Appointment booking in chat

Overview

Visitors can request an appointment with your team without leaving the chat widget. They pick a day and time, share their name and email, and your team gets a request to accept or decline.

Booking happens through the Book Appointment step in a workflow. On plans with AI, your AI agent can also start a booking on its own when a visitor asks for one. Before you begin, finish Calendar → Calendar setup so there are hours and employees to book.

Add the Book Appointment step

1. Go to Workflows and open your workflow.
2. Drag Book Appointment from the node palette onto the canvas. It only appears if your plan includes Calendar.
3. Connect a step into it, for example a Question option such as "Book a demo", or your AI Chat step.
4. Connect it out to what should happen next. If the next step is End, the conversation closes after the request. To let visitors keep chatting, connect it back to your AI Chat step.
5. Select the step to open its settings. You can change these, or leave them empty to use the defaults:

You can use the placeholders {name}, {email} and {time} in the success message. An amber warning means calendar setup isn't finished.

6. Click Save in the settings panel, then Save the workflow.

Let your AI agent start bookings

On plans with AI, you can let your agent open the booking flow whenever a visitor asks, for example "Can I book a demo?"

1. Go to AI agents and edit the agent used by your AI Chat step.
2. In Skills, select Book an appointment. It's listed only when your plan includes Calendar.
3. Click Update Agent.
4. Make sure the workflow contains a Book Appointment step. It doesn't have to be connected directly to the AI step.

We recommend adding a line to the agent's instructions such as: "To schedule a demo or meeting, always use the Book an appointment tool. Never say a meeting is booked yourself." If the agent also has Schedule a callback selected, consider removing it so the AI doesn't pick it instead.

What the visitor sees

1. Day buttons: only days with free times are shown.
2. Time buttons for that day, in the visitor's local time, plus ← Other days to go back. On AI plans, visitors can also type a time, such as "Tuesday afternoon".
3. Subject buttons ("What is the appointment about?"): only on plans without AI. On AI plans the subject is worked out from the conversation.
4. Name and email: only the details the chat doesn't already know.
5. Your success message, confirming the request was sent.

If someone else takes the chosen time in the meantime, the visitor is told and shown fresh options.

What happens next

• The visitor receives a "Request received" email saying your team will contact them to confirm.
• A free employee is picked at random, gets a tentative event on their calendar and receives an email with Accept and Decline buttons.
• When the request is accepted, the visitor receives a "Confirmed" email. If it's declined, they're told the time isn't available.

Tips

• If chat says "Online booking isn't available right now", finish calendar setup by clicking Finish setup on the Review step.
• If chat says there are no open times, check hours, minimum notice, busy times and each employee's Active setting.
• If the AI mentions a demo but no time buttons appear, check that Book an appointment is selected on the agent and the workflow has a Book Appointment step.

Related articles

• Set up your calendar
• Manage bookings
• Workflow builder basics
• Workflow node types
• AI agents