Appointment Settings
Configure how appointments get booked, appointment length, booking hours, who they route to, and the reminders around them.
When an AI employee schedules an appointment, it finds availability using your appointment settings: booking hours, appointment length and spacing, and concurrency limits. If the target team member has a connected calendar, careCycle also checks it for personal conflicts and creates the event there, so appointments appear in both careCycle and their calendar.
You manage appointment settings from Configure in the sidebar, under the Appointment Settings tab. careCycle created a starter configuration when your Receptionist's number was provisioned; most agencies begin by reviewing and adjusting it rather than creating one from scratch.
Appointment settings are shared building blocks. One configuration can back your Receptionist, several campaigns, and transfer fallbacks at once. Each configuration in the list shows a "Used by" badge listing exactly which campaigns and transfer destinations rely on it, so check that before editing. A configuration that is in use cannot be deleted until it is unassigned everywhere.
The editor has four tabs: Basics (name, description, and duration), Limits (how often this can be booked), Routing (how the agent is picked at booking time), and Workflows (reminders, confirmations, and follow-ups).
Basics
- Title: the name your team sees everywhere this configuration is used, for example "30 Min Medicare Review".
- Description: a short note about this appointment type, shown on the customer's booking page.
- Duration: appointment length in minutes, from 5 to 240 in 5-minute steps.
- Meeting type: how the appointment happens.
- Phone Call (AI agent), the default: at the appointment time, the AI calls the customer from your business number and transfers them to the assigned agent. The customer just waits for the call, no dialing in.
- Phone Call (agent-initiated): at the appointment time, the assigned agent gets a "Call now" prompt and dials the customer from the softphone.
- In-person and video call options are coming soon.
- Display the caller ID on the booking page: optionally show customers the number their call will come from, so they know what to answer.
Limits
These controls decide how many appointments can be offered and when:
| Setting | What it does | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Time between slots | How far apart offered start times are. 30 means a new slot every 30 minutes. | 5-240 minutes |
| Max options offered | How many slots the AI employee offers on the call. | 1-5 |
| Minimum notice (hours) | The earliest an appointment can be offered, in hours from now. Optional. | 0+ |
| Concurrent limit | How many of these callbacks can run at the same time before the rest wait in line. Only shown for the External transfer routing mode; in the other modes the assigned agent's own calendar controls overlap. | 1-20 |
Two optional toggles narrow availability further:
- Limit booking date range: restrict this appointment type to a specific date window with an earliest and latest date. Useful for seasonal pushes like AEP review appointments.
- Limit booking hours: restrict when this appointment type can be booked, narrower than your organization's operating hours. Add one or more windows, each covering selected days (with Weekdays and Weekends presets) and a start and end time. Windows must fall inside your business hours, and days with no window cannot be booked. Leave the toggle off to simply inherit your organization's operating hours.
Routing
The Assignment mode decides who each appointment goes to at booking time:
- Customer's agent (default): always assign to the agent already attached to the customer record.
- Softphone destination: pick an agent at booking time using the routing attached to a softphone destination. Choosing this reveals a destination picker and a preview of that destination's routing flow.
- External transfer: no agent assignment. The callback is dispatched through a transfer destination at appointment time.
The last two modes point at your transfer destinations, which is why setting those up comes first.
Workflows
Workflows are the messages around each appointment. Two things to know before editing them:
A confirmation text is sent the moment an appointment is booked, always, in addition to the workflows below. And if a workflow's trigger time has already passed at booking (for example a 24-hour reminder when the appointment was booked 20 hours out), that workflow is skipped.
Each workflow is a simple rule with three parts:
- Trigger: before the event starts or after it ends, plus how long (minutes, hours, or days). A 60-minute before-start trigger is the classic reminder.
- Condition (optional): only run if the appointment status is one of Scheduled, Confirmed, Cancelled, Completed, or No-show. Status is checked at the moment the workflow fires.
- Action: send an SMS to the customer (email is coming soon). Write the
message with template variables: type
{in the editor to insert one.
Every new configuration starts with three sensible defaults, which you can edit, disable, or delete:
| Default workflow | When it fires | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 24-hour confirmation text | 24 hours before start, if still Scheduled | Reminder with the date, time, and a confirm link |
| 1-hour reminder text | 1 hour before start, if Scheduled or Confirmed | "Your appointment is coming up today" |
| No-show text | 5 minutes after the end of a No-show | "Looks like we missed you," with a reschedule link |
Template variables
| Variable | Inserts |
|---|---|
{CUSTOMER_FIRST_NAME}, {CUSTOMER_LAST_NAME}, {CUSTOMER_FULL_NAME} | The customer's name |
{AGENT_NAME} | The assigned agent's name (not available in External transfer mode, where no agent is assigned) |
{ORGANIZATION_NAME} | Your organization's name |
{EVENT_DATE}, {EVENT_TIME}, {EVENT_TIMEZONE} | The appointment's date and time in the customer's timezone |
{CONFIRM_LINK}, {RESCHEDULE_LINK}, {CANCEL_LINK} | Self-serve links for the customer |
Deleting a workflow only stops future bookings from scheduling its messages; anything already scheduled for existing appointments still fires.
Where Appointment Settings Are Used
A configuration can be attached in three places:
- Campaigns: each campaign that books appointments points at one configuration. A campaign with a Book Appointment behavior (or a transfer destination that falls back to appointment booking) cannot go live without one.
- Transfer destinations: as the fallback when no agent answers a transfer, so the AI rejoins and books instead.
- Your Receptionist: through the Book Appointment behaviors you configure on the Receptionist page.
You can duplicate a configuration from the list to create a variation (for example, a shorter version of the same review appointment) without starting over.
Automated Follow-Up
Beyond the reminder workflows above, careCycle can also automate the appointment call itself and no-show recovery. See Automated Appointment Handling for the Appointment Callback Pulse and no-show handling.