Note: Online Scheduling is in its initial beta release. To see what scheduling and booking features the team is currently working on, visit the Scheduling Beta Roadmap page in your account. If you have a feature request pertaining to online scheduling or booking, be sure to get that documented on our Feature Request board.
You'll see the new Scheduling section in your sidebar! 🎉 From here, you can create a New Bookable Event for Mini Sessions:
The Mini Session setup contains four main steps:
Event Details
Event Type, Brand & Job Type
In this section you'll select the event type; what you'd like to name this event; which Booking Site this event belongs to (i.e. which brand); the URL and what type of lead you want this event to create:
Note: You will need to select a Job Type but if you send an invitation, we'll use their existing job, otherwise a new lead will be created using the Job Type specified here.
Job Role & Lead Status
Next you'll specify which Job Role should be assigned to the contact, if a lead is created:
You'll see two new Lead Statuses have been created in your account, Scheduling: In Progress and Scheduling: Stale. When a new lead is created, you'll specify the lead status that should be used here:
We recommend using Scheduling: In Progress. This lead status will automatically change to New once the client has completed the booking process.
If the client doesn't complete the booking process, the lead will remain in Scheduling: In Progress for 7 days, at which time it'll move to Scheduling: Stale then be automatically closed after another 7 days. You can customize the timings of these automatic changes in your Lead Status settings.
Filtering your leads by Scheduling: In Progress will allow you to see any clients who have dropped out of the booking process, and the new Booking in Progress section on the lead, will show what stage of the process they made it to.
Event Confirmed & Primary Session
Decide whether you want this event to be marked as confirmed immediately, or show as tentative until you manually confirm it. You can also choose if you want this to be set as the Primary Session.
For Mini Sessions, if you require payment on booking, you'll likely want both of these options checked:
Event Description & Header
Next add an Event Description and Event Header to your Bookable Event:
The built-in image crop tool will let you select the correct aspect ratio for your Header image:
Public or Private Event
The last step in Event Details is to decide whether you want this to be a Public or Private event:
Public events will be listed on your public Booking Site. Private events will not be listed on your Booking Site but will still be available at the URL listed above. You can send invitations to either public or private events directly from any lead or job in Táve.
Date, Time & Location
Unlike bookable events for calls, meetings, sessions and other events - Mini Sessions don't have an Availability section. Instead you'll set up the dates, times and locations that you'd like to offer in this section.
Mini Sessions don't use an availability schedule and won't check your Táve calendar or any other connected calendars for conflicts. The dates and time slots set up here will be offered regardless of any other events on your Táve calendar.
However, the time slots you set up will block out your availability on other bookable events. All Mini Session time slots set up will block out availability whether that slot has been booked yet or not. This is to prevent any bookings from other bookable events on the days/times you've set up Mini Session slots for.
Use the Add Date & Time button to get started:
Select the dates in the calendar that you're offering these Mini Sessions. You can select multiple dates, if you're offering those at the same location. Next enter the location to see the weather, sunrise and sunset times for those days.
Now you can enter your time slots. You can choose to have your time slots automatically calculated according to your start time or end time; enter the number of slots; the duration and the gap you'd like between slots. You can also add in breaks to block out slots being offered during that time.
You'll see a summary of the dates & times offered. If you'd like to add additional dates/times (perhaps at a second location), use the Add Date & Time button at the bottom, before moving on to the Booking Process section:
Booking Process
The next step is to decide how clients can book this event. Táve will always collect your client's name, email and phone number by default, but for Mini Sessions you might want your client to complete a quote and pay for their session on booking.
Note: In the Booking Process you'll need to choose EITHER adding a Quote OR Adding a Questionnaire and/or a Contract. If you choose to add a quote, your quote can contain questionnaires and contracts within it, as the Add a Questionnaire and Add a Contract dropdowns will be disabled.
Notifications & Permissions
The final step is to set up the Notifications & Permissions. In here you can add an optional confirmation message or choose to redirect to an external URL after booking:
Note: if you want to set a confirmation message for all Bookable Events on a particular Booking Site, you can set that up in the Booking Sites section.
Confirmation Notice
Add and personalize the confirmation email that is sent when a Mini Session is booked. If you set the event to be marked as confirmed, this will happen immediately on booking. If you set the event to tentative, this will be sent once you manually confirm the event in Táve:
You can use the default template or select a template of your own. You might want to create your own bookable event confirmation and reminder templates, with specific information for these Mini Sessions:
Event Reminder Notices
Add event reminder notice emails that your invitee will receive if the event is confirmed. You can specify the time the reminder goes out (e.g. 1 hour before) and set up multiple reminders (e.g. 24 hours before and 1 hour before).
Use the default template or select a template of your own:
Permissions - Cancel & Reschedule
Finally, choose if your client can cancel or reschedule their Mini Session. You can specify a minimum number of hours or days before the event start for each:
Your Mini Sessions are set up and ready for your clients to start booking 🎉🎉
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to the Táve Support team if you need assistance, by clicking on Support in the top menu. 🙂
See what else we have planned for online scheduling and unassisted booking on our Beta Roadmap!