Who can use this feature?
The Scheduler is your go-to place on your Home Page when you want to find available times in your calendar or your teammates’ calendars to book an important meeting or even book a meeting on a colleague’s behalf. It’s the perfect place to check for everyone’s availability and guarantee the meeting will be scheduled.
The Scheduler looks different and has different functionalities if you are using Handoff or accessing it from the extension in one of our integrations or sidebar. Navigate to the articles below to learn more about these two:
We will check all MyApp/Home Page Scheduler features in more detail below.
Table of Contents
- Availability Schedules (My availability)
- Priority Scheduling
- Calendar Navigation
- Host and Guest Management
- Meeting Management
- Reminders
Availability Schedules (My availability)
You likely noticed a "My availability" button in the Scheduler's header. Over there, you can create and include custom Availability Schedules. This feature streamlines the booking process by allowing users to create custom schedules for certain scenarios. This ensures that the right times are available for the right meetings, improving efficiency and organization.
To learn more, we recommend checking this article, as we have covered this feature in more detail there.
Priority Scheduling
You also likely noticed the Priority Scheduling button at the header. ChiliCal’s Priority Scheduling feature is designed to streamline your day, allowing you to prioritize, deprioritize, and automatically adjust meetings based on your needs and preferences.
Calendar Navigation
We will start covering the calendar navigation and some settings to make the booker's life easier during the booking process.
Show Weekends
By default, ChiliCal's Scheduler will display calendars from Monday to Friday in the weekly view. Still, you can easily adjust it to show weekends (Saturday and Sunday) by clicking on the settings, signing in the header, and toggling the "Show Weekends" button.
Follow the same steps to switch back to the Monday to Friday view, but switch off the "Show Weekends" button.
Show Meeting Buffers
If enabled, you can view meeting buffers associated with the Meeting Type while picking time slots. You cannot modify meeting buffers on this view.
Keyboard Shortcuts Manual
We have some keyboard shortcuts to facilitate your navigation even more! Click this option to learn more or remember them:
Monthly or Weekly View
By default, the Scheduler will open in the weekly view, where you can use the arrows in the header to navigate around the weeks.
If you would like to see a monthly view, that should be useful for booking meetings, for example, days or months in advance, you can click the "Monthly" button, and the Scheduler will show you all month's days on a single screen.
You can use the arrows to navigate around each month, and once you click on the desired day, ChiliCal will show you that day's availability in more detail.
Change Timezone
In the top-left, you should be able to update the timezone to have better visibility of your prospect's timezone or any other timezone that might be relevant to your booking process:
Booked Meeting Management
Clicking "Open" next to a meeting title opens specific meeting details and also enables you to take some associated actions.
Within the meeting details on the right-hand side, you will find more information about the meeting, such as its Date, Time, Host, Guests, Location, Description, and Reminders associated with it.
As mentioned above, there are also some possible actions you can take from here:
Update Date/Time
The time and date right below the meeting's title are clickable, and you can use to update the meeting's time and/or date from there.
Cancel Meeting
You can cancel the meeting you are checking by clicking the three dots on the header and then "Cancel Meeting"
Mark as No-Show
By clicking the ghost icon, you can mark whether the prospect attended the meeting or not. This is especially useful if the Distribution associated with the meeting is set to credit back assignees for No-Shows.
You can also mark No Show from other places - click here to learn more!
Meeting Conference Link
Also, at the header, you can click the meeting conference link icon to be redirected to the meeting's link and join it.
Guest Management
In the Guests field, you can remove or make any existing Guests option by clicking the three dots next to their names.
You can also invite new Guests from the "Invite a guest..." box below. By default, we will display a menu with Chili Piper users with the proper licenses to be invited, but you can also invite users outside of Chili Piper by typing their emails and hitting return/Enter:
Location Management
If your Meeting Type uses multiple Locations, you can manage and update the one you want to use within the Location field:
Description
Do you need to update your meeting description? No worries; you can click on the Description field and update as you wish.
Reminders
Here, you can confirm which Reminders are associated with the meeting and add more using the Add Reminder button. You can also remove any Reminders that have not been sent by clicking the X for each.
RSVP
Last but not least, you can also update your response to the meeting from Chili Piper at the bottom. The available options are Going, Maybe, or Not going.
Don't forget to click Confirm Changes after performing any updates to an existing meeting!
Host and Guest Management
In this section, we will cover how to manage your meeting's host and guests, ensuring that all the required people are invited to it.
Change Host
Besides booking in your calendar, you can also book on a colleague's behalf.
Suppose you are from Sales, and now you need your prospect to talk with someone from your Onboarding Team to start their onboarding process: you can book on an Onboarding Team member calendar. There are some criteria while booking on someone else's calendar:
- The booker and the new host(assignee) must have signed into ChiliCal before and belong to the same org.
- Also, both the booker and the new host need ChiliCal Org licenses.
After ensuring both parties meet the above criteria, click on the Host dropdown at the top right and select/search for the new host.
When selecting a colleague as the Host, you will see their calendar on the Scheduler to ensure you are booking at a feasible time for them.
Adding Guests
You can include any additional Guests in the right side menu by searching for their e-mail, or their name if they are also a Chili Piper user.
If any additional guests are Chili Piper users (teammates) with an active calendar connection in Chili Piper, marked as required, we will automatically include their availability in the Scheduler with a different color so that you can consider their availability and yours altogether.
Make Optional or Make Required
If internal Guests are marked as Optional, their slots will not be displayed on the calendar screen, and consequently, their availability will not be considered during the booking process.
If you use the Make Required option, the opposite will happen: their slots will be displayed in the Scheduler, so their availability can be considered, as previously shown.
Set as Main Guest
By clicking on the three dots right next to the Guest's name, you can also set them as the Main Guest for the meeting. You will notice "Primary Guest" right next to their names once it happens.
Remove Guest
Also, by clicking on the three dots, you can remove a Guest from the booking process. If you remove the Main/Primary Guest, another Guest will be automatically assigned to this role.
You can also do Guest Management for meetings that were already booked. This will be covered next in the Meeting Management section.
Meeting Management
In this section, we will cover how to update your meeting data to ensure that the meeting invite and calendar event look as they should for the meeting participants.
Update Scheduling Link
The Scheduling Link associated with a Meeting Type is the asset that will define how your meeting invite will look: title, description, duration, location, and so on. It should be the ideal place to include key information about your meeting, such as the meeting links and any information prospects need to know before the meeting, for example.
To update the Scheduling Link in the booking process, click the "Scheduling Links" dropdown on the right side and select the one you want to use. You will see all the ones shared with you from your personal and team workspaces.
If needed, you can manually update some specific information associated with the Meeting Type, such as its duration, description, or title; we'll cover those below!
Update Date
Most users will click the slot they want in the Scheduler and book from there, but you can also manually select the day and time for your meeting:
Update the Meeting's Title
You can also update the meeting's title for the specific meeting(s) by clicking on the "Title" field on the right side and updating it as you wish.
You can also use dynamic tags to pre-populate any required data by clicking the "Insert Dynamic Tag" button and selecting the one you want.
Remember that this will also be the calendar invite's title your prospect will see.
Update Meeting's Description
The meeting description will contain the calendar invite's description visible to your prospect, and can also be manually updated by clicking on the "Description" field on the right side, and updating it as you wish.
Update Location
This will be the one listed in the calendar invite's location field and can also be manually adjusted if required by clicking the "Location" dropdown.
When using the "Custom" option, Dynamic tags can also be used to populate any links or data.
Reminders
Within this section, you can manually define which Reminders should be sent for the meeting that is about to be booked. This gives you more flexibility to ensure that only the required and needed ones are sent to prospects.
By default, Chili Piper will load all Reminders associated with the selected Meeting Type, but you can click the X icon to remove any or use the "Add Reminder" option to add any.