Appointment Agents: Telling Your Assistant About a Calendar
Describe what a calendar accepts, set spoken names and aliases, choose a naming policy and test how your assistant directs customers.
Appointment agents contains the information assistants use to decide whether a customer should be directed to this calendar. It describes the services and how the assistant may refer to them. Availability and booking links are configured separately.
Open the right calendar
- Open Settings → Calendars Config and confirm the location.
- Open the settings for the intended calendar.
- Select Appointment agents.
Describe the services
- What is booked here: enter services separated by commas, such as “consultations, follow-ups, installations”. Office states that leaving this field empty offers the calendar for everything. Review this carefully when several calendars serve different needs.
- In your own words: explain what this calendar covers in plain language. The assistant uses the description to judge whether it fits the customer’s request. Include useful distinctions from other calendars rather than repeating a generic business description.
Set naming rules
- How the assistant may refer to it: the approved name or role the assistant may say aloud, such as “our service team”. Leaving it empty means offering times without naming a person.
- What customers call it: aliases, shorthand or common ways customers ask for the service. This field is for understanding the request; Office labels it as never spoken.
- Can it name this one?: controls whether the assistant may use the approved spoken name. It is not permission to read the aliases aloud.
The policy choices are Same as the assistant, Never — only offer times, Only if they ask or name it, and Always — may offer the choice. The first follows each assistant’s setting. Choose a policy that matches whether you can promise a specific person or role.
Save and check the assistant’s choice
- Review all fields together and click Save.
- Reopen the tab and confirm the saved values.
- Test an ordinary service request, a request for another calendar’s service, and a request using an alias.
- Check whether the assistant chooses the intended calendar and follows the naming policy. Refine ambiguous descriptions if needed.
For example, if one calendar takes first consultations and another takes existing-customer follow-ups, state those differences in their service lists and descriptions. Avoid leaving both open to everything unless that is intentional.
Keep descriptions and availability aligned
These fields do not open days, increase booking capacity or connect an assistant channel by themselves. Review availability and capacity and booking links separately. When a service or staff member changes, update the relevant descriptions and test again before relying on the assistant to offer it.
If the assistant selects the wrong calendar, give Support the request wording, intended calendar and observed result. Do not include unrelated customer details.