Welcome to the Anthill Guide on managing appointments.
If you have the appropriate admin permissions, you will see the ‘Admin’ link in the top-right of your screen in Anthill. Clicking this will present you with the admin options that are available to you.
Please speak to your CSM if you have questions about access.
Overview
Appointments provide a way to schedule a date and time with a customer.
Different types of appointments represent the different situations that you need to meet with a customer. Common examples are Sales Consultation, Presentation, Installation and Delivery.
The different types of appointments you setup flow through the Anthill platform to power dashboards, workflows and automations in lots of useful ways, for example.
- Send a thank you for visiting email the evening of a sales presentation
- Manage installer availability and allocate jobs to fitters
- Send an SMS to remind customers their fitter is arriving tomorrow
Creating a New Appointment Type
Click Add New from the Appointment Types admin page.
| Appointment Type Label | This text value is what users will see from the dropdown box when booking an appointment. |
| Appointment Type Description | This value is only used in the admin area for you to add additional information about the appointment type |
| Internal Only | Used when creating appointment types where the customer is not present. Internal meeting or Holiday for example. |
| Allow Multiple Users | Used if you wish to add multiple users to the appointment. If unticked, it can only be one user. |
| Default Duration (minutes) | This is the default duration the user is shown when booking the appointment. This can be changed by the user when booking. |
| Earliest Start Time Latest Start Time | Used to prevent users booking appointments out of your business hours |
| Linked to Enquiry Linked to Lead Linked to Sale Linked to Fulfilment Linked to Issue | Appointments can be associated to stages of the customer journey. This enables you to prevent a delivery from being booked when the customer has just requested a brochure. Tick the relevant stage to match the appointment type. |
| Calendar Back Colour | The colour selected will show in the Anthill calendar. |
| Hide Schedule Video Meeting Requires Teams integration enabling | Used to hide the teams link for appointments that will never be conducted virtually. Staff Holiday or Delivery. |
| Default Schedule Teams Meeting Requires Teams integration enabling | Used to default teams link to make is easier for the end user. Virtual Design Appointment for example. |
Controls & Completion / Cancellation Details
This section enables management of the controls the controls the user has to populate when creating, completing or cancelling an appointment. The default options are commonly used so no need to change these settings in most situations.
We recommend speaking with your CSM before making changes to these areas.
Areas & Restricted Areas
Areas power ‘who’ can do the appointment.
| Selected Areas | The user groups that can be booked against the appointment. Sales Team for a Product Demo |
| Creation Restricted To | The user groups that can create the appointment. Booking Team for Installation |
| Include in Restricted Experience | To allow restricted experience users to interact with the appointment. By default these user groups will not be able to see any appointment. |
Advanced Settings
There are a high number of advanced settings that require in-depth Anthill knowledge.
Changing these settings will alter how the end users interact with appointments.
Changes should not be made without speaking with your CSM first.
The default options are commonly used so no need to change these settings in most situations.
Internal Appointments
To create an appointment type where the customer isn’t present the appointment type simply need the internal only setting ticked. If the appointment isn’t relating to customer activity, leave the activity links unticks – this will result in the appointment only being created from the calendar page.
Removing an Appointment Types
If you no longer require an appointment type, you can deactivate it from the footer menu in the edit appointment page.
Deactivating an appointment will remove if from the end users being able to select it.
Please note: Deactivated types are not accessible via workflow or email automation, removing when still in use will break the user experience – check with your CSM for help.
You can reactivate an appointment type by showing archived types in the appointment list (using the toggle shown below) and then selecting reactivate from the appointment page.
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