How to create group meeting type?

Modified on Sat, 23 Sep 2023 at 02:19 PM

What is the use of group meeting type?

A group event type is used to schedule meetings with multiple people for the same time slot. This is useful for webinars, training, product demo, etc. Here if any invitee reschedules/cancels the appointment, it does not affect other invitees who have booked the same timeslot to attend the meeting. Suitable for: Webinars, Training sessions, online classes, etc.

Steps to create group meeting type

Whether you're organizing a workshop, team meeting, or group session, this guide will walk you through the process of setting up a group event type.

Step 1: Access the meeting types Page

Open the Leadmonk app and navigate to the 'meeting types' page.

Look for the option to create a new event type, usually denoted by a '+ Create' button. Click on it to proceed.

Step 2: Select Group Event Type

After clicking on the '+ Create' button, a popup window will appear.

In the popup window, choose the option for creating a group event type. This will enable the necessary settings and configurations for managing group events.

Step 3: Provide Event Details

In the next popup window, you will be prompted to specify the event details. Enter the event name, description, duration, and location information in the respective fields. Additionally, set the maximum number of invitees allowed per appointment. This ensures that the group event doesn't exceed its capacity. Once you have filled in the necessary information, click on the 'SAVE' button to create the group event.

After creating the group event, you can further customize its details based on your specific requirements (refer below for this).

What details have to be specified in the group event type customization?

Event Info Section

Event Type is - Enable/Disable - If the event type is disabled, then its scheduling page cannot be accessed by invitees to book the appointments. It can be switched on again.

Visible on booking page - Enable/Disable - If this flag is on, then the event type is shown on the booking page i.e. as part of the appointments directory. But invitees who have the scheduling link can schedule an appointment with you.

Event Name - Event type lets you easily pre-configure your Appointment settings, and then reuse these settings for faster appointment scheduling. Enter a name for event type.

Description/Instruction - Specify description of your event type. This is an optional field.

Duration - Define how long your appointment will be. You can specify up to 3 durations here. With this option, you can give multiple appointment duration options to your invitees to let them specify their preference at the time of appointment booking.

Maximum number of invitees per slot - In this field, specify the maximum number of invitees allowed per group appointment.

Display remaining spots on scheduling page - This switch is used to indicate whether to show available open spots on the booking page for invitees to book the event. if the switch is off, then available spots per event time slot is not shown. Otherwise available spots per available slot is shown to invitees on the booking page.

Location Preference - Enter the location where the appointment will take place. It can be Google Meet, MS Teams, Zoom, or a phone number for invitee(s) to call you or a physical address where you want to meet. You can specify only one location option here.

Invitee to book an appointment providing - Set how you want your invitees to book an appointment with you using any one of the following options –
- Email
- Mobile number
- Email & Mobile number

Select Calendar to update - Specify the calendar to fetch free/busy availability and to add appointments as and when invitees book time with you using the scheduling link.

URL (Scheduling Link) - Scheduling Link is a public URL that you can share with anyone to easily book an appointment with you. Add this self-scheduling option to an email, share it via SMS or chat, or integrate it with your web lead forms.

Availability Preferences Section

Select Availability Profile - The Availability Profile allows you to restrict your available hours for this event type. Leadmonk will only offer available time slots within this availability window. LeadMonk syncs with your calendar so it always knows your availability.

Date Range - Set a range of dates when you can accept appointments. User can specify any of the below options:
- “XY number of days into the future” -> rolling calendar days
- Within a date range
- Indefinitely into the future

Show Availability in increments of - The frequency of available time slots for invitees. Start time increments are fixed and are only available up to every 120 minutes. If you need to set specific available start times, we suggest you set intervals or time frames when you are available to take an appointment.

How much heads up should invitee give - The minimum lead time that is required before an appointment can be scheduled and helps prevent last-minute appointments. Your invitees will only be offered a time frame that is outside of this time.

How much buffer time to add before or after your appointment - If you want to avoid back-to-back meetings, add buffer time before or after your appointments in Leadmonk. Buffers are extra time that can be added before and/or after an appointment. This can be helpful if you want extra time to prepare before a meeting or post appointment work. The buffer time before or after any appointment will be marked as busy, so people can't book your time then. This means you can prep for the next appointment...or just get some coffee. Buffers are event type-specific so you can tweak and optimize buffer settings for each of your event types. Check this help page to know more.

Maximum allowed appointments per day for this event type - You will need some concentrated work from time to time, so you may want to limit the number of appointments you schedule every day. To accomplish this, set up the appointments limit as shown below. You can specify a number in the below specified field and it will no longer be possible for your day to have any more than that number of appointments using that event type. You can also set this limit at Leadmonk user account level to be applicable across the event types. Check this help page to know more.

Preference on free slots:
- If the “Fetch from Calendar” option is selected, then free/busy availability is read from the connected calendar(s) to show availability to your invitees. This is a standard feature.
- If the “Standalone” option is selected, then the event type itself behaves as a standalone calendar to manage free/busy availability instead of the connected calendar(s). This option adds meeting invite to the connected calendar but does not refer to the connected calendar for availability check. Instead availability check is done at Leadmonk event type level. This is to be used in special cases such as managing bookings for shared resources such as meeting rooms where you may not have dedicated calendars for each shared resources. This can also be used for modelling multi-specialty doctors clinic where bookings are managed centrally and you may not have separate calendar for each doctor. Check this blog to know more.

Invitee Preferences Section

Scheduling Page Language - Here you can choose the language for your booking page. Localize the scheduling experience for your clients with booking pages in 14 languages. Read more.

Invitee name input format - Here you get 2 options - "Name" and "First Name, Last Name". This is mainly to collect invitee name on the booking page as part of appointment booking. If you choose Name

If you choose 'First Name, Last Name' option, this is how your booking page is shown:

If choose 'Name' option, this is how your booking page is shown:

Fix the time zone to use in the scheduling page - Set this field to YES only for in-person appointments. Otherwise invitees will see your availability in their time zone and it may confuse them for in-person appointment which is going to happen in host time zone.

Invitee Questions - Get all the info you need from invitees before the appointment. Choose from a variety of field types including text, checkbox, radio button, and dropdown. You can add any number of invitee questions. You can also mark whether a question is mandatory or not. You can also reorder questions. Read more.

On booking confirmation - You can redirect your customers to an external URL upon appointment confirmation. Here you can specify your website URL to be redirected.

Notify a colleague - If this field is filled with an email address, then that email address will be added as an additional attendee to every appointment that gets booked using this event type.

Restrictions on Rescheduling and Cancellation - By default, invitees have the ability to reschedule or cancel appointments at any time before the start of the appointment. However, you now have the flexibility to customize this behavior to meet your specific requirements.

There are four options available to modify the standard behavior of rescheduling events:

Default: Events can be rescheduled anytime before the start of the event.
Can Never Reschedule: Events cannot be rescheduled at any time.
Before Event Starts: This option allows you to specify a timeframe in minutes/hours/days to allow rescheduling before the event start time. For example, selecting "1 hour before event start" would allow events to be rescheduled up to 1 hour before the start of the event.
After Event Starts: This option allows you to specify a timeframe in minutes/hours/days to allow rescheduling after the event start time. For example, selecting "1 hour after event start" would allow events to be rescheduled until 1 hour after the start of the event.

Similarly, there are four options available to modify the standard behavior of event cancellation:

Default: Events can be cancelled anytime before the start of the event.
Can Never Cancel: Events cannot be cancelled at any time.
Before Event Starts: This option requires you to specify a timeframe in minutes/hours/days to allow cancellation before the event start time. For example, selecting "1 hour before event start" would allow events to be cancelled up to 1 hour before the start of the event.
After Event Starts: This option requires you to specify a timeframe in minutes/hours/days to allow cancellation after the event start time. For example, selecting "1 hour after event start" would allow events to be cancelled until 1 hour after the start of the event.

Please note that any changes made to these reschedule and cancellation fields will only apply to newly booked events.

Notification Preferences

Reduce no-shows and keep appointments top of mind with reminders for your invitees. Invitees can specify whether they want to receive appointment updates as SMS or WhatsApp message. In this section, you can make use of either system default notifications or workflows.

Default notifications: You can specify any number of reminders (e.g.: 1 day before, 1hr before etc..). You can also specify what kind of reminder you want to send and when (e.g.: Email reminder 1hr before and text reminder 30min before). Check this page to know more.

Workflow is an automation that is triggered throughout the appointment lifecycle, from the time an appointment is scheduled all the way through your follow-up with attendees. Send an email or text to your invitees when an appointment is scheduled, rescheduled or canceled. Send custom email/sms reminders before the appointment and send thank you or follow up email/text upon appointment completion. Check this page to know more.

Payment Preferences

Collect payments with Stripe when appointments are booked and reduce no-shows. Include payment terms within the appointment scheduling process. This option is enabled only when you connect stripe/PayPal to your Leadmonk account. Read more.

Troubleshooting

The Troubleshooting feature is used to identify why some of your time slots are not available on your booking page.

The availability check on the troubleshooting page is calculated based on the selected month and configured 'Availability Preferences' i.e. Date Range and Heads Up (lead time) settings.

Select the date for which you want to analyze your availability and then click on the timeslot marked as unavailable to see why its not unavailable on the booking page.

How to edit an Event type?

To modify the details of an event type, locate the three dots on the event type highlighted within a green circle and click on that. This will bring up a menu, and from there you can select the "Edit" option to proceed with editing the event type.

How to create a clone of an Event type?

To create a clone or copy of an event type, locate the three dots on the event type highlighted within a green circle and click on that. This will bring up a menu, and from there you can select the "Clone" option to proceed with cloning the event type.

How to delete an Event type?

To delete an event type, locate the three dots on the event type highlighted within a green circle and click on that. This will bring up a menu, and from there you can select the "Delete" option to proceed with deleting the event type.

NOTE: Standard behavior is an appointment can be rescheduled or cancelled any time before the start of (start date & time) appointment. Post that it’s not possible. This standard behavior can be changed using the setting available in Invitee preferences section.

NOTE: It’s not possible to convert one kind of event type to any other kind of event type. E.g.: It’s not possible to change/convert Group Event Type to One-on-one or vice-versa.