Appointments & Booking

Overview

Appointments lets customers book time slots from inside a WhatsApp chat. WaDesk reads your Google Calendar to see when you're free, offers the next open slots as a WhatsApp list message, and writes confirmed bookings back as calendar events — optionally with a Google Meet link. Find it under More → Appointments; it's admin-only.

The booking itself happens inside a flow: you add a Book appointment step to any flow, the customer picks a slot from a list message, and WaDesk books it end-to-end.

Prerequisites

One sign-in unlocks every Google step. The same Google connection covers Calendar (Book appointment + Google Meet), Sheets, Docs, Drive (files the app created), and Forms steps, plus the inbox composer — so the first consent screen asks for the full set at once. You can manage the same account from the dedicated Google Account page. Admins who prefer a stricter setup can narrow what's requested in system settings.

Connecting Google Calendar

Open Appointments → Settings and click Connect Google Calendar. You're sent to Google to approve access; on return, WaDesk stores the connection securely and brings you back.

1. WaDesk asks for the kind of access that keeps the connection alive in the background, so you don't have to sign in again and again.
2. On first connect, it uses your main calendar so Meet links and bookings work right away; you can pick a different calendar in Step 1 of the settings form.
3. The connection renews itself automatically, about 60 seconds before it would expire.
4. To disconnect, use Disconnect on the settings page — this removes the stored Google connection for the workspace.

If renewal breaks. Keeping the connection alive depends on the admin's Google Cloud app being set up correctly. If it's misconfigured, the connection can quietly stop renewing. If bookings stop writing to the calendar, disconnect and reconnect to refresh it.

Availability windows (Step 2)

Step 2 of the settings form defines when customers can book. There is one row per weekday with a from and to time. Leave a day blank to disable it entirely. A fresh workspace defaults to Mon–Fri, 09:00–18:00 with weekends off.

• Times use 24-hour HH:MM format, and the from time must be earlier than the to time; invalid or empty rows are dropped on save.
• Only calendars you can write to are listed in the picker.

Tip: pick a dedicated calendar to book into so personal events don't mix with customer bookings.

Booking rules (Step 3)

Step 3 controls how slots are generated. These rules feed directly into the slot calculation. All are required except the default location.

The booking flow

Customers don't book from a page — they book through a flow. In the flow builder, add a Book appointment step to a flow. When it runs, the step:

1. Fetches the next available slots and sends them to the customer as a WhatsApp list message.
2. When the customer taps a slot, books it — creating the appointment and the calendar event.
3. Sends the confirmation back into the conversation.

The plan features and the monthly appointment limit are checked when the booking is made.

No double-booking. If a customer taps the same slot twice in the same conversation, they get the existing appointment back rather than two bookings.

Slot calculation

When slots are requested, WaDesk computes the next open times in the calendar's timezone:

1. Build candidate slots from your availability windows, from now through the end of your advance booking window.
2. Check your Google Calendar for the times you're already busy in that range.
3. Drop any slot that clashes with a busy time, widened by the before / after buffers.
4. Drop slots that are already in the past.
5. Apply the max-per-day cap.
6. Return the first few slots (a small handful at a time — up to 10, default 5).

Each slot is offered with a start time, an end time, and a friendly label like "Mon 3 Jun · 9:00 AM".

Confirmations, Google Meet & reminders

When a slot is booked, WaDesk creates the appointment and, if a calendar is selected, writes the event to Google Calendar. Once the event is written, the appointment is marked confirmed (otherwise it stays pending).

Cancel & reschedule

From the Appointments list:

• Cancel an upcoming booking — marks it cancelled and deletes the linked Google Calendar event (if the event is already gone, that's treated as success).
• Reschedule — moves a booking to a new start/end time. WaDesk updates the same Google Calendar event, so attendees get a "this event was rescheduled" email rather than a brand-new invite, and the WhatsApp reminder is reset for the new time. The end must be after the start.

A booking that's already cancelled or declined can't be rescheduled. Appointments use these statuses:

Timezone handling

Slots, events, and the bookings list all honour a timezone, resolved in this order: the connected calendar's timezone (captured when you pick the calendar), then the workspace timezone, and finally UTC. The list view shows each booking's start, end, and timezone explicitly so there's no ambiguity for operators working across regions.

Troubleshooting