Booking
Share a public link, let people pick a time, and the booking lands in your calendar with reminders and follow-ups already wired up. No back-and-forth email, no double-bookings.
Inbox to invoice. Slot to booking.
A booking event type is just a friendly face on your real calendar availability. Every confirmed booking respects your buffers, your minimum notice, and your other meetings — and writes the meeting back to Google or Outlook automatically.
Quick Start
- In the sidebar, click Booking.
- Click + Create event type and pick a kind (1:1 is the default).
- Set the duration (e.g. 30 min) and an event name (e.g. "Discovery Call").
- Open the new event type and walk the tabs left-to-right:
- Overview — title, description, slug, public/private toggle.
- Schedule — duration, slot increment, buffers, minimum notice.
- Availability — weekly hours and one-off date overrides.
- Custom Questions — add the fields the booker fills in at confirm time.
- Hosts — who runs this meeting (skip for solo).
- Sharing — copy the public URL.
- Click Publish in the toolbar.
- Click View in the toolbar to open your public booking page in a new tab.
That's it. Anyone with the link can now book a time on your calendar.
Key Concepts
| Concept | What it is |
|---|---|
| Event type | A bookable "kind of meeting" (Discovery Call, 60-min Strategy, Group Workshop). Bookings hang off event types. |
| Booking | One confirmed slot on an event type. Has a start, an end, an attendee, and a status. |
| Availability rule | A weekly recurring window of bookable hours (e.g. Mon–Fri 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM). |
| Date override | A one-off change for a specific date — holidays, half-days, blocked-out periods. |
| Buffer | Gap padding before and/or after every booking, so meetings don't crash into each other. |
| Minimum notice | The shortest lead time you'll accept (e.g. "no bookings within 4 hours"). |
| Scheduling horizon | How far in the future people can book (e.g. 60 days). |
| Host | The user who runs the meeting. 1:1 has one host; collective / round-robin have many. |
| Pool | A reusable bag of hosts you can assign to many event types at once. |
| Custom question | A field on the public confirm step that captures extra info (project size, phone number, etc.). |
| Workflow | An automated email/SMS/webhook fired by booking events (created, reminder, cancelled). |
| Draft vs. published | The editor is your draft. The public URL serves the last published snapshot — edits never go live until you click Publish. |
| Public slug | An opaque code (e.g. B1AI7BXGdOQM) at /b/{slug}. Not derived from the event title — competitors can't guess it. |
In This Section
| Guide | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Creating Event Types | The four event-type kinds (1:1, group, collective, round-robin) and when to use each |
| Availability | Weekly hours, date overrides, buffers, minimum notice, scheduling horizon, max-per-day |
| Multi-Host & Pools | Collective and round-robin event types, pool selection strategies |
| Custom Questions | Add fields to the booking confirm page and write answers back to a database |
| Branding & Theming | Cover image, brand colour, host bio, custom thank-you message |
| Workflows & Reminders | Automated emails, SMS reminders, webhooks, and tagging triggered by bookings |
| Payments | Charge for bookings with Stripe Checkout, refunds, free vs. paid event types |
| Publishing & Sharing | Publish, unpublish, the snapshot model, public URL, embed snippet |
| Managing Bookings | The Calendar workspace, reschedule, cancel, no-show, drag-and-drop |
| Analytics | Booking volume, conversion, cancellation rate, source attribution |
| Calendar Integrations | Connect Google or Outlook for free/busy and write-back |
| Troubleshooting | Common problems and how to fix them |
Where Booking Lives in the App
| Location | What you can do |
|---|---|
/booking (Booking in the sidebar) | List of every event type on your team. Filter by status or kind. |
/booking/{id} | The event-type designer (this is where you build availability and confirm questions). |
/booking/pools | Define and manage reusable host pools. |
/booking/analytics | Per-event-type metrics: bookings, conversion, cancellations. |
/calendar | Unified workspace calendar of every booking on your team — drag to reschedule, click to inspect. |
/b/{slug} | The public booking page bookers see. Serves the published snapshot only. |
/b/cancel/{token} / /b/reschedule/{token} | Self-service links the booker gets in their confirmation email. |
How It's Different from Calendly
| Ascend Booking | Standalone scheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| Where bookings live | In your Ascend workspace next to your contacts, deals, and time entries — already linkable | A separate inbox you re-key into your CRM |
| Custom questions | Write straight into a backing database, ready to filter and view in Kanban | A standalone CSV export |
| Workflows | Built into the same workflow engine as the rest of Ascend (forms, databases, contacts) | Tool-specific recipes |
| Calendar sync | Native Google + Microsoft Graph with webhook-driven cached free/busy | Same idea, different vendor lock-in |
| Pricing | Included on every Ascend plan that fits your needs — not a separate subscription | A second SaaS bill |
| Round-robin | Pool model — assign one pool to many event types, change strategy in one place | Per-event-type host lists you keep in sync manually |
Related Features
- Databases — Where booking custom-question answers can land
- Forms — Same designer engine; reuse field types and conditional logic
- Inbox — Where booking notifications + confirmations show up
- Workflows — Trigger emails, SMS, and webhooks on booking events
- Sharing — Share-link collaboration on the event-type designer itself