An online booking calendar is only as good as the slots it offers. Show too many and your team is booked into gaps they needed for preparation. Show too few and prospects leave for a competitor who answered faster. This article is about the rules behind those slots on the levelpartner.ai platform: working hours, buffers, notice periods, booking windows, daily limits, time zones and date-specific exceptions, and how they combine across a team. Set them well once and the calendar protects your diary without anyone policing it.
How the platform decides which slots to show
For any calendar, a slot appears only when every rule agrees. The assigned user must be inside their working hours. Their connected external calendar must show them free. The slot must fall after the minimum notice period and inside the booking window. Any buffer around existing meetings must be clear. The day must not already have hit its booking limit.
If one rule fails, the slot disappears. That is why a calendar can look empty to visitors while a rep insists they are free: one forgotten rule is quietly removing every option.
Before you start
- Each user's agreed working hours, including days they do not take external meetings.
- Every user's Google or Outlook calendar connected under Calendar Settings, Connections.
- A decision on preparation time before meetings and recovery time after them.
- The minimum notice your team needs, such as same day, next morning or two days.
- How far ahead people may book.
- Public holidays and known leave for the next quarter.
The rules, one at a time
Working hours. Set per user, then the calendar can narrow them further. A rep who works nine to five may only take first calls between ten and four.
Slot interval. How often a slot starts. A thirty-minute meeting with fifteen-minute intervals offers more starting times than one with hourly intervals, which helps fill a diary but can fragment it.
Buffers. Time blocked before or after each meeting. A buffer after a first call gives the rep time to write notes and update the opportunity before the next one.
Minimum notice. How soon a slot can be booked. Too short and reps walk into calls unprepared; too long and the lead cools.
Booking window. How far ahead people can book. A shorter window keeps the diary flexible.
Daily limit. The maximum bookings per day for that calendar, so one person is never stacked with back-to-back first calls.
Date overrides. Specific dates with different hours or no availability, used for holidays, training days and events.
How to set it up
- Confirm each user's time zone and working hours with them.
- Go to Calendars, then Calendar Settings, and open Connections.
- Click Add New to connect each user's personal calendar.
- Back in Calendar Settings, open the calendar you want to configure.
- Set the Slot Duration and the Slot Interval.
- Add a Buffer where preparation or notes are needed.
- Set the Minimum Scheduling Notice.
- Set the Date Range for how far ahead people may book.
- Set Appointments per Day if the calendar needs a cap.
- Add date-specific hours for holidays and leave, then save.
- Click Troubleshoot Calendar and hover over any unavailable slot.
- Open the booking link privately and check the next two weeks.
Team calendars and time zones
On a round robin calendar, the visitor sees a slot if any assigned user is free. On a collective calendar, every assigned user must be free at once, so the rules for each person stack. A collective calendar with three busy people may offer very few slots; keep collective meetings for when everyone genuinely needs to be there.
Time zones catch out firms serving more than one country. The visitor sees slots in their own time zone, worked out from their browser. Your side must be right: each user's profile time zone and the calendar's own setting. A UK adviser with a profile left on a US zone will offer slots in the middle of their night.
Suppose the firm's first call calendar uses UK working hours of nine to five for advisers. A New York prospect would see the earliest slots at four in the morning their time and the latest at noon. Giving two advisers later hours on two days a week would add afternoon options for US prospects without changing anyone else's diary.
What this replaces
It replaces the rep who blocks fake meetings in their own calendar to stop people booking, the coordinator who shuffles diaries every Monday, and the awkward email apologising for a double-booking. The rules do that work every time someone opens the link.
For rolling these rules out consistently across teams, read the rollout plan for a firm-wide scheduler. Once meetings are booked, the appointment management routine covers what happens next. If you need to book shared spaces as well as people, read booking rooms and resources alongside meetings.
The mistake most firms make
Leaving the defaults. A default interval, no buffer and a long booking window produces a diary full of back-to-back calls booked weeks out, half of which never happen. Spend twenty minutes per calendar on these rules before it goes live.
Using a very long booking window for first calls. Meetings booked weeks ahead are forgotten. Keep first-call windows short and use reminders.
When not to tighten the rules
If a calendar is barely getting bookings, do not add more restrictions. Widen availability first, shorten the notice period and see whether demand follows. Tight rules suit a busy calendar, not an empty one.
Troubleshooting
No slots appear at all. A user has no working hours, the booking window is zero, or a date override blocks the whole range. Check each in turn.
Slots appear when the rep is in a meeting. Their external calendar is not connected, or the meeting was marked as free. Reconnect and check how the event is set.
Slots look an hour out. A user's profile time zone is wrong, or daylight saving changed and a setting was entered by hand. Correct the profile zone.
The calendar fills with back-to-back calls. No buffer and no daily limit. Add both.
Frequently asked questions
Can each team member have different hours on the same calendar?
Yes. Each user's own working hours apply, and the calendar can narrow them further.
Do holidays need to be set per calendar?
Set leave on the user's own calendar so it blocks every booking calendar they are assigned to. Use calendar overrides for days the whole meeting type is off.
How do we stop people booking the same day?
Set the minimum scheduling notice to the next working day or longer.
Can visitors see which team member they will meet?
On a personal calendar, yes. On round robin they are told after booking, in the confirmation.