Meeting types are customizable appointment options—such as tours, consultations, and other sessions—that you can share with prospective families for easy booking. You can create as many meeting types as needed, tailoring each with a unique name, booking form, duration, availability, and location.
Booking links make it simple for families to schedule tours with you. You can share these links on social media, embed them on your website, or generate QR codes for flyers, providing multiple convenient ways for families to book.
💡 This is available with the purchase of Playground CRM & Marketing Automation.
To get access to CRM, reach out to your dedicated account manager. Your account manager's contact information can be found by clicking the white Support button in the top right corner of your Playground screen.
Manage Availability
In order to create a meeting, you'll first need availability. Your availability will determine when a guardian can schedule a tour.
Administrators can customize availability for each meeting type. You can set a single schedule for all meeting types or assign a unique schedule to each one.
Create Availability
From your CRM Dashboard, click the Meetings tab on the left sidebar and then click the Availability tab.
Click the blue + New Availability button in the top right corner of the screen.
Name the availability.
This allows providers to easily find and apply the availability to specific meeting types.
Select the Timezone and set the available days & times. These are the days & times that will be available each week for families to book.
Toggle days on to make them available.
Add multiple time ranges within a specific day by clicking + to the right of the time input. You can break your regular schedule day into multiple slots, allowing you to easily take time out of the calendar for consistent events such as lunch breaks, coffee breaks, or recurring meetings.
Add Date Overrides to block off unavailable times, such as holidays or events. You can mark unavailability for specific hours in the day, or mark yourself unavailable all day by toggling on Mark Unavailable All Day. When you are done adding your date overrides, click Save. You can add as many date overrides as you like.
Click Save in the top right corner to save the availability.
Edit Availability
Under Meetings, navigate to the Availability tab.
Click Edit.
After changes are made, click Save.
Or, click on All availabilities in the top left corner to navigate back without saving the changes.
Delete Availability
Under Meetings, navigate to the Availability tab.
Click Edit.
Click Delete.
Confirm you'd like to delete the availability by clicking Yes, Delete.
Meeting Types
Meeting types are the shareable links you can create and provide for families to book time with you whether it's a tour, consultation, etc.
💡 If you don't want to share the meeting link with families, you can also use this meeting type to manually book tours with leads.
Create a Meeting Type
Under Meetings on the left sidebar, navigate to the Meeting Types tab.
Click + New Meeting Type.
Add the meeting Name, Description, Lead Stage After booking, Form, Availability, Meeting Duration, and Location. This can all be edited later.
The Name will be visible when leads book a tour.
The Description will be displayed to leads underneath the tour name.
Lead stage after booking is the stage a lead will be transitioned to after booking the meeting.
The Form will capture any information from the lead beyond the date and time of the meeting. This form must first be created within Forms.
Availability must be created within the Availability tab under Meetings. If you haven't created availability yet, follow the steps above.
Location can be the name of your school. It does not have to be your school's address.
Click Save and the Event set up page will open. Here you can add the maximum number of bookings per time slot.
Click the Scheduling tab. A preview of the selected availability will appear.
If you want to adjust this availability, you need to create a new availability or edit an existing availability. You can click Edit Availability to change your availability (this will take you out of the Meeting Type creation flow).
From the Scheduling tab, add a Minimum notice to set how much time is required before a family books a meeting and how far in the future they can book.
Tour show rates may improve if the maximum notice is less than 14 days.
Select the Booking Page Options. The Lead Form is the form that you want leads to complete when booking the tour and was selected in the first step of this flow. You will see a preview of the form here. Click Edit Lead Form to leave the Meeting Type flow and be taken to form editing directly.
It is best to have a unique form linked meeting types. For the best streamlined operations and reporting, this form should not be used for other purposes.
Set the Submission Options to control what the lead will see after completing their booking. Leads can either be shown a success page that you set the title and message for or they be redirected to a URL of your choosing.
This is what the success page may look like for the lead:
Click the Notifications tab. By default, a confirmation email will be sent to the email address submitted with the booking form. The confirmation email will include a calendar invite to the meeting.
Add emails to send meeting confirmations to the staff members who are responsible for leading tours. This will allow staff members to add the tours to their calendars. You can add multiple email addresses.
Toggle on Pre-meeting reminder/ Post meeting follow-up to customize emails or SMS messages to be sent in relation to bookings.
Input Time relative to event to determine how soon (in minutes, hours, or days) before or after the booking you would like the message to be sent.
You can choose who to Send to - this could be the lead who submitted the initial form or a specific email address like the school admin hosting the tour.
Send from will default to the default email setup within your CRM connections.
Write a Subject for the message.
Write a Message that you would like to be sent. Use the Personalize button to add specific properties into your email.
The merge tags (specific properties) will be highlighted as what custom input will be sent.
Click Add another row to create any additional custom reminder/follow-up notifications.
Click Save in the top right corner.
Edit Meeting Type
Under Meetings on the left sidebar, navigate to the Meeting Types tab.
Within the specific meeting type you would like to edit, click Edit.
After changes are made, click Save.
Or, click on All meeting types to navigate back without saving the changes.
Delete Meeting Type
Under Meetings on the left sidebar, navigate to the Meeting Types tab.
Within the specific meeting type you would like to delete, click the ( • • • ) icon.
Click Delete.
Confirm you'd like to delete the meeting type by clicking Yes, Delete.
Share Booking Link with Families
Once your meeting is created, there are several ways you can share the booking form with families to book time with you. You can link the booking link on your website, embed the form on your website, or share the link on social media!
This is what the tour booking form will look like.
Share Link
This method enables you to copy the public meeting booking link to your clipboard and share this anywhere. You can add this to buttons on your website, link it on your social media, or even turn it into a QR code to print out on fliers.
Under Meetings, navigate to the Meeting Types tab.
Click on the 🔗 icon to copy the link to your clipboard.
Embed Code
User would directly see your booking link inside your own webpage like it's part of your website. Using the inline embed, the entire booking would happen on your website.
Under Meetings, navigate to the Meeting Types tab.
Click the three dots and click Copy Embed Code. This will open an Embed Form popup.
Click Copy embed code at the bottom of the popup to copy the code to your clipboard. This can then be pasted into your own website.
Manually Book Meetings with Leads
Meetings can be booked for a lead, bypassing the need for the lead to complete the booking form. This can be useful if a guardian calls or emails to book a tour.
Navigate to the Leads tab on the left sidebar. Click into the specific lead that you would like to schedule the meeting for.
Click Actions in the right corner then Schedule a Meeting.
Select the Meeting Type you want to schedule. Click Schedule Meeting and you will be taken to the meeting scheduling screen.
You can now select a Date and Time based on the Meeting type's availability to manually schedule a meeting with the lead. Click Schedule Meeting once you have made your selections.
The new meeting booking will show up in the lead activity feed. Any notifications associated with that meeting type will be sent.
Manage Meeting Bookings
All your bookings are categorized by their date, time, type, and the booker, so that you can have an organized and holistic view of your upcoming & past bookings.
Our booking flow helps you avoid all the back-and-forth you would typically have when trying to schedule a tour with someone. Instead of suggesting all the times you are available and the person on the other end doing the same, a link that leads to your event type and available times speeds up that process significantly.
With that URL that leads to your available times, you can focus on the tour, and not on making meetings happen.
View Booking Details
Click on the Booked by name of a specific booking to view the details of the lead and see the booking and form submission details.
You will be taken to the Leads tab and shown the specific details of the lead name that you clicked on from the bookings page.
Note that this image also shows the reminder email that was automatically sent to the lead.
Click Show booking details to see the specifics of the booking.
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Click Show form submission to see the details that the lead entered into the form when booking.
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💡 If a lead does not already exist, a new lead will be created when a meeting booking is submitted. If a lead already exists in your CRM, then when that lead books a meeting it will be automatically tied to their existing lead profile via guardian email and/or phone number.
Reschedule a Booking
To reschedule a meeting you must first cancel the booking and then follow the process to manually book a new time.
Cancel Bookings
This is the process to cancel a meeting booking from your bookings list.
Navigate to Meetings on the left sidebar and click Bookings.
Click on the three dots next to the booking you want to cancel.
Click Cancel Booking and the booking will be removed from your list of bookings.
If you cancel a booking, the lead will still be listed under Leads.