Setting your appointment hours

As an Agent, you can manage the times that you are available to take appointments with customers. This topic describes how to use one or more Week Templates (including the Default template) to set your standard availability hours each week, and Day Templates to change your availability hours for one or more specific days.

Note that these templates determine your general availability hours for appointments. However, any events or appointments in your linked work calendar will be taken into account before showing your availability to customers.

Your Office Manager can also update your appointment hours.

Setting up your weekly default template

When your Pexip Engage account is initially created, you'll have a blank weekly default template applied to your calendar. Your weekly default template is used to determine your availability in the absence of any other day or week template being applied.

Your default template won't have any hours or offices assigned to it at first, so you'll need to add these as follows:

From the top right of the page, select your name and from the drop-down select Account settings.
From the options on the left, select Appointment hours.
Under Week Templates, select the icon next to Default template and select Configure slots.

You'll see a calendar showing the days Monday to Sunday.
For one of the days you'll be available for appointments, click on your start time and drag to your end time. A coloured block appears over the selected times and a configuration panel opens on the right.
From the panel, select the office(s) for which you'll be available to take appointments for that block of time.

For each office, by default your appointments will be confirmed automatically, but you can toggle the option to Confirm manually.
Select Save.
Repeat these steps for each day of the week you're available for appointments.
When you're done, from the top of the page select Back.

The hours you have set up in your default template are now automatically applied to your availability calendar.

If you have other weekly working patterns (for example, if you work Saturdays some weeks but not others, or you work from different locations on different weeks), you can set up one or more additional weekly templates and apply these to selected dates instead of the default. You can also set up day templates for those days where you won't be available for your regular hours, for example if you are on vacation.

Setting up additional weekly templates

If you have more than one regular weekly availability pattern, you can set up additional weekly templates as follows:

From the Appointment hours Settings page, select the + icon next to Week Templates.

The New Week Template panel appears on the right.
Enter a Name for the new template.
Select the Order in which this template will appear in your list of available templates.
Select a Color to be used in your availability calendar to indicate the dates on which this calendar has been applied.
Select Create

The new template appears in the Week Templates section.
Select the icon to the right of the new template, and select Configure Slots

You'll see a calendar showing the days Monday to Sunday.
For one of the days you'll be available for appointments, click on your start time and drag to your end time. A coloured block appears over the selected times and a configuration panel opens on the right.
From the panel, select the office(s) for which you'll be available to take appointments for that block of time.

For each office, by default your appointments will be confirmed automatically, but you can toggle the option to Confirm manually.
Select Save.
Repeat these steps for each day of the week you're available for appointments.
When you're done, from the top of the page select Back.

Now you can apply this template to relevant dates in your calendar.

Applying weekly templates to your calendar

Your default weekly template is automatically applied to your calendar. If you have set up any additional weekly templates, you must now apply them to the relevant dates in your calendar. To do this:

From the calendar in the Appointment hours Settings page, click and drag to select two or more concurrent days that will have the same weekly template.

You can apply a weekly template up to 11 months in advance.
From the Assign Week Template option, select the weekly template you wish to use for the selected days.

The background for the selected dates will change from grey (which indicates the default weekly template) to the colour of the selected template.

Setting up day templates

There may be some days when you are not going to be available for the hours set up in your weekly templates. For these days you can create and apply a Day Template instead.

By default you will have a day template labelled Unavailable — apply this to any days you will not be available to take any appointments at all.

To set up a new Day Template:

From the Appointment hours Settings page, select the + icon next to Day Templates.

The New Day Template panel appears on the right.
Enter a Name for the new template.
Select the Order in which this template will appear in your list of available templates.
Select a Color to be used in your availability calendar to indicate the days on which this calendar has been applied.
Select Create

The new template appears in the list of Day templates.
Select the icon to the right of the new template, and select Configure Slots

You'll see a schedule showing a single day.
Each block of time you'll be available for appointments that day, click on your start time and drag to your end time. A coloured block appears over the selected times and a configuration panel opens on the right of the page.
From the panel, select the office(s) for which you'll be available to take appointments for that block of time.

For each office, by default your appointments will be confirmed automatically, but you can toggle the option to Confirm manually.
Select Save.
Repeat these steps for each block of time during the day that you're available for appointments.
When you're done, from the top of the page select Back.

Now you can apply this template to relevant days in your calendar.

Applying day templates to your calendar

To override a weekly template with a day template:

From the calendar in the Appointment hours Settings page, select the day on which you want to apply the day template.
From the Assign Day Template option, select the day template you wish to apply.

The background for the selected day will change colour to indicate that a day template has been applied.

Overriding the default planning rules

When you set up your weekly and daily templates, in most cases you simply select the hours you will be working and the offices you'll be working from, and the default planning rules (which are set by the Office Manager and determine which subjects and meeting types are offered for each office) are automatically used for your appointment availability.

However, with the agreement of your Office Manager, you can override the planning rules so that you select which subjects and meeting types you'll offer for each particular time slot.

To do this:

When configuring the slots for any day or week template, select the office whose planning rules you wish to deviate from, and then select Show advanced options:
From the additional options that appear, enable Override default planning rules. Select Enable subject, and from the list that appears, select the first subject you want to offer for this slot:
For the selected subject, use the buttons to select which meeting types you will offer for that subject in that slot:

You can only select meeting types that have already been enabled for that subject by an Administrator.
Repeat for every additional subject you want to offer for this time slot.
Select Save.

What's next?

Now that you've set up your availability, you can start Working with your calendar.