Configuring Your Scheduling Setup

Setting up scheduling means telling Alivo when your team is free and where new appointments should land, so customers only ever book times that actually work. It matters because good availability is the difference between a booked inspection and a double-booked mess. This guide walks through connecting your calendar, choosing which of your calendars count toward availability, deciding where bookings get saved, and setting your hours.

Connect Your Calendar

Alivo connects to Google Calendar or Microsoft (Outlook) so it can see when you are busy and write new appointments back to your calendar. On the calendar connection screen, sign in to the account you use for scheduling. Once connected, Alivo can read your free and busy times and add booked jobs automatically.

Choosing Which Calendars Block Availability

Most people keep more than one calendar in the same account, like a personal calendar and a shared team calendar. Alivo now shows all of them. After you connect, a "My calendars" section lists every calendar in that account, each with its color.

• Check a calendar to have it block your time. Any calendar you check is used to find conflicts, so a busy block there keeps customers from booking over it.
• Uncheck the ones that should not count. If a calendar is just for reference and should not affect your availability, leave it unchecked.
• Your primary calendar is always on. The main calendar for the account is always used and cannot be unchecked.

This lets a rep whose life spans several calendars have all of them respected, so Alivo never books a time that is actually taken.

Choosing Where Bookings Are Saved

Reading your calendars and writing to them are two different jobs. On calendars other than your primary one, an "Allow writing" switch marks a calendar as a place Alivo is allowed to save new appointments. Then, in your event type setup, each host has a "Book new events into" choice, so a rep's booked jobs can be written into a specific calendar instead of always the main one. If you do not change it, new bookings go to the primary calendar as before.

Rule of thumb: Check every calendar that should keep you from being double-booked, but only turn on writing for the one place you actually want new jobs to appear. Read from many, write to one.

Set Your Availability and Hours

Beyond your calendar, Alivo uses your business hours to know when bookings are allowed at all. Set the days and times your team takes appointments so the booking options a customer sees always fall inside your working window. Business hours are covered in their own guide if you want the full walkthrough.

Decide How Customers Get Booked

Once your calendars and hours are set, you choose how customers land on a time. You can let Alivo assign a rep, or you can hand out a booking link for a specific person so a customer books directly with them. If a customer asks for a rep by name on the phone or by text, Alivo can point them to that rep's availability too, and quietly fall back to showing all reps if that person has no open times. The different scheduling styles are covered in "How to Choose a Scheduling Type for Your Business."

Confirm Your Coverage

Scheduling also respects where you work. Your service areas decide who is even allowed to book, so it is worth setting those before you go live. See "What Are Service Areas in Alivo?" for how to define your coverage.

Common Questions

Can Alivo check more than one of my calendars for conflicts?

Yes. Every calendar you check in the "My calendars" list is used to find busy times, so Alivo will not book over any of them.

Where do new appointments show up?

In your primary calendar by default. If you turn on writing for another calendar and pick it as the booking destination for a host, new jobs land there instead.

Do I have to connect both Google and Microsoft?

No. Connect whichever one your team runs on. Alivo works with either.

Still have a question this didn't answer? Reach out to our support team support@alivo.ai and we'll be glad to help.