# Appointment Booking: Getting started

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<Lead>
From zero to your first booking in about ten minutes: this page walks you through installation, the guided setup and the moment the first booking arrives.
</Lead>

## Installation

You will find **Appointment Booking** (Termin-Booking) in your platform's **marketplace**. After installation the tool appears under **Tools** and opens its own dashboard with its own sidebar.

<Callout tone="note" title="Plan requirement">
Appointment Booking is included from the **Compact plan** and costs no credits. It is deliberately unavailable during the trial (message: "Dieses Tool ist im Test-Zeitraum nicht enthalten.", meaning the tool is not included in the trial period). The reason: your public booking links would go dead after the trial ends, which would look unprofessional to your customers.
</Callout>

Two permissions decide what you can do in the tool: whoever may **use** the tool sees and manages their own appointments. Whoever may **configure** the tool additionally creates event types, schedules, workflows and routing forms and sees the whole team's appointments. Without the configure permission the start screen shows a note that an admin in your workspace can create event types.

## Guided setup

On first open (as long as no event type exists yet) a guided setup starts, in **five steps**. You can skip it at any time with **Später einrichten** (set up later) and create everything by hand.

<Steps>
  <Step title="For you or your team">
    "Are you setting up Appointment Booking for yourself or for your team?" You pick **Für mich** (for me) or **Für unser Team** (for our team) and tick what the tool should help with: coordinating viewings, consultations, valuation visits, phone callbacks, open house, fewer no-shows through reminders, or turning WhatsApp enquiries into appointments. The tool assembles your first event types from this selection.
  </Step>
  <Step title="Business focus">
    "What describes your business best?" Options are sales, rentals, sales and rentals, valuation and surveys, property management, new build and developers, commercial, or other. The focus fine-tunes the defaults: for rentals, the viewing is created shorter, for example.
  </Step>
  <Step title="Connect your calendar">
    "Connect your calendar so busy times cannot be booked." In this step you connect your calendar via its private iCal address; short click-by-click instructions cover Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple iCloud, and any other iCal or webcal address works too. The step can be skipped. The one-click sign-in with your Google or Microsoft account lives in the tool under **Availability > Calendars** (Verfügbarkeit > Kalender).
  </Step>
  <Step title="Availability">
    "When are you usually available for appointments?" A weekly grid with time windows per day. If business hours are maintained in your company profile, they are pre-filled here. You also set the time zone; guests automatically see times in their own.
  </Step>
  <Step title="Meeting point">
    "How do you prefer to meet your customers?" Options: **Am Objekt** (at the property, the meeting point automatically becomes the property address), **Im Büro** (your office address from the company profile), **Telefon** (the guest leaves a number, you call) or **Video**.
  </Step>
</Steps>

With **Fertigstellen** (finish) the tool creates up to **three starter event types** from your answers, for example a viewing with travel buffers, a consultation or a phone appointment. If you ticked no purpose, a consultation is created. You can freely edit or delete all starter event types afterwards.

<Tip title="Skipped the setup?">
No problem. Everything from the setup can be done later: event types in the **Event types** area, hours under **Availability**, the calendar under **Availability > Calendars**.
</Tip>

## The ready-to-go checklist

On the **overview**, the **Startklar** (ready to go) card accompanies you on the right until all three steps are done:

<Checklist>
  <ChecklistItem>**First event type created**: at least one bookable event type exists.</ChecklistItem>
  <ChecklistItem>**Calendar connected**: busy times are blocked automatically.</ChecklistItem>
  <ChecklistItem>**Booking link shared**: you copied a link, for example for your email signature, portals or your website.</ChecklistItem>
</Checklist>

Next to it the overview shows the **Als Nächstes** (up next) card with your next appointment (including **Route öffnen** via Google Maps and **E-Mail kopieren** to copy the guest's email), **Deine Agenda** (your agenda) grouped by day, and **Deine Buchungslinks** (your booking links) for quick copying. A **calendar** card reports the state of your calendar connection.

## Sharing your booking link

Every event type has its own public link in the format `/book/link-name` on your domain. The **Teilen** (share) button of an event type offers several routes:

<DefinitionList>
  <DefItem term="Copy link (Link kopieren)">Copies the booking link for signatures, portals, exposés or chat messages.</DefItem>
  <DefItem term="Copy email text (E-Mail-Text kopieren)">A polite, ready-made email text with the link that you can paste and send right away.</DefItem>
  <DefItem term="Add to website (Zur Website hinzufügen)">Opens the embed dialog with three options (inline, popup widget, popup text) and ready-made code. Details: [Booking page](/tools/booking/buchungsseite#embedding-add-to-website).</DefItem>
  <DefItem term="Offer times (Zeiten anbieten)">Pick up to five free slots; the result is an email text in which each time is linked directly and pre-selected on the booking page. Details: [Event types](/tools/booking/terminarten#offering-times).</DefItem>
  <DefItem term="View booking page (Buchungsseite ansehen)">Opens the public page in a new tab so you can check it yourself.</DefItem>
</DefinitionList>

Proven places for the link: your email signature, property listings on portals, your website and the automatic reply to portal enquiries.

## The first incoming booking

As soon as a guest books, this happens:

1. The appointment appears in the **Meetings** area under upcoming, with the status chip **Bestätigt** (confirmed). The overview shows it in the agenda.
2. You are notified in the platform. In addition, the host receives a short internal email with event type, guest and time, as long as the switch **E-Mail an Gastgeber:in bei Buchung und Absage** (email to host on booking and cancellation) is on (default: on, see [Settings](/tools/booking/einstellungen)).
3. The guest immediately receives a confirmation email with a calendar invite (.ics) and a personal manage link for rescheduling or cancelling on their own.
4. If your calendar is connected, the appointment lands there automatically and the time is blocked for further bookings.

<Info title="Double bookings are impossible">
If two people book the same time simultaneously, exactly one gets the appointment. The other sees a message that this time was just booked by someone else and asks them to pick another one.
</Info>

## Further reading

Back to the overview: [Appointment Booking](/tools/booking). Next logical step: [Event types](/tools/booking/terminarten).