Sales Managers & Admins | Smart Scheduler Overview and Set Up

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Requirements
• Create a Smart Schedule
• Step 1: Smart Scheduler Workflow
• Step 2: Add Assignees
• Step 3: Deploy
• Smart Schedule Home Tab
• Important Details About Default Attribute Behavior

Overview

Create a single schedule with multiple reps that will automatically route people to the appropriate rep and ensure the best match possible. Take advantage of our custom attributes and scheduling form for an even more accurate matching experience. 

How Smart Scheduler will help teams book with more confidence and in much less time: 

1. Automate the scheduling process by matching people with the most qualified and available reps. 
2. Eliminate manual lead assignment for Sales Managers and SDRs. 
3. Eliminate the back and forth common with coordinating meetings via phone calls or email.

Requirements

1. Plans with full access to all features
   • Scheduling+
   • Expert

Where Do I Access Smart Scheduler?

Create a Smart Schedule

Overview: Create your first schedule to test the schedule without any required configuration. Return to make edits to add assignees, modify settings, and customize the schedule and easily preview your changes to know exactly what the customer experience will be.  When you are ready to deploy and publish the schedule, distribute a link to customers or directly embed your Smart Schedule experience to your website to begin automating bookings to your Sales Team.

1. Create a New Schedule

• From the Smart Scheduler Homescreen, click the create button from the top right corner of the screen

2. Choose your logic

• Choose the system logic you want the schedule to follow.  The logic controls how meetings are distributed to the pool of Assignees included in the schedule. There are three options to choose from
  • Utilization - Optimizes distribution of meetings to the assignees based on the number of bookings for each Assignee and prioritizes availability of assignees with the least number of bookings.
    • • When meetings are booked to Assignees calendars, Smart Schedule will track the number of bookings for each User.  
      • The next time a customer visits the scheduling flow, the logic will evaluate not only availability of matching users, but the number of bookings for each User.  Users with the least number of bookings will be prioritized.
      • Customers will be shown less available times to book.
        • • What will happen when a rep is on vacation and returns?  
            • Smart Scheduler will prioritize Reps with availability while others are OOO.  When a rep returns, their availability will be prioritized to help maintain an even distribution of meetings.

• • • • The logic will attempt to maintain distribution of meetings as evenly as possible.
  • Customer Availability - Customer Choice gives your customers the most available time to conveniently schedule with representatives.
    • • When customers visit the scheduling flow, they are presented with a greater number of available times to choose from for more scheduling flexibility.
      • Smart Scheduler accomplishes this by populating a threshold of 80% availability of all User in the rotation to the customer.  
      • As each meeting is booked to a calendar, Smart Scheduler will present the next customer with availability from Users with a lower count of bookings
  • Match Maker - Match Maker automatically adds a configurable form to the workflow that leverages Custom Attributes. When your customers visit the scheduling flow, the first step will be to complete a form which filters availability of Assignees most qualified to assist the customer. 
• Note: For all schedules, the default availability displayed is set to two weeks from access.

Step 1: Smart Scheduler Workflow

Smart Scheduler Workflow Step

Overview: After selecting your primary Smart Schedule logic, the Workflow steps will appear on the left side of the screen.  These steps are the backbone to set up your Smart Schedule and show you exactly how the customer will walk through the scheduling experience.  Each step has customizable options you can choose to configure to control your customer booking experience.

Advanced:  You can also choose to add or remove a Form at this step for each selection to further filter the best matching Rep.  Please see Custom Attributes and Form set up for further details.

Availability and Utilization

1. Confirm the distribution logic for your workflow.  Select your default Meeting Buffers to show the correct availability in the booking calendar.  Choose to add or remove a form from the workflow.
2. Choose the first meeting and all meeting buffers.
• First Meeting Buffer: sets the number of minutes or hours between the time a contact visits the workflow to book and the first available times that show to give your reps lead time to prepare for the meeting.
  • Choose whether no lead time is needed or up to 7 days.
• All Meeting Buffer blocks off the number of minutes or hours set between meetings to prevent customers from booking back to back meetings where that is not possible.
  • Choose whether meetings can occur with no break between meetings or up to 8 hours.  

Booking Calendar

Overview: Click to customize the experience your customers will see when selecting a time to meet with Assignees in the schedule. 

1. Calendar Welcome: This is the title your customers will see when visiting the booking page.
2. Description:  Add a greeting message visible to customers when they visit the scheduling page for your team.
3. Meeting Days: Choose the days of the week, Calendar Hours available to schedule for each day and the default timezone of the schedule
4. Meeting Length: How long the meetings for the schedule can be.
   • The default settings will reflect your Org calendar settings for Cirrus Insight.  If there are customizations to make for your specific team, edit them here. 
   NOTE: If users operate outside of the timezone in the set up and do not set their specific time zone for their primary Calendar View, this will be their default value.

Details and Questionnaire

Overview: After customers select a time for a meeting, the customer is matched with an assignee and can enter their contact information and view the details of their meeting. Customers can also be required to answer specific questions valuable to the team member hosting the meeting.  

Meeting Settings:

1. Location field allows you to set where the meeting will take place.
   • Location Options:
     • Custom
     • Zoom
     • Microsoft Teams
     • Google Meet
   • Custom allows you to add a specific location or phone number. 
   • For Virtual Meetings, select between Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams and Cirrus Insight will generate a unique meeting link that will be added to the calendar event. 
     • NOTE: The integration of choice must be enabled for your org to view the virtual option in the dropdown and Users must have a valid connection to the desired teleconferencing platform.
       • Cirrus automatically connects Microsoft Teams or Google Meet from a Users email connection.  
       • Zoom Users must have a valid integration connection for the meeting link to be generated.  If no integration connection is detected for an assignee, they will be sent an email asking to connect from the CI dashboard or sidebar.  Users can authorize Zoom from Manage Connections in the User portal.
2. Save to Salesforce checkbox automatically saves the calendar event to the Assignees' Salesforce calendar when scheduled
   • NOTE: This setting is only necessary if Salesforce is used to track events or if your Org has opted out of the Cirrus Insight automatic Calendar Sync. 
3. Questionnaire allows you to add optional survey questions for customers to answer before confirming the meeting. (e.g. “What is the primary service you are interested in learning more about?”)
   • Choose to make questions required or not required.
   • All answers provided by the customer will be included in the confirmation email sent to the matched Assignee.

Meeting Scheduled

Overview: After a customer confirms the meeting, they will see a confirmation of booking and receive an event invite.  

Settings:

In the Meeting Scheduled workflow, customize the  subject line of the customer confirmation email for a personal touch.

1. Input your custom message to the customer when the generic email client just won't do.
2. Send the Host confirmation email checkbox will send your Assignees a copy of the customer facing invite. 

Step 2: Assignees

Overview: Add up to 50 assignees to your workflow to include their availability to your customers and select the priority order for User in the workflow.  The schedule creator will automatically be added by default to allow the Smart Schedule to be saved as a draft immediately to preview the customer facing scheduling experience. The creating User can be removed when at least one additional assignee has been added.

Requirements:

1. Assignees must be licensed Cirrus Insight Users
2. Users should upload a profile picture from the User Portal in My Profile

Add Assignees:

1. Adding Assignees to the scheduling workflow is easy.  Using the search bar, search for licensed Cirrus Insight Users your org by name ore email and select from the dropdown to add them to the assignees list.

Order Assignees:

Overview: Assignee Order allows customization of the workflow logic.  When the scheduling flow is kicked off, Smart Scheduler will fetch the availability of the priority Users first.

1. Adjust the order of the assignees in the list using drag and drop to the left of each User.

1. As bookings are scheduled, availability will presented to customers by the Users next in the order.
2. Available times presented to customers will be prioritized for Users with the least amount of bookings. 

Step 3: Deploy

Overview: The Final Step to review a Smart Schedule allows you to customize your brand experience for your customer and permission schedule editors.

Settings to configure:

1. Name the workflow (Internal Facing)
2. Add a custom unique URL
3. Add your branding
4. Preview and test the customer facing experience before publishing.

Name field: 

• This is the internal name as it will appear in the Smart Scheduler list and home tab.
• Search the Smart Scheduler list to locate your schedule when editing is required. 

Custom URL field:

• Add a customer friendly URL to the scheduling page. 

Owners field:

• Permission other Cirrus Insight Users to edit and publish any specific Smart schedule. This field allows easy transfer of ownership or shared ownership.
• To Add owners, search by name and select any Cirrus Insight User from the dropdown.
• Users listed in the field will automatically be granted access to the Smart Scheduler feature.
• Users will have full edit and publishing rights for any schedule to which they are added.

Branding:

Overview: Upload your personal brand logo from a local file to appear in the booking experience for your customers to add a professional touch to your page.

Requirements:

• The branding logo must be sized at 200x50 pixels.

Adding Branding:

1. To upload an image, simply drag and drop or select from a file.
2. The image will appear in the top left header of the booking page experience.
   • NOTE: The Org branding set up by your Cirrus Insight Admin will appear by default. If no branding appears in this setting, please upload or consult with your Cirrus Insight Admin to apply Org wide branding to the Calendar Scheduling configuration.
3. The Branding image will appear in the top left corner of the customer facing scheduling experience.  Preview the flow to make sure the logo appears as intended.

Preview:

Overview: Before publishing your Smart Schedule, we give you the option to preview exactly how the customer experience will look and feel. This is your opportunity to make sure the Smart Schedule is customized precisely the way you want.

• Click the Preview button to walk through the entire live scheduling flow and even book a time with one of the Assignees. 
  • NOTE: On the first run, you can expect Users that appear at the top of the Assignees list to be scheduled during the preview flow.

Smart Schedule Home Tab

Overview: When at least one Smart Schedule is created, the home tab will display a list of all created schedules.  Schedules can exist in multiple states, from Draft, Published, to a mixed state with a Published and a Draft version.

You will notice different action controls depending on the status of a given Smart Schedule by hovering over the Smart Schedule name.

Draft Status

Drafts are unpublished versions of a schedule that are not yet active or visible in the customer experience. 

Available Actions:

• Edit Drafts to update any set up or assignees to a schedule before publishing.
• View the current set up of the Smart Schedule as it would appear to your customer when booking a meeting
• Publish Draft will update the Status of a schedule and allow for deployment to your customers

Published Status

Published schedules are ready for deployment to your customers.  A direct link is available to send via emails or embed behind a website button.  Or choose to copy the HTML code and embed the booking experience directly in a web page.

Available Actions:

• Edit
• View
• Deploy allows you to copy the link to the active schedule
  • Deploy also gives the option to copy the HTML code for embed on your website.
    • NOTE: See the Deploy section below

Published and Draft Status

Overview: Smart Schedules can exist as a published, deployed version, and Draft version. The mixed status allows active customer-facing schedules to continue to drive bookings from the published version while edits are being made on the fly to a draft to be deployed later.

When edits to a draft are approved, Publish Draft will update the current published version of the schedule automatically without disruption to your customers.

• NOTE: The best example for utilizing the mixed state - A new hire begins in one week.  You want to be confident they will be inserted into the schedule at the start date.  Once they are onboarded, publish the draft schedule to insert them into the published workflow.

Deploy

Overview: The deploy action allows you to immediately obtain a link directly to the SMart schedule flow OR  Embed allows copy of the HTML code which can be directly applied to any web page.  This gives you flexibility when curating your customer scheduling experience.

Requirements:  

In order to access the Deploy action, a schedule must have a status of 'Published'

Action:

1. Clicking Deploy will open a menu and provide two options to share access to your scheduling workflow.
2. Copy Link Tab:
   • Just like personal scheduling pages, the Copy Link allows you to deploy your Smart Schedule efficiently to customers.
     • Example Uses:  
       1. Add the link to marketing emails to drive customers to your reps.
       2. Mask the link behind a button in your website to kickoff the customer booking experience
3. Embed tab:
• Clicking the embed tab will show you a preview of an iframe for your created schedule.
• Copy the Embed HTML code to add the actual scheduling experience directly to any webpage.
  • NOTE: Send the code to your IT or Website specialist. They can customize the iframe to modify the iframe to match the color palette for any webpage.

Important Details About Default Attribute Behavior

Creating Custom Attributes with Default Values:

• When you create a custom attribute for users in a system, you can assign a default value. This default value is automatically applied to all users within the system, ensuring that every user has a value for this attribute from the start.

Manual Overrides:

• If you then manually change the value of this custom attribute for a specific user, this user’s attribute value will diverge from the default. The system records this manual change, and this user’s custom attribute will no longer automatically update with changes to the default value.

Updating the Default Value:

• Should you decide to change the default value of the custom attribute at a later time, this new default value will propagate to all users except for those whose attribute values have been manually edited. Those manually edited users retain their customized values, ensuring their specific settings are preserved.

Behavioral Principle:

• The key principle here is that the system distinguishes between users who retain the default setting and those who have been given a specific, manually-set value. Changes to the default setting do not affect users with manual overrides, which allows for both broad changes across the user base and individual customizations.

For details on creating custom attributes and forms within a Smart Schedule, view this Knowledge Base article.