How do I create a meeting calendar project?

Bookers and salespeople. Calendar projects. Calendar project participants.

Meeting calendars allow agents to book meetings between your team and contacts. While the language used in calendar revolves around booking sales meetings, it can be used for booking other types of meetings as well. 

It is important to understand the difference between:

• Booker - the agent working in LeadDesk who speaks to contacts and arranges meetings.
• Sales person - the person who actually meets with the contact.

Generally, a sales person can only see their own calendar. Bookers can potentially see multiple calendars.

Creating new calendar projects

To create a new calendar, in your Admin account:

1. Go to the Products page.
2. Go to the Meeting calendars subpage.
3. Click the Add new button.

The New Calendar Project dialog opens, with two tabs, Calendar project and Meeting events. The article covers how to complete the Calendar project tab. For information on Meeting events, see this article in the main support pages.

New Calendar Project

The Calendar project tab It is divided into four sections.

 In the first section, you specify the general settings:

• Project name (mandatory) - name under which you can find the calendar in LeadDesk.
• Duration (mandatory) - time span for which the calendar should be active.

For the next four settings, you can optionally use tags. Click the Insert tag drop-down list for any of these options and choose a tag from the list. The tag will be replaced by an actual value when a meeting is booked.

You can combine text and tags. For example, in the Default meeting title you could type "LeadDesk demo with " then add the tags for Contact first name and Contact last name.

• Default meeting title - when an agent books a meeting, this will be the title of the meeting.
• Default location - this is where the meeting will take place.
• Default sender email - the invitation email will be send on behalf of this address. If left blank, the email will be sent by no-reply@leaddesk.com. It is much better to type an email address or use the tags for Booker's email or Sales person's email. 
• Sender name - use tags to choose if the mail should be identified as sent by the Booker or the Sales person.
• Description - content for the meeting.

Calendar project options

The second section of the dialog is the Calendar project options. Click to tick the options you want to use, or untick the options you don't want to use.

• Send mail also to attendees... - Ticked by default, meaning that update mails will be sent to all participants (defined below) when the meeting changes status. If you untick this option, participants will not be notified of changes.
• Show link to call-recording... - If the call where booker arranged the meeting was recorded, ticking this option will allow the sales person access to that recording. Useful if the contact discussed specific requirements with the booker.
• Add manuscript results to meeting... - If the booker used a manuscript in LeadDesk in which they recorded information, those responses will be included in the meeting email if this option is ticked.
• Enable SMS reminders - if ticked, and if you have defined an SMS template, reminders for the meeting will be messaged to the participants.
• Allow private meeting data synchronization... - Ticked by default. If unticked, changes to the meeting made outside of LeadDesk will not be reflected in LeadDesk.
• Allow users to see the titles... - If the sales person has synched their calendar with an external calendar, appointments booked outside LeadDesk will normally appear as "busy". If this option is ticked, they will be able to see the titles of those events instead.
• Allow users to book meetings on already busy time slots - unticked by default, if ticked, it is possible to book overlapping meetings.
• Allow agents to edit booked meetings - Ticked by default. If unticked, agents will not be able to change booked meetings.
• Allow agent to change the meeting's status - Unticked by default 

Maximum number of bookings allowed

The third sections lets you define caps on the number of bookings.

• Optionally, type maximum values for Daily, Weekly or Monthly bookings, as needed.

Project participants

Here you can define stakeholders for the meeting. This doesn't necessarily mean that all persons will attend the meeting; rather that they can receive information when a meeting is booked or when its status is changed. 

You can add rows, and allow other participants by clicking the Add calendar project participant link. For each participant, you can specify:

• Full name
• Email
• Phone
• Language - click the drop-down list to select from a range of languages.
• Meeting template - insert a invitation template (described below) this section.
• Role - Click the drop-down list to select the participant's role. Possible roles - Sales person, Manager, Sales person & manager, or Team leader.

Once the Calendar project tab is complete, you can move to the Meeting events tab. Alternatively, you can create the calendar project, then come back in to edit the Meeting events.

Completing the calendar project

To finish creating the calendar project:

1. Click the Create button at the bottom right of the dialog.

To attach a calendar project to an outbound campaign, it must be selected in the campaign's settings. See this article.