices for sharing your Bookable Calendar Link
Share the link to your Bookable Calendar in your email footer, or embed it on your website. Your guests simply open the link and choose a time option. Once the meeting is booked it’s added to your calendars automatically! Your link stays the same. Even if you change the settings or the availability of your Bookable Calendar, you do not have to send out a new link or replace it - it stays the same!
Pause your Bookable Calendar
If you do not wish for anyone to book a meeting with you for the time being, you can easily disable your link from your Doodle account. You do not have to remove your link from anywhere you have it posted - if someone clicks on the link, they will be notified that you are not available for bookings at the moment. At any time, you can enable the link again.
Need to reschedule?
The participant can cancel an appointment they made in your Bookable Calendar by clicking "reschedule" in the calendar invitation they received after making the booking. They are then taken back to your Bookable Calendar page to select a new time - you will be informed and the calendar event will be updated automatically.
As the admin of the Bookable Calendar, you can delete the calendar event in your personal calendar and reach out to the participant to ask them to select a new slot.
Do you want to know more about Bookable Calendar? Have a look here.