How do I show my openings and let clients pick a time?
Openings are the times clients can pick with you. Set them once and the Book appointment card on your page shows them. When a client picks one, it arrives in your inbox as a request with their first message, and you confirm it, move it or decline it in the conversation. Nothing gets booked on its own unless you switch on Instant booking.
The first time, Openings starts with a short page on what booking means for you: you confirm every request, and you choose which services can be booked. Then it walks you through setup in five steps. Clients can pick a time once you finish the setup, and a new page shows in search from then. If you leave before the end, Continue setup on the Openings page takes you back, with what you already saved filled in.
You can also start from a conversation. While you have no openings, Offer a time and the Details panel say what's missing. Before you finish the setup, the button takes you back into it, and when you finish, Continue brings you back to that conversation with the time picker open, so you can offer the client a time right away. After that, it opens your Openings or Services page in a new tab, and the conversation shows your times when you come back to it.
Your hours alone are enough to get started. Connecting a calendar is optional: it removes the times you are already busy and puts confirmed bookings in your calendar. Google Calendar and Outlook (Outlook.com and Microsoft 365) both work.
1. Weekly hours
Open Openings in the sidebar. For a clinic provider, it's in their listing editor, under Logistics. Pick your time zone, switch on the days you work, and set a start and end time for each. Add hours gives a day a second range, like 09:00 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 17:00. Copy to other days applies one day's hours, and where they're offered, to other days.
If you offer more than one place (online, home visits or several offices), each range has a Where row: pick where you see clients during those hours, like your office on Monday morning and online in the afternoon. Everything is picked to start, and a range with everything picked also covers an office you add later. Dates that differ have the same Where row.
Save, and your page shows openings.
2. Dates that differ
For holidays, conferences, or an extra Saturday. Add the date and either mark it closed or give it its own hours. Your weekly hours are replaced for that date only. Full until a certain date? Close the days until then: your page shows your next opening after them.
3. Slot rules
These cut your hours into times clients can pick. The defaults work for most practices.
- Start times every: 30 minutes by default. A 09:00 to 17:00 day with 50-minute sessions offers 09:00, 09:30, and so on up to 16:00.
- Free time before and after a session: a gap kept around anything busy in your calendar.
- Minimum notice: 24 hours ahead by default.
- Latest a client can pick: 60 days ahead by default.
- Max. bookings per day: no limit by default. Set one, and once a day holds that many bookings and requests through Promptd, clients see no more times that day, even with hours left. Events in your connected calendar don't count toward it. You can still offer a time on a full day yourself.
Each service uses its own duration, so a 15-minute consultation and a 60-minute session get different times from the same hours.
4. Google Calendar or Outlook
The Calendars card lists both. Press Connect next to Google Calendar or Outlook, sign in, and accept every permission. If one is left out, the row shows Permission missing and nothing is connected: press Connect again and allow them all. Promptd only reads whether you are free or busy, never what an event is. It writes only to one calendar of its own, described below.
A connected calendar also earns your page the full booking points of your discovery score. Hours without a calendar earn half, and a calendar that needs reconnecting stops earning the other half until you press Reconnect.
Once connected, the row shows the account and how many of its calendars count as busy. Press Manage to tick the calendars that should block openings under Calendars that count as busy, then Done. Changes in your calendar reach your page within a few minutes.
You can connect both. Busy times from both are taken out; confirmed bookings are added to one of them, marked Receives bookings. To move that, open the other account's Manage dialog and choose Add confirmed bookings to this account. Bookings already in the first calendar stay there.
If a provider stops sharing your calendar, the row tells you and its busy times are not taken out until you press Reconnect. Disconnect, at the bottom of the Manage dialog, removes Promptd's access; your hours stay.
Outlook and Microsoft 365
Outlook.com accounts connect like Google. A work or school account in Microsoft 365 may show Your organization has to approve Promptd first instead of connecting: your organization only lets an administrator allow new apps. Ask your IT admin to approve Promptd for calendars; once they have, Connect works from the same card. Nothing else is needed on your side.
Owl Practice, Jane and other apps
If your sessions live in practice software like Owl Practice, Jane or SimplePractice, or in iCloud, press Add next to Calendar link in the same card and paste the calendar link your app gives you. Its sessions block your openings too. Steps for each app: Add a calendar link.
Bookings in your calendar
With a calendar connected, every confirmed booking is added to a calendar named Promptd · your name in the connected account, for example "Promptd · Brigitte Naggar". Promptd creates it the first time you connect. In a clinic, one account can be connected on several practitioners' pages and each page gets its own calendar, which you can share with that practitioner from Google Calendar or Outlook. The event carries the service, the client's name, the time, the location for in-person sessions and a link to the conversation. Moving a booking moves the event; cancelling it removes the event. Promptd never adds, changes or removes events in any other calendar.
That calendar is yours to colour, hide, share or show like any other. It is never used as a busy calendar, since Promptd already knows those bookings. If your calendar refuses an update, the Manage dialog tells you the date; your bookings are not affected and the next confirmation tries again.
5. Instant booking
Off by default. Every picked time is then a request you confirm, decline or move from the conversation.
Switch on Book instantly and clients book a picked time directly, without your confirmation. The time is held for them while they write their first message and booked when they send it. You get the booking in your inbox and in your calendar. You can still cancel it or move it from the conversation.
Instant booking needs a connected calendar or a calendar link, so your busy times are respected. If the connection breaks, it pauses and picked times are requests again until you reconnect.
6. Offered services
Each service has a switch under Offered services. On: clients see it on your page and can request a time for it, or book one directly with Instant booking. Off: it's hidden from your page, and clients can't pick it or message you about it. You can switch every service off; once openings are set up, your page then shows no services and leaves search until you turn one back on. Until you finish setting up openings, a service not accepting new clients shows as off, and switching it on opens it to new clients.
7. Preview
Preview openings, at the bottom of the page, shows your booking window the way clients see it: your services, then each one's days and times, from your saved settings. You can't pick a time there. Save first to see a change. Services clients don't see are listed above the times.
8. A clinic's hours on one page
In a clinic, Openings in the sidebar shows every published profile's hours on a real week, with dates. Use Today and the arrows to change weeks, and Show hours for to see one provider.
- Not set up under a name means clients can't book that provider yet. Set up asks for their services, then their hours, then their calendar. Saving hours on this page doesn't finish anyone's setup.
- Click a day to change that date only, like a later start on Thursday the 16th. Edit week in that box opens their whole week.
- ⋯ next to a name: Edit hours changes their weekly hours. Services switches their services on or off; No services offered under a name opens the same list. Copy hours to gives the same week to others. Hours at an office someone doesn't work at are left out, and the dialog says so before you copy. Connect calendar opens that provider's own Openings page.
- Dates that differ, under the week, lists every upcoming closed day or day with other hours, including ones set on a provider's own page. Block a date closes whole days for everyone or for some people, like a holiday. If someone had other hours that day, the dialog says blocking replaces them. Copy hours to and Block a date list only providers who are set up.
Owners, admins and members can all change anyone's hours here. A profile appears once it's published; drafts get their hours in the setup wizard.
What clients see
Your page's Book appointment card shows up to seven upcoming days with times for the service the client picks, each with how many times it has. A day, + or Book time opens the booking window, where the client picks the time and, under Location, online or one of your offices, then Continue. The window opens on your soonest time and where it is. The times shown are the ones offered at the location picked. A day with times only elsewhere is outlined, and an empty day says where there are times, with a button to switch (like Show online times). Times show in your time zone, and clients can switch to theirs. On phones, See times at the bottom of your page and the Upcoming openings days open the same window. Your page doesn't show a link to an outside booking calendar.
A client who picks a time lands in the message form with the service, time, format and location filled in. Their message arrives in your inbox with the request pinned at the top of the conversation, and the notification email shows it too. The client has already picked the format and, for in person, the location. Confirm books it in one click, Modify offers another time, service or option, or keeps the time and changes only the format or location (for example online instead of in person) and Decline asks why: This time doesn't work frees the slot with an optional note, while Not taking new clients, Not the right fit or Can't offer what they asked also sends the client a polite message you can edit, in one press. If you stopped offering the format or address a client asked for, Confirm tells you so, and its Modify button opens the request on one you offer. If the client picked the wrong service, change it there rather than declining: you can pick any of your services, including ones clients can't book directly, and the client accepts or declines the change. They sit on the request's card in the conversation and in the Details panel. Before anything is booked, Offer a time and Decline sit under the message box; that Decline sends the same polite message. Until something is booked, Details shows your next open days, each with how many times it has: pick one, or Offer a time, to choose a time (and the service, if the request doesn't name one). The format and location start on the client's answers, and Change service switches to another service. Nothing is archived unless you archive it. Details also shows what the client is booking (the current booking's service and format, or their first answers before any booking) and your past bookings with them. The same buttons are on each request in your Bookings page. You have two business days to answer (Saturdays and Sundays don't count), and never later than the appointment itself. The conversation shows Answer by with the exact deadline. A request you don't answer by then expires and the time opens up again. Replying to the notification email sends a message to the client, but it doesn't answer the request: open the conversation to confirm, change or decline. Two clients can request the same slot; you decide. With Instant booking on, the time is booked when the client sends and the conversation opens on the confirmed booking.
FAQ
Do I need to connect a calendar?
No. Weekly hours are enough. Google Calendar and Outlook connect directly. Owl Practice, Jane, SimplePractice, iCloud and other apps that give a calendar link can be added with Calendar link: see Add a calendar link.
Can Promptd see my appointments?
No, only whether you are free or busy. Remove the access anytime with Disconnect, or at myaccount.google.com/permissions for Google and account.live.com/consent/Manage for a personal Microsoft account (myapps.microsoft.com for a work account).
Why is a time not offered?
It is busy in a ticked calendar, inside a buffer, sooner than your notice, or on a closed date.
My page shows no openings
You need at least one weekly range and one service switched on under Offered services.
Does picking a time book it?
Only with Instant booking on. Otherwise you confirm in the conversation, and nothing is booked until you do.
Where do confirmed bookings go?
Into the conversation, your Bookings page and, with a calendar connected, the Promptd calendar in your Google or Outlook account (the one named after you).
The Promptd calendar does not show on my iPhone or iPad
Apple's Calendar app only syncs a Google account's main calendars by default. Open calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect on the device, tick the Promptd calendar and save.
I work in a clinic
Anyone with editor access can set hours and connect a calendar on a practitioner's page. Connect that practitioner's own Google or Microsoft account. On Microsoft 365, the clinic's IT admin may have to approve Promptd once for everyone. To set everyone's hours at once, use the clinic's Openings page (section 8).