Appointments

What it is

Appointments in Joby are online bookings your customers make themselves. You publish a booking form — either as a link you can text and email, or as a form pasted into your own website — and every submission lands in Joby as an appointment you can confirm, complete, cancel, and turn into a lead.

There are two places you work with them:

• Settings›Booking Form — set up the form on the Form Setup tab, and work through what came in on the Request History tab. Admins also get a Booking Form shortcut in the sidebar under More, with a number badge showing how many bookings are still Pending.
• The schedule board — a day, week, and month calendar of everything booked. On a computer you reach it from Dashboard›Appointments card›View appointments, or by searching a customer name in the search box at the top of the app and picking the result under "Appointments".

When to use it

• You want customers to pick their own time instead of calling and waiting on hold.
• You want a "Book online" button on your website that feeds straight into Joby.
• You want separate booking links for different campaigns, services, or locations.
• Every morning, to work through the bookings that came in overnight and confirm them.
• To see what the day, week, or month looks like before you promise a customer a time.

Before you start

• Admin access. Settings›Booking Form is admin-only. Office agents who are not admins need the Appointments permission turned on for their role in Settings›Team Roles before they can see bookings at all.
• Your services list, if you want customers to choose what they need. Services come from Settings›Service Types.
• A decision about leads. If every booking should automatically open a lead, pick which status and ad source it should get. Those lists live in Settings›Lead Statuses and Settings›Ad Sources.
• Your real hours. Which days you take work, what time you start and finish, how long a visit takes, and how much notice you need before a customer can grab a slot.

Step-by-step

1. Set your booking hours

1. Go to Settings›Booking Form›Form Setup.
2. In the Availability card, click the day buttons (Sun through Sat) so only the days you actually take work are highlighted.
3. Set Start Time and End Time to your working hours.
4. Set Duration — how long each bookable slot is. The choices are 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, 1.5 hours, and 2 hours.
5. Set Minimum lead time — how many hours of notice you need. A customer can't book any slot sooner than this.
6. Click Save Settings.

2. Choose what the form asks for

1. Still on Form Setup, use the Form copy card to set the Title and the Text below title customers see at the top of the form, then click Save Copy.
2. In the Standard form fields card, switch each field Show and Required on or off. You can control appointment date, appointment time, last name, email, address, and notes. First name and phone are always shown and always required.
3. In the Services on booking form card, turn on Show service selection on booking form if you want a service picker, then switch on each service you want customers to see. Turn on Require service selection to make it mandatory.
4. In the Bookings›leads card, turn on Automatically create a lead for every booking if you want each booking to open a lead by itself, and pick the lead status and ad source it should get.

3. Share the link or put the form on your website

1. At the top of Form Setup, click Copy Link to copy your public booking link, or Open to see the live form the way a customer sees it.
2. To put the form on your own website, click Embed. The window gives you a Widget URL for site builders that have an embed block, and an HTML snippet you can paste into a plain HTML or custom-code block. Click Copy snippet.
3. Paste the link into your email signature, text templates, Google Business profile, and ads.

4. Work the bookings that come in

1. Open Settings›Booking Form›Request History (admins can jump straight there from More›Booking Form in the sidebar).
2. Each row shows when it was submitted, the customer, phone, email, requested date and time, status, address, and notes. Click the arrow at the left of a row to expand long notes and addresses.
3. Click the status on a row and pick Pending, Confirmed, Completed, or Cancelled.
4. Use Create Client to add the customer to your client list, and Create Lead to open a job for them — Joby takes you straight to the new lead. Once a client or lead exists, those buttons change to Open Client and Open Lead.
5. Use the List / Calendar switch to see the same requests laid out by the date the customer asked for, and Export CSV to download them.

5. Check the schedule board (on a computer)

1. Go to Dashboard and click View appointments on the Appointments card.
2. Use the date buttons — All, Today, This Week, This Month, Custom — to set the window you care about.
3. Switch between List and Calendar. In Calendar, use day / week / month, the arrows, and Today to move around.
4. Click any booking to open Appointment Details, where you can change the status, jump to the linked lead, or click Create lead from appointment.

How to check it worked

1. In Settings›Booking Form›Form Setup, click Open and book a test appointment on your own form, exactly as a customer would.
2. Confirm you only see the days, hours, and slot lengths you set, and that nothing sooner than your minimum lead time is offered.
3. Submit it. You should see the confirmation screen with your requested date and time, and the message that you'll be contacted shortly.
4. Back in Joby, open Request History. Your test booking should be at the top of the list, newest first, with the details you typed.
5. If you turned on Automatically create a lead for every booking, the row should already show Open Lead instead of Create Lead.
6. On a computer, open the schedule board and switch to Calendar›month. Your test booking should sit on the day you chose. Delete the test row when you're done: select its checkbox and click Delete selected, or use Delete on the row.

Common mistakes

• Looking for a "New Appointment" button. There isn't one. Bookings come from the form. For work you book yourself, create a lead.
• Minimum lead time set too high. If it's set to 48 hours, nobody can book the next two days and the form looks broken. Lower it and re-test.
• No days switched on. If every day button in Availability is unselected, customers see no times at all.
• End Time earlier than Start Time. This leaves no slots to offer. Check both.
• Too many required questions. Every extra required field is another reason someone gives up halfway. Ask for what you need to show up at the right door, and get the rest on the phone.
• Renaming a booking form and not updating your links. Renaming a form changes its link. Any old link you already published stops working — re-copy the link after a rename.
• Deleting the wrong thing. Deleting a booking request removes the request only. If it already became a lead, that lead stays. Leads are never deleted from this screen.
• Expecting Joby to text the customer automatically. Booking does not send a confirmation message on its own. Set that up as an automation (see below).
• Changing hours mid-week without testing. Anything you change in Availability affects what customers can book immediately. Open the public form after every change.