Discover a sleek new Outlook plugin, more ways to learn about invitees ahead of meetings, and the smart holiday detection setting just in time for eggnog season.
Own your schedule, not the other way around.
For any busy business-owner or customer-facing professional (sales reps, recruiters, support specialists — we see you!), we know that complete calendar ownership feels like a far cry from reality. But it doesn't have to be. CalendarHero is continuously improving our product to give meeting creators more control over their scheduling workflow, which means less last-minute bookings and time spent negotiating calendar conflicts, and more space for the work you love.
Check out what's new in December:
1. CalendarHero's New Outlook Plugin
ICYMI, we recently released CalendarHero's revamped Outlook plugin! Microsoft users now have access to powerful scheduling features right within their inboxes. If you've ever found yourself dizzy from manual scheduling and want a speedy and efficient scheduling process, this plugin is for you.
With CalendarHero's Outlook plugin, choose from various scheduling methods to suit your communication style, your invitee's preference, or your meeting goals.
What's New:
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Share real-time availability — quickly access scheduling links or insert a preview of available times in an email
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The power of the web scheduler in Outlook — create and send automated meeting requests from your inbox
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Effortless team collaboration — instantly find mutual availability for meetings with team members
The new Outlook plugin offers meeting creators more flexibility and control over their scheduling workflow.
2. Invitee Questions: Phone Number & Consent Form
CalendarHero's Invitee Questions makes it easy to learn more about prospects, customers, and candidates before you meet.
This feature is handy when organizing meetings or appointments with people who know very little about your business. By asking your invitees questions, you can learn if they're a right fit for your services, how they discovered you, and raise the value of your conversations.
This month, we've released two updates to the types of questions you can insert into your invitee scheduling flow.
Phone Number: As a meeting creator, you can now create a dedicated phone number field to collect a phone number from your invitee. Customize the label as needed for different numbers, such as Home or Mobile.
Consent Form: Gate your bookings by including a consent form that communicates your terms and conditions to customers before they schedule with you. For instance, add a waiver or link to your privacy policy. The flexible, rich editor allows you to customize the text and add external hyperlinks.
Make your meetings more productive by asking the right questions.
3. Holiday Scheduling Flexibility
Have you ever forgotten to block off a statutory holiday on your calendar? Recently, one of our sales reps confessed that this happened to them. Christmas Day rolled around, and they were shocked to learn that a client had booked a demo. Whoops!
To make sure you're not finding yourself on a Zoom call during turkey dinner, we've rolled out a new setting that prevents bookings on certain holidays.
If you want to prevent an accidental holiday booking automatically, enable the "Prevent Scheduling on Holidays" feature. Note: this setting is off by default for all users. For added flexibility, you can customize this setting for each meeting type. For example, you might not want to have team meetings during the holidays, but maybe you're open to connecting with a VIP client.
How and where you use this setting is entirely up to you and your scheduling workflow.
CalendarHero's final product release notes for the year continue to build on the momentum and growth you've seen in our product over the last 12 months. As a quick refresher, here are some of the stand-out product updates we've already released this year.
Set your maximum daily number of meetings. With Meeting Limits, you can have more control over your booking volume and customize your daily meeting limit for different meeting types.
After listening to our customers, we decided to refresh our invitee flow! Instead of starting with contact information, we prompt invitees to select a time to meet first. We also enhanced the design of the invitee experience.
The CalendarHero add-on gives you shortcuts to our most popular meeting scheduling features — including personal scheduling links, adding available times to emails, automated meeting requests, and people insights.
CalendarHero gives meeting creators more than one way to book a meeting or appointment. We expanded our scheduling methods by introducing the option to copy and paste available times for different meeting types right into an email.
With Group Class, you can pre-schedule a group event for a set time and date and allow multiple participants to sign up for the same event. Marketers, coaches, and fitness instructors can now organize stress-free online events by leaving the scheduling work to CalendarHero.
Measure the success of your meeting-related campaign funnels and your invitee flow with Google Analytics. Users subscribed to a Professional or Team plan can track events and measure conversions related to their invitee experience.
Personalize every scheduling touchpoint. Meeting creators can brand their scheduling pages with a custom logo and personal icon. If you’ve upgraded your plan, you can also remove CalendarHero’s default branding at the footer of your scheduling pages.
Happy Scheduling & Holidays!
The CalendarHero Team
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