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Meeting Invitation Lead to Double Booking

Brendan C Feb 01, 2012 07:15AM EET

I just had a double booking occur. Here was the scenario:

I created and sent a meeting invitation to a "Client 1" for a 1.5 hour meeting with a window of 12:00pm - 5:00pm available on Feb 2nd

Before "Client 1" responded to the invitation request, "Client 2" requested and booked a 1 hour appointment with me on the inbound side for 3:30-4:30pm also on Feb 2nd. That appointment was booked on a calendar that connected to my ScheduleOnce account.

Later that day "Client 1" clicked on the the invitation and was also able to select that they also wanted to meet me starting at 3:30pm on Feb 2nd.

This seems like a bug. As soon as the appointment for "Client 2" was put on my calendar for Feb 2nd from 3:30-4:30pm shouldn't the original invitation to "Client 1" have recognized that my linked calendar had changed and that I was no longer available after 3:30pm that day? I would think that as soon as an invitation link is clicked, that it should check my calendars to get my latest availability and update the invitation time blocks as necessary so that a double booking doesn't occur.

-Brendan

2 Agent Answers

Rami Feb 01, 2012 08:31AM EET

Hi Brendan,

We have two modes of operation. Blocking and non blocking. The default for outbound scheduling is non blocking because there are more users who prefer to work in non blocking mode in outbound.

So all you need to do is check the "Busy time blocks my availability" in the small popup where you select your calendars on the Invite page.

It will then work exactly as you expected.
Please see the full explanation here:

http://help.scheduleonce.com/customer/portal/articles/77993-understanding-busy-time-behavior

Rami Feb 01, 2012 04:36PM EET

Hi Brendan,

Yes, It will be the default for all future invitations so you will not have to check it again.

About putting the blocking/non blocking in the Outbound settings page - Its a good question. We have thought of that. The issue is that we didn't put the calendar selection in the outbound settings but put it in the invite so that you can change calendars on a per invitations basis. The blocking/non blocking is really the same thing, its like a calendar selection. Maybe for one important meeting you will want to turn blocking off and also change the calendar selection.

So in the Outbound settings we chose to have things that are less likely to change between meetings but maybe both the calendar selection and the busy time blocking should both go into the Outboud settings page?

I would love to hear anyone's feedback on this.

Regards,
Rami

1 Community Answer

Up 1 Rated Down
Brendan C Feb 01, 2012 03:41PM EET

Excellent, thank you for the quick response.

On the outbound side, once I enable blocking mode for an invitation will it then default to blocking mode for future invitations or will I have to enable blocking mode for each invitation I send?

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like this preference should be set on the main "Outbound Settings" page.

Thanks again for the quick response!

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