If you manage a team that books meetings—sales, support, onboarding, whatever—you know that wrangling everyone’s calendar can be a pain. Double bookings, endless back-and-forth, and someone always gets stuck with the Friday 4:30pm slot. You want a system that just works, so the right person is available at the right time, and no one’s calendar becomes a wasteland.
This guide is for teams who want to use Appointlet to handle group scheduling, set up team availability, and actually make round robin assignment work in the real world. I’ll walk you through, step by step, what’s worth doing, what’s not, and the gotchas that trip people up. If you want to spend less time herding cats and more time getting stuff done, read on.
Why bother with team availability and round robin?
A quick reality check: if you’ve got more than two people taking meetings, someone’s going to get overloaded unless you’re intentional about it. Team availability lets you set who’s actually bookable and when. Round robin scheduling automatically rotates meetings across your team, so no one gets swamped.
In theory, it’s simple: clients book a slot, and Appointlet divvies up the meetings. In practice, missed settings, bad calendar connections, or ignoring PTO can turn things into chaos. The payoff is real, though—done right, you’ll save hours and avoid “Who’s taking this one?” Slack messages.
Step 1: Get your team into Appointlet
First things first: everyone who’ll be booked needs an Appointlet account, and their calendars have to be hooked up. Otherwise, you’re dead in the water.
What to do: - Invite each team member to your Appointlet organization (they’ll need to accept the invite). - Make sure they connect their calendar (Google, Office 365, Outlook, whatever you use). - Double check that each calendar connection actually works—missed meetings usually come down to a bad sync.
Pro tip:
If someone refuses to connect their real calendar (“I don’t want work stuff on my personal account!”), you’re better off not including them. Scheduling around ghost calendars just creates confusion.
Step 2: Define team members’ working hours
Now you need to set when each team member is available for meetings. This is where a lot of setups fall apart—don’t just use the default 9-5 unless that’s actually true for everyone.
How to do it: 1. Go to your Appointlet dashboard. 2. Click “Members” in the sidebar. 3. For each person, set their working hours. You can customize days and specific times (e.g., Monday 10am-4pm, Wednesday 1pm-5pm). 4. Save changes for each member.
What works: - Custom hours per person—great for part-timers, folks in different time zones, or people who block off “deep work” days. - Ability to exclude certain days (vacation, holidays, etc.).
What doesn’t: - Don’t assume people keep their calendars up to date. If someone’s bad at blocking time for lunch or appointments, they’ll show as available and get booked anyway. - Appointlet doesn’t natively sync with HR tools for PTO. If someone’s out, you need to update their availability manually or remind them to block it on their calendar.
Step 3: Create a team booking page
This is where the magic happens—clients book a time, and Appointlet figures out who gets the meeting.
Set up a group booking page: 1. Click “Meeting Types” in Appointlet. 2. Create a new meeting type, or edit an existing one. 3. Under “Hosted by,” select “Multiple Members.” 4. Choose which team members should be included for this meeting type. 5. Hit save.
Things to consider: - You can create different booking pages for different teams (e.g., Sales, Support), each with its own set of members. - For specialized roles, don’t just lump everyone together. If only some folks handle onboarding calls, make a separate meeting type just for them.
Step 4: Set up round robin assignment
By default, group bookings just show all available times for all team members. If you want meetings to be assigned automatically and evenly, you need to turn on round robin.
How to enable it: 1. On your team booking page (the meeting type you just set up), go to “Assignment Method.” 2. Choose “Round Robin.” 3. Decide how you want Appointlet to assign meetings: - Strict rotation: Meetings cycle through the list in order, regardless of who was actually booked last. - Availability-based: Appointlet checks who’s available at the requested time and assigns the booking to someone with an open slot. (This is the one most people want.) 4. Save your settings.
What works: - Round robin helps avoid overloading your top performers (or the unlucky person first in the list). - It’s fair, but you need everyone’s calendar to reflect reality.
What doesn’t: - If someone’s always marked as available (but isn’t actually working), they’ll get more bookings. Garbage in, garbage out. - There’s no granular weighting—if Jane should get 2x as many meetings as Bob, you can’t set that natively. You’d have to fudge it by adding Jane to more meeting types or adjusting her hours.
Step 5: Test it like a real client
Don’t trust that it just works—test the whole flow, or you’ll find out about problems from angry clients.
How to run a test: - Open your booking page in an incognito window. - Pick a time slot. See whose calendar gets booked. - Try booking multiple meetings in a row—does it rotate? Does it skip when someone’s unavailable? - Check that confirmations go to the right team member and customer.
What to look for: - Booking times match team availability. - No double bookings. - No “phantom” availability (times that aren’t actually free). - Everyone gets notified, and calendar invites show up as expected.
If something’s off:
Go back and check calendar connections and availability settings. Nine times out of ten, it’s a bad calendar sync, someone forgot to block a vacation, or there’s a time zone mismatch.
Step 6: Share the booking link and communicate with your team
Once you’re happy with how things are working, share the booking page with your clients, prospects, or whoever needs to book meetings.
How to handle rollout: - Send the link to your team first so they know what to expect. - Give clients clear instructions—don’t just drop the link and hope for the best. - Remind your team to keep their calendars up to date, especially for last-minute changes.
Pro tip:
You can embed the booking page on your website, or just send the link via email. Don’t overthink it—whatever gets people booking with the least hassle.
Common pitfalls (and how to dodge them)
Even with the best setup, a few things trip people up:
- Calendar chaos: If someone’s using multiple calendars and only one is synced, meetings can overlap. Make sure everyone connects all their work calendars.
- Outdated availability: People forget to block time for doctor’s appointments or school pickups. Remind your team that Appointlet can’t read their minds.
- No-shows or confusion: Clients sometimes get confused by team member names they don’t recognize. Consider customizing confirmation messages to explain who they’ll meet.
- Overly complex setups: The more meeting types, the more ways things can break. Keep it simple unless you really need extra complexity.
Final thoughts: Start simple, tweak as you go
You can spend hours fine-tuning every setting in Appointlet, but you really don’t need to. Start with the basics: get your team’s calendars connected, set working hours, enable round robin, and test it out. Most problems come from trying to cover every possible edge case before you’ve even run a real booking.
Once things are running, keep an eye out for snags—and don’t be afraid to adjust. Scheduling should save you headaches, not create new ones. Get the basics right, and let the tool do its job.