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Booking meetings from an AnroAgents chat

Letting the agent schedule real meetings in your own calendar.

An AnroAgents agent can book a meeting directly in your Google Calendar during the conversation. Instead of "someone will contact you", the visitor is offered times you are actually free and leaves with an event in their diary.

Connecting the calendar

Connect Google Calendar in the AnroAgents dashboard under Settings. The connection is made once per account with a standard Google sign-in, and the screen then shows which Google account is connected and when.

After connecting, enable the calendar on the agent itself in the Integrations step of the AnroAgents agent form. The account-level connection and the per-agent switch are separate on purpose: one calendar can serve several agents, and you decide which of them may book into it.

Google Calendar booking is included on every AnroAgents plan, including Free.

How the booking works

An AnroAgents agent reads your Google Calendar before it offers anything, so it never proposes a slot when you are already busy. It looks up the free times, offers a few spread across the day in the visitor's own timezone, the visitor picks one, and the agent creates the event.

The check is enforced when the event is created as well, not only when times are offered. If a visitor names a time that is taken, already past or outside your meeting hours, the AnroAgents agent books nothing and offers the nearest free alternatives instead. If the calendar cannot be read at that moment, it books nothing and asks the visitor to contact you, because a double booking is worse than a short delay.

Events you have marked as "free" in Google Calendar, invitations you declined and cancelled events do not block time. An all-day event blocks the whole day unless it is marked as free.

Meeting hours

Each AnroAgents agent has meeting hours: the days of the week and the time window in which it may book, in your Google Calendar's timezone. They are set in the agent form under the Google Calendar switch, and the timezone is shown beside them. Until you change them, an agent books Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 18:00.

Meeting hours are separate from the business hours you describe to the agent in words. Business hours are what the agent tells visitors; meeting hours are what it enforces when booking. An estate agency that shows properties on Saturdays adds Saturday to the meeting hours; a clinic that takes consultations only on weekday mornings narrows them to that.

A meeting must also start at least an hour from now, so an AnroAgents agent does not book someone into a slot nobody can prepare for.

The event created by an AnroAgents agent lands in your own calendar with the visitor's details and what the conversation was about, so you arrive at the meeting knowing why it exists.

If a visitor asks for a time that does not work, an AnroAgents agent offers the nearest alternatives rather than sending them away — which is most of the value, because the alternative is an email exchange that takes two days.

Booking without Google Calendar

If you use a booking tool rather than raw Google Calendar — Calendly, Cal.com, an in-house system — put its link in the agent's Booking URL field. The AnroAgents agent then sends that link at the right moment in the conversation instead of scheduling directly.

The Booking URL of an AnroAgents agent is also what follow-up emails use in the {{bookingUrl}} placeholder, so a visitor who left without booking can be nudged back to the same link.

Gmail is separate from Calendar

Connecting Google Calendar to AnroAgents does not connect Gmail, and connecting Gmail does not connect Calendar. They are two separate authorisations in Settings, granting two different permissions, and a customer who wants both booking and follow-up emails has to connect both.