Booking Settings and Availability

Your booking settings control when and how your AI assistant schedules appointments. You can set which days and hours you’re available, how long each appointment lasts, and how much buffer time to leave between jobs. These settings work alongside your connected calendar to make sure appointments only get booked when you’re actually free.

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The Three Core Settings

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1. Availability Hours

Availability hours define the days and time windows when your assistant is allowed to book appointments. For each day of the week (Monday through Sunday), you can:

• Toggle the day on or off — Turn the switch on for days you accept appointments, off for days you don’t.
• Set start and end times — Choose when you start and stop accepting bookings each day. Times are available in 30-minute increments from 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM.

For example, a typical contractor might set Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with Saturday from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and Sunday turned off.

Tip: Your availability hours work together with your connected calendar. Even if you mark Monday as available from 8 AM to 5 PM, your assistant won’t book during times that already have events on your calendar.

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2. Appointment Duration

Appointment duration sets how long each booking slot lasts. When your assistant books an appointment, this is the time block that gets reserved on your calendar. In the assistant setup wizard, the available durations are: The default duration is 30 minutes. In the Settings page, you have access to an expanded list of durations up to 4 hours, plus a custom option where you can enter any value between 5 and 480 minutes.

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3. Buffer Time

Buffer time adds padding between appointments. This is especially useful for home service businesses where you need travel time between jobs, or time for cleanup and preparation. The available buffer options in the wizard are: The default buffer is 15 minutes. Like duration, the Settings page offers more buffer options up to 4 hours, plus a custom option for any value between 0 and 480 minutes. For example, if you set a 1-hour appointment duration with a 30-minute buffer, your assistant will block out 1 hour and 30 minutes total for each appointment. This ensures you have time to wrap up one job and get to the next.

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Where to Configure These Settings

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During Assistant Setup (Wizard)

When you create a new inbound assistant, the Set up appointment booking step lets you configure all three settings at once:

1. Turn on the Appointment Booking toggle.
2. Connect a calendar provider (see Calendar & Booking Overview for provider options).
3. Set your Availability hours using the per-day toggles and time dropdowns.
4. Choose your Appointment duration from the duration dropdown.
5. Choose your Buffer time from the buffer dropdown.

The duration and buffer selectors sit side by side in two cards below the availability hours.

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From Settings (After Setup)

You can update your appointment duration and buffer time at any time from the Settings page:

1. Navigate to Settings in the sidebar.
2. Find the Appointment Booking section (it’s collapsible — click to expand if needed).
3. Update the Appointment Duration and Buffer Time dropdowns.
4. Click Save Changes.

When you save changes from the Settings page, VozAgent automatically syncs the updated duration and buffer to all your assistants that have booking enabled. You’ll see a confirmation message: “Appointment settings updated and synced to your assistants.”

Note: The Settings page offers additional duration and buffer options beyond what’s available in the wizard, including values up to 4 hours and a custom “Other…” option where you can type in any number of minutes.

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Custom Duration and Buffer Values

If the preset options don’t fit your business, you can enter a custom value from the Settings page:

1. Open the duration or buffer dropdown.
2. Select Other… at the bottom of the list.
3. A text input appears. Type your desired value in minutes (minimum 5 for duration, minimum 0 for buffer, maximum 480 for both).
4. Click Save Changes.

To switch back to a preset value, click Cancel next to the custom input, and the dropdown returns to the standard options with a default selected.

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How These Settings Work Together

Here’s a practical example. Say you’re an HVAC contractor with these settings:

• Availability hours: Monday—Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
• Appointment duration: 1 hour
• Buffer time: 30 minutes

When a caller asks for an appointment on Tuesday, your assistant will:

1. Check your connected calendar for existing events on Tuesday.
2. Look at your availability window (8:00 AM to 5:00 PM).
3. Find open 1-hour blocks with 30-minute gaps between them.
4. Offer the available slots to the caller.

So if you have an existing appointment from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, your assistant won’t offer 11:00 AM — it will wait until 11:30 AM (after the buffer) to offer the next slot.

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Best Practices

• Be realistic with duration. If a typical service call takes 45 minutes, don’t set 15-minute appointments. Your assistant will book based on what you tell it.
• Account for travel time. If you drive between jobs, set a buffer that covers your average travel time. For field service, 30 to 60 minutes is common.
• Keep weekends intentional. If you only take emergency calls on weekends, consider leaving Saturday and Sunday toggled off and handling those manually.
• Review your settings periodically. As your business grows or your schedule changes, revisit these settings to make sure they still reflect reality.

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Related Articles

• Calendar & Booking Overview
• Connecting Google Calendar
• Connecting Calendly
• Connecting Cal.com