Creating one-time meeting links with Zoho Bookings

Creating one-time meeting links with Zoho Bookings

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an older workaround. Zoho Bookings now supports one-time meeting links. Please refer to this page to generate one time meeting links.  
  • Want to schedule ad-hoc meetings?
  • Want to share only a particular time slot for a meeting?
  • Don't want clients to book with you again?
  • Don't want to expose your total availability?
And do all this without disturbing your current setup? Dive right in. We'll show you how to schedule One-Time Meetings.
  1. Staff sends a one-time booking page link to the invitee.
  2. Booking page link expires once an appointment is booked.
  3. Invitees can book next appointment only when staff shares a new URL.
  4. Invitees cannot share your availability with people you do not know.
Can we do this in Zoho Bookings? Unfortunately no. Not at the moment. Though one-time meeting links are on our roadmap, we don't wish to stall our customers.


 
So here's our workaround for one-time meeting links with a little bit of manual effort.
  1. Create a service specific to one-time meeting links.
  2. Mark this service as private. It makes sure that the service isn't listed under any workspace.
  3. Navigate to the service booking URL. Click Customize.
  4. Change the last portion of the URL to the following format.


For example, if you send an appointment link on May 01, 2023, to a customer called Robert James, your code would look like this - D010523TROBE. It ensures that none of the one-time URLs overlap with each other.

Voila, your one-time booking link is ready. Once a customer books using this link, you can modify it and send it again to another customer. The following is how the flow would look like,



Check out the video below for more details,


Important Notes

  • Let's assume we send the URL to customer 1. If customer 2 asks for a one-time link, don't modify the URL before customer 1 books. Once customer 1 books an appointment, you can modify it and send it to customer 2.
  • If multiple customers request a one-time URL simultaneously, you can create another service, repeat the above process, and send the URLs to your customers. Check out the following video for more details.
  • If two customers ask for a one-time URL simultaneously with the same name, you can add one more letter to the URL. For example, Robert James and Robert Williams are requesting one-time appointment links simultaneously. The following can be the code,
    • D010523TROBEJ - For Robert James
    • D010523TROBEW - For Robert Williams
  • It's not mandatory to follow the naming convention, but we recommend you do so to avoid the overlap of using the same booking page link.


Taking complete control over one-time meetings

If you wish to power over your availability, here's how you should do it.
  1. Navigate to Service Notifications > Available Date Range.
  2. Set it to a date/ date range you want your customer to book. Double click to select a single date/ choose a date and drag the slider to choose a range. Once you've chosen your preferences, click on select and finally 'Save.'
  3. Now click on available Times. Choose custom time.
  4. Here you can define your time slot and allow people to book appointments depending on your preferences.
Check out the following video for more details.



With this method, you can generate one-time meeting links through Zoho Bookings. If you've any queries, drop them in the comments. We'll be happy to help you out.

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