Enabling Drift to connect to your Calendars will give you the additional benefits of allowing your visitors to book meetings with you.  These meetings can be leveraged as a tool to gain insight to your customers needs, work towards closing a deal, or provide any type of additional service needs to your end users.

Billing Plan: Connecting your calendar is available on all Drift plans.
 

In this article we'll cover:

• Making The Connection
• Personalized Settings
• Your Contact's View
• When Calendars Are Used
• Helpful Tips

 

Making the Connection

After you have successfully created your Drift account, it’s time to personalize your settings, including your calendar. 

Navigate to the Meetings tab.   

Note for Enterprise Customers:  If you're calendar has not been set up for you, you'll want to go to click the Meetings icon on your left hand navigation bar in lieu of the steps above.

You can connect to either Google Calendar or Office 365 Calendar. Select whichever works best for you! When prompted, be sure to sign into your email and allow all permissions.

Note: Drift can only connect directly with Office 365. Exchange, Exchange Online and Hybrid Exchange calendars will not connect. 

If you are connecting your Gmail, make sure that Google Chat is turned off. If not turned off multiple "locations" will show in the meeting details and as a result can be confusing to your end user.  For further info on how to turn off Google Chat, check out this article provided by Google .

Once you have your calendar successfully connected, you'll see the following screen which includes any organization wide meetings your company may have already set up. 

Personalized Settings

Once connected, you can personalize your meeting settings. Click on the Default Meeting Type used in calendar drops from chat and your Drift Profile.

The Default Meeting Type will be your basic meeting that is booked when a user is interacting with a playbook.

You can have multiple meeting types to suit your needs, for example; a sales team may utilize a 15 minute "Demo Meeting" to showcase a product, while your training team may use something along the lines of "60 Minute Digital Workshop" for a deeper dive into material.

Each one comes with its own scheduling link so you can easily book any meeting, anywhere.

You can also create a new meeting type with a link that can be shared through email or manually in chat. Other meeting types are often created to offer different meeting durations, for example a 30 minute demo vs. a 60 minute demo!
 

Setting #1: Meeting Details

How will you actually get in touch with leads who book time with you? How long will the meeting be?

Be sure to leave details under the “Location” field, as this tells the end user how to get in touch with you, whether it’s your phone number, a zoom link, or another form of connection.

These fields will sync directly with the appropriate fields on the calendar event. 

Note:  If you choose to add a phone number under Location, the contact will have your number but you might not have theirs. Work around this by adding a "Phone Number Capture" Skill to your playbooks or by clicking the "ask for a phone number as well" toggle within a goal.

 

Setting #2: Rescheduling

Navigate back to the Settings > App Settings > Meetings  and scroll down to "Availability" to continue set up! 

If you would like to allow others to reschedule or cancel meetings they have booked through your calendar drop, toggle this setting on.

Under the "Availability" section, you can also set your availability for meetings. When you connect your calendar Drift will detect the time zone in your browser and default to that time zone. If you need to change it for any reason you can do so here. You can select what type of days you are available (weekdays, weekends, everyday, etc) and times to go along with those days.

If there are two or more conditions for your availability (ex. 9am to 5pm on weekdays, but only 10am to 2pm on weekends) feel free to click “Add Availability”


Going Out of Office?

If you're going to be out of office you can use the "Mark out of office" button located at the top of the screen. This will make it so that site visitors are unable to book meetings with you from your Drift profile and bots will not book meetings for you.

Once enabled, you will see the following message:

Note: Drift is only able to see the default "Event" on your Google Calendar. If you connect your Google Calendar, Drift will not respect Focus Time, Out of Office, Working Location, Task, or Appointment Schedule blocks on your calendar.


Premium+ customers have a setting to prevent you from being routed into a conversation when in a meeting.  Check the box shown in the screen shot below,

Once checked, you'll avoid being routed into conversations during meetings.  If you stop being "Busy" according to your calendar, you'll be routed into conversations again. 

Drift is able to differentiate between a "Free" meeting and a "Busy" meeting on your Google calendar.

If you block time off on your calendar and set this meeting to "Free", Drift will be able to differentiate the different meeting types so that you can be routed into conversations when you have your calendar blocked off with the meeting.

Also note, if you have an 'All-day' event that is on your calendar, and the meeting type is set to "Busy" this will prevent you from being routed into conversations for that entire day.  If you have the setting "Don't route me into conversations" enabled and you have a meeting on your calendar that is set to "Busy", Drift will not route you into conversations during that time.  (For further details on how to set your Google Calendar to Free/Busy, check out this doc regarding Booking Room Options with Google)

Keep i mind, If your calendar is disconnected these settings will no longer work with Drift.  Also note, this setting won't account for any calendars other than the one you're using in Drift.

Setting #3: Time Buffer Settings

These settings are very helpful in keeping your calendar manageable and stress free! Buffer time allows for time in between meetings to recharge, and minimum notice time gives you the chance to prepare before meetings and avoid surprises.

Setting #4: Meeting Reminders 

When you are creating a new meeting, you have the option to:

• Send an email X minutes after a meeting is booked written in own words via the Customize link.
• Send an email X minutes before a meeting takes place written in your own words via the Customize link.
• Send multiple reminder Emails to guest.

Setting #4: Meeting Email Signatures
Here you can setup your email signature that will appear on any meeting related emails that Drift sends on your behalf such as reminder or confirmation email. 

Your Contact's View

This is what the end user will see from their end when scheduling a meeting!

Once they have selected a meeting time, they will receive this message and an email confirmation automatically. You will also receive an email confirmation with the contact’s details, and the meeting will appear on your calendar.

Note: If you already have their contact information, the bot will remember this! If not, the bot will prompt them to provide their email address before dropping the calendar.

When Calendars Are Used

The Calendar drop can be used in a variety of ways, including on your Drift Profile, Drop in Live Chat, and Automatic Drop from Playbooks. Learn more about these options here !

Helpful Tips

A meeting booked through a Drift Profile link will always be synced to an outside MAP or CRM integration (Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo, etc.) regardless of whether or not you have CQL score filter turned on.

If a rep has a meeting on the connected calendar calendar, but has not accepted the invitation, Drift will still consider the user as unavailable or busy.

If a rep has a meeting that they need to cancel or reschedule, they must go to their connected calendar to cancel or reschedule the meeting.

If a rep has meetings scheduled and is then deleted from Drift, their meetings will NOT be automatically cancelled.

You’re All Set!

You are now ready to start booking meetings!