What are Collective Bookings?
Group scheduling simplifies the process of coordinating multiple participants for meetings, ensuring efficiency and seamless synchronization. This feature aligns the availability of various team members, making it easier to find a mutually suitable time slot for collective or group bookings. By merging individual calendars, it eliminates scheduling conflicts and streamlines the booking experience.
This capability is especially useful in scenarios such as orchestrating sales calls that require both an account executive and a sales development representative (SDR), arranging technical support sessions that involve a customer support representative and an engineer, or conducting interviews where both a recruiter and a hiring manager need to be present.
Setting up a collective booking calendar is a simple process. Navigate to Calendars ➝ Calendar Settings, select "Create Calendar," and choose "Collective Booking." Then, enter key details such as the calendar name, participating team members, a custom calendar URL, and the meeting location. Once finalized, your Collective Calendar is ready to use.
A unique aspect of collective Booking is the concept of a 'Primary Owner.' This individual leads the appointment, acts as the appointment owner, and is assigned contacts if contact assignment is enabled. The primary owner is typically the first team member added to the collective Booking, but they can be changed as needed for greater flexibility and efficient team management.
Notification-wise, all team members are alerted when a contact books an appointment. This process ensures that everyone on the team stays informed about each appointment, fostering effective communication and collaboration.
In addition to these features, collective Booking includes payment capabilities if enabled for the calendar. With this, users have to make the payment first, and only after the payment is confirmed does the appointment get booked. This system ensures a seamless, secure transaction process, making the collective booking experience smooth and convenient for both users and customers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many team members can I add to a single collective booking calendar
Answer: You can add up to 100 team members in a collective calendar, although please remember the more team members lesser the chances of finding available slots across all of them
Q: Would payments work in Collective booking?
Answer: Yes, payments would work for Collective Booking.
Q: Can I use collective booking for virtual appointments?
Answer: Collective booking can be used for virtual and physical appointments; please add the correct details in the Meeting location field.
Q: Can I remove a team member from an existing collective booking calendar?
Answer: You can remove any team member from the collective booking calendar except for the Primary owner. In case the team member you want to remove is a Primary owner, change the ownership from that user and then you would be able to remove the team member.
Q: I have changed the primary owner of the collective booking calendar, but for the existing appointment, I still see the old primary owner; why?
Answer: The details of the booked appointment would reflect based on the Calendar settings, which were there when the appointment was booked. Any appointment booked after the changes would start reflecting the changes.
Q: Is there a way I can change the Primary owner for an already-created appointment?
Answer: No, there is no way for users to change the details of an already booked collective appointment.
Q: Can I edit/reschedule a booked collective appointment?
Answer: Yes, you would be able to edit the details of the collective booking appointment. However, you could not change the team member details for the booked appointment.