Appointment Booking Settings
All the configurations with regards to scheduling and managing appointments within ERPNext lie in the Appointment Booking Settings. These settings dictate how customers schedule appointments via your site, how agents are allocated, and how availability is handled.
1. Enable Appointment Scheduling
Checking this checkbox turns on the appointment scheduling feature in ERPNext and also turns on the /book_appointment path for website visitors (your customers). After turning it on, customers can access a special booking portal where they can select available time slots, fill in their information, and confirm bookings.
This portal view is integrated completely with ERPNext CRM and will automatically associate appointments with existing Leads or create a new Lead when required.
2. Agent Information
Here you can take into consideration the employees performing appointments, their working time, availability, and exceptions such as holidays.
2.1 Slot Availability
You set the time periods when agents are available for appointments here. This is done per day of the week, and each row corresponds to a continuous block of time.
- Two entries per day can be made to cover breaks.
For instance, if agents work from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday to Friday, with a break of 1:30 PM to 2:00 PM for lunch, you would make two entries:
9:00 AM to 1:30 PM
- 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
ERPNext applies these settings to automatically show available time slots on the booking website, so that customers are able to book only valid time slots.
2.2 Agents
This is the agent list that will be automatically assigned to appointments. ERPNext's auto-assignment framework takes into account:
- The number of appointments already booked by each agent for the same time slot.
- The agent's specified availability.
The number of appointments that can be done simultaneously in a time slot is determined by the number of available agents in this list.
2.3 Holiday List
It is possible to associate a Holiday List to be applied to the appointment schedule. If a day has been defined as a holiday in this list, appointment scheduling for the day will be disabled in the portal and Desk.
3. Appointment Details
This part has the general parameters for handling appointments.
3.1 Appointment Duration in Minutes
This specifies the duration of every appointment slot in minutes. ERPNext calculates available booking times for the web portal using this. Modifying this field will only impact newly added appointments, not currently added appointments.
3.2 Notify via Email
When activated, ERPNext will automatically send reminder emails to both participants (the assigned staff and the customer) on the appointment day. These reminders serve to limit no-shows and result in improved preparedness. Activating/deactivating this option will only result in new appointments that were made after the action.
3.3 Appointment Can Be Booked in Advance for How Many Days
This configuration determines how early ahead of time a customer can book an appointment. ERPNext will automatically refuse bookings once the limit is reached or the last date in Holiday List is exceeded—whichever is earlier.
4. Success Settings
4.1 Success Redirect URL
This is the URL on which the customer will be redirected after having successfully created an appointment through the web portal. This redirection does not happen when appointments are created via the Desk UI.
- Leave empty to redirect to the homepage.
- The value is relative to the site URL. For instance, using "about" will redirect to "https://yoursitename.com/about".