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TAB Calendar

TAB Calendar is your own booking calendar, built into TAB. Your agent reads your real availability, offers open times in the conversation, and books the appointment without sending the customer anywhere else.

You do not need Calendly or any other scheduling account.

What your agent can do​

Once TAB Calendar is enabled, your agent can:

  • Tell customers which services you offer and how long each takes
  • Offer real open times from your calendar, in your timezone
  • Book an appointment during the conversation
  • Find a customer's existing appointment
  • Move an appointment to another open time
  • Cancel an appointment when the customer confirms they want to

Every one of these can be switched on or off individually, so you can let the agent book but not cancel, for example.

Setting it up​

1. Enable TAB Calendar on your agent​

Open your agent, go to Integrations, find TAB Calendar and turn it on.

An agent can use TAB Calendar or Calendly, not both. If Calendly is already connected to that agent, disconnect it first — otherwise the two calendars would disagree about what is free.

2. Add your services​

Go to Calendar → Services and add each type of appointment you offer.

For each one you set:

  • Name — what the customer is booking, e.g. "Dermatology Consultation"
  • Description — what it involves. Your agent uses this to answer questions about the service, so write it for a customer rather than for yourself.
  • Duration — how long the appointment lasts. This is what the customer is told.
  • Buffer — dead time held after the appointment for cleaning down, notes, or running slightly over. It is never offered to customers, but it does block the calendar. A 30-minute service with a 10-minute buffer means the next appointment can start 40 minutes later.

Only active services can be booked. Deactivating one hides it from your agent immediately, without affecting appointments already booked against it. Edit on a service changes its name, length, buffer, colour and who offers it; appointments already booked keep their original length.

3. Add your resources​

Go to Calendar → Resources. A resource is anything that can only take one booking at a time and has its own hours: a doctor, a stylist, a mechanic, a service bay, a treatment room. Name them the way a customer would say them.

Your calendar starts with one resource called Main. A one-person business can rename it and stop there; nothing else changes. Add more when several people or stations take bookings at the same time.

Each service says which resources offer it: "Oil change: Bay 1, Bay 2, Bay 3", "Botox: Dr. Samah". Two appointments on different resources can overlap, even for the same service. Two on the same resource never can, whatever the services.

Your agent asks a customer for a preference only when more than one person offers the service, and only once. "Anyone" is a fine answer: the first free resource takes the booking. It never mentions a bay or a room unless the customer asks.

4. Set your opening hours​

Go to Calendar → Availability and set the hours each resource is open on each day. With more than one resource, a picker at the top chooses whose hours you are editing.

You can add more than one window to a day. Two windows is how you express a break — for example 10:00–14:00 and 16:00–20:00 leaves the afternoon free.

Days with no window are treated as closed.

Your agent cannot book anything until opening hours exist. With no hours set it will tell customers there is nothing available, however far ahead it looks.

Using the calendar​

Calendar shows the week. Appointments are colour-coded by service, and today is highlighted. Click any appointment to see who booked it, how to reach them, which channel it came from, and its reference — or to cancel it.

You can also book manually, for a customer who phoned or walked in. Manual bookings sit on the same calendar and block the same time as agent-made ones.

Reminders​

Every customer with an email address on their booking gets a reminder 24 hours before the appointment. If the booking came from a chat, the agent also sends a reminder on that conversation where the channel allows it.

Reminders follow the appointment: moving it moves the reminder, cancelling it cancels the reminder.

Customers​

Calendar → Customers lists everyone who books on this calendar: how many visits, what is booked next, their last visit, no-shows, and who they usually see. Click a customer for their full history. Anyone who books through the agent is added automatically; add a walk-in or a phone customer yourself with Add customer.

A phone number or email is what identifies a customer. When a booking arrives with a phone the calendar already knows — however it is written — it goes onto that customer's record rather than creating a new one. When you book manually, start typing a name to pick an existing customer, or fill in a new one.

A customer who came through a channel has an Open in CRM link to the conversation. This list is the calendar's own; editing a person's details in the CRM does not change them here.

Booking references​

Every appointment gets a reference like AP-K7M2QX. It is how a customer identifies their booking later.

If a customer asks about an appointment, your agent will ask them to confirm the phone number or email they booked with before showing any details. This protects your customers: someone who guesses another person's phone number is told nothing.

For an appointment you booked from the dashboard, or one made in an earlier conversation, the customer also needs to give the reference. Those bookings are not linked to the current chat, so the reference is what finds them. It is worth giving customers their reference when you book them in by phone.

Double-booking​

Two appointments cannot overlap on the same agent's calendar. This is enforced by the database, not by the agent, so it holds even if two customers confirm the same slot at the same moment — one gets it, the other is offered another time.

It applies to your manual bookings too.

Keeping your own calendar in step​

Your agent only knows about appointments in TAB. If you book someone in your phone's calendar and not in TAB, your agent may still offer that time.

Block the time in TAB — either as a manual booking or by editing that day's availability — so the two do not drift apart.

Timezone​

Set your timezone under Calendar → Availability → Booking rules. Every time the agent quotes, every reminder and every export uses it. Until it is set, the calendar runs in UTC and the page warns you. Daylight saving is handled per date, so hours set as "10:00" stay at 10:00 through the change.

Exporting​

Export on the Calendar page downloads the appointments in a date range, optionally for one resource, one service or one status. Times are in your timezone.

The default is an Excel workbook with three sheets: Calendar (a week-by-week grid, each booking in its resource's colour), Appointments (the full list, with filters), and Summary (totals per resource and per service). Choose CSV list instead for a flat file to import elsewhere.

Common questions​

I have three doctors. Do I need three agents? No. Add each doctor as a resource on one agent's calendar. Each gets their own hours, the services list who offers what, and the agent asks the customer which doctor they would like.

Can two agents share one calendar? No. Each agent has its own services, hours and appointments. That way two agents in the same workspace never book into each other's time.

What happens when I deactivate a service that has bookings? Existing appointments are untouched. The agent simply stops offering it.

Can customers reschedule themselves? Yes, if the reschedule action is enabled. The agent finds their appointment, offers new times, and moves it in one step — the old slot is freed automatically.

Does cancelling free the slot immediately? Yes. As soon as an appointment is cancelled the time is bookable again.

Can I stop last-minute cancellations? Yes. Under Calendar → Availability → Booking rules, set a cancellation cutoff — for example 24 hours. Once an appointment is that close, the agent no longer lets the customer cancel or move it and asks them to contact you instead. You can still cancel it yourself from the calendar. 0 means no limit.