Managing Your Calendar in Dubsado
Dubsado allows you to connect external calendars so your availability can take into consideration all the events you have in your Google (or other) calendar - not just events in Dubsado.
In this blog post, I’ll go over how to connect an external calendar to Dubsado and go through the different calendar events that Dubsado creates based on scheduler appointments and projects.
Dubsado calendar event colors
Dubsado uses color coding to help you quickly distinguish what each event type is in the calendar:
Green are appointments that are booked via a scheduler template.
Black are project dates for projects with a lead status.
Blue are project dates for projects with a job status.
Red are payment plan installment due dates.
Pink are tasks. These aren’t to-dos that are created via a workflow, but project tasks that you assigned a due date to.
Orange are events synced from an external calendar.
If you click on the Dubsado generated events / appointments in your calendar you can see the details of the event and even make changes. This isn’t the case for events that are synced from an external calendar.
Scheduler appointments
If you click on the appointment in the calendar, a pop up will appear with the following details:
Keep in mind that any edits you make will notify your lead or client of the changes and send them an email notifying them of the rescheduling of their appointment.
There are three icons at the top of the box:
Reschedule appointment: this will send your lead or client an email letting them know that you need to reschedule the appointment, and send them the scheduler again so they can book a time that works best for them. Don’t worry you can edit the email before sending.
Cancel appointment: this will send your lead or client an email letting them know that you need to cancel the appointment, you can add a reason for cancelling the appointment before the email goes out.
Go to project: this will open up the project that this scheduler appointment is tied to.
Invoice due dates
If you click on the invoice due date in the calendar, it will take you to the project invoice.
To make changes to the payment plan installment due dates - click on the installment you’d like to change and a menu will appear with the option of editing the installment due date, the amount due and the reminders.
Changing the dates in the payment plan will change them in the calendar view.
Project dates
If you click on the project date in the calendar, a pop up will appear with the following details:
You can edit the project start and end dates. You can also change it from an all date event to setting a specific start and end time. You can also decide if you want to appear as available or busy.
Keep in mind that if any actions in your workflow or payment plan are tied to a project start date or end date, making changes to the project dates here will impact those dates in the workflow or payment plan.
Tasks
If you click on the task due date in the calendar, a pop up will appear with the following details:
Here you can change the name of the task, change the due date - changing it from an all day due date to a specific time of the day. You can assign the task to a specific project, to a specific assignee, add files and comments.
Changing the due date here will change it in the calendar view.
Connect an external calendar to Dubsado
To view your external calendar in Dubsado, have your Dubsado appointment show up in your external calendar and take into account your availability using events outside of Dubsado - you can connect your external calendar.
Dubsado connects to the following list of external calendars:
Apple Calendar
Google
Office 365
Microsoft Exchange
Outlook
Only one calendar can be connected per user and for multi-user accounts, scheduling will be set based on the brand owners calendar.
To connect your external calendar, go to the calendar and click on ‘Calendar Settings’ (gear icon)
In the next page, click ‘Sync Calendar’ and follow the instructions to connect your external calendar.
Once connected, you’ll see your calendar appear under ‘Available Calendars’.
Click ‘Link Calendar’ to edit the settings of the connected calendar.
Under the Sync Calendar options you can choose to:
Import your external calendar events into Dubsado
AND / OR
Export Dubsado’s calendar into your external calendar
Note: if you have multiple calendars inside the connected account - those will all show up inside Dubsado. You can decide the settings for each calendar individually.
For external calendars, your availability (free or busy) needs to be set inside the external calendar itself. So if you set an event as busy, Dubsado will take that into consideration and remove that time frame from your availability when someone is booking an appointment with you.
Calendar event view
If your Dubsado calendar view gets a bit busy and you just want to see a snapshot of your appointments, you can click on ‘Events’ to only see your upcoming scheduler appointments.
Setting your scheduler availability
It’s important to set the availability of each scheduler in Dubsado to make sure people can only book that appointment during the time slots that you choose.
To set your availability, go to the scheduler you want to edit and scroll to the calendar section titled ‘What times can this appointment be scheduled?’ and click on the date you’d like to edit.
A dropdown will appear titled ‘Add available slots’. Here you can add a single time slot or multiple time slots. Once done, you can apply the availability to that single date or all Mondays (or whichever day of the week you’re editing).
Tutorial: Using the calendar in Dubsado
A quick tutorial to take you through everything in this blog post: the different event types in Dubsado, how to integrate an external calendar and more.
Let’s work together!
Need help setting up Dubsado for your business? I can help you with a Done for you Dubsado setup. We’ll map out your desired client process so I can build it in Dubsado for you.
To learn more, book a free discovery call where we’ll talk about where you need help, and if it makes sense we can talk about what it’s like to work together.