Set up Appointments

Appointments lets customers book your services online, with a staff member and at a time that is free. It works in Personal or in a team. Team members with edit access set it up and change it; members with view access can see it.

For meetings people book with you alone, from your own meeting page, use Meetings instead; see Set up and share your meeting page.

Set up

Open Appointments and choose a business type, such as Salon or barber, Consultant, Tutor or music teacher or Start from scratch, and the time zone appointments are shown in. Magpie adds that type's suggested services, makes you a staff member, and sets hours of 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday. The booking page is named after the team, or after you in Personal.

Until the booking page is published, Overview shows these as one list to check:

• Services: click a name to change it; open Details for its duration, price and staff. Add service asks for a name only.
• Staff: a switch for each team member who accepts appointments.
• Weekly hours: click a day and type hours such as 9–5 or 8:30am–6pm, or Closed. On this page the hours apply to everyone accepting appointments; one person's hours are changed on Staff.
• Booking page: Preview opens the page as a customer sees it, without saving a booking. Publish booking page makes it public.

Publishing needs at least one service available to book, and each service available to book needs a staff member with weekly hours. You can add appointments yourself before the page is published.

After publishing, Overview shows the booking page address with a copy button, today's appointments (or the next ones when there are none today) and links to Services, Staff and Booking page. Share booking page in the page bar starts a Social Media draft with the page's name and address.

Booking Page

Appointments → Booking Page shows the address to share and whether the page is published, and holds the details customers see. Click a detail to change it.

• Name: the heading of the booking page and the sender name on confirmation emails.
• Description: shown under the name, before the list of services.
• Address: the page's address after /book/. An old address keeps working after a change.
• Time zone: weekly hours and appointment times are in this zone. A service's required resource has to use the same zone.

A team member with edit access who opens the booking page while signed in sees Edit in Magpie, which opens Appointments → Booking Page. Until the page is published, customers who open its address see that it was not found.

What customers see

Customers choose a service, then who with when more than one person provides it (or Anyone available), then a day and an open time. Times are shown in the booking page's time zone. They enter their name, email address and, optionally, a phone number. They do not need a Magpie account.

Magpie emails a confirmation with a link to view, reschedule or cancel the appointment. On that page, Reschedule lists open times with the same staff member, and Cancel appointment is in the More menu. Once the notice set under Settings has passed, the page says to contact you instead.

Settings

Appointments → Settings holds the rules every booking follows. Click a value to change it; type lengths such as 90 min, 2 hours or 1 day.

• Minimum notice: how soon before a start time it can still be booked.
• Maximum range: how far ahead customers can book.
• Start times: how often a start time is offered within the weekly hours, such as every 15 minutes.
• Cancellation and Rescheduling: how long before the start a customer can still cancel or choose another time from the link in their confirmation email.

For booking records and changes, see Manage customer appointments. For a setup problem, Contact support.