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Invite Teams to a Booking

Keywords: invite

Hanu Gouda avatar
Written by Hanu Gouda
Updated over a week ago

Overview

The Invite Teams feature allows you to automatically invite all available teams via email/SMS to see if they’re interested in doing a booking.

Teams can reply back as “Interested” or “Not Interested”, and have the option to leave Comments or a Bid amount (i.e how much they’re willing to do the job for).

Your staff can then see who’s Interested when they’re doing their scheduling and dispatching.


How it Works

Before you can use this feature…

  • You must have the Invite Teams feature on your plan (available on the Plus plan)

  • Make sure that you first set up availability for your teams. The system will only invite the teams that are scheduled to work during the time of the booking. If you are using multi-location, the location must also have teams in it.

Step 1: Enable the Invite Teams setting

  1. Go to Settings > General > Subdomain tab

  2. Scroll to the Invite Teams to a Booking section

  3. Choose Enabled

  4. Click Save Changes

Step 2: Make sure all Invite Team email templates are enabled

  1. Go to Settings > Emails > Email Templates

  2. Make sure that each of these email templates are enabled (should be enabled by default)Teams > BOOKING INVITATIONTeams > TEAM INVITATION REPLY ACCEPTED BY SUPPORTTeams > TEAM INVITATION REPLY DECLINED BY SUPPORTSupport > TEAM REPLIED TO INVITATION

  3. Go to Settings > Text MessagesBOOKING INVITATION SMSTEAM INVITATION REPLY ACCEPTED BY SUPPORT SMSTEAM INVITATION REPLY DECLINED BY SUPPORT SMS

Step 2: Invitations are sent when booking gets created

Invites are automatically sent when all of these conditions are met:

  • Invite Teams feature is enabled

  • The “Automatically Invite all available teams when booking is created” setting is enabled. If it’s disabled, you may manually invite teams to the booking.

  • Email and SMS templates are enabled

  • When a new booking gets created

Note: invitations are NOT sent when:

  • a cancelled booking gets restored

  • a recurring booking gets created automatically by the system

  • a booking is rescheduled

Invitations are only sent to teams that are:

  • scheduled to work during the date and time the booking was scheduled for

  • the team is not assigned to another booking scheduled for the same time in the same Location (if you’re using the multi-Location feature)

Step 3: Teams reply

Teams reply to the invitation by clicking the link in the email/sms, and submitting their reply. They don’t have to be logged into their account to reply.

Teams may change their reply

If teams need to change their initial reply, they will have to give their login credentials for security purposes

Viewing Team replies

You can view all invitation replies when you go to the booking to assign teams.

Step 4: Assigning Teams

Once you assign a team(s) to the booking, their invitation is accepted and they will receive an “invitation approved” notification.

All other teams that replied but were not assigned to the booking will receive an “invitation rejected” notification.

Note: you may disable the automatic sending of these notifications in the Invite Teams settings in your account and then send the invitations manually if you prefer.

To manually send an invite

  1. Go to the Active Bookings page

  2. Click on the Invite Teams button

3. Choose the booking(s) you would like to invite teams to

4. Click Invite

FAQs

Can I disable the Bid and Comment fields when teams reply?

Yes, you can disable these options in the Invite Teams settings in your account.

Does Support get a notification when a Team accepts/declines an invitation?

Yes, support will get a notification when teams accept/decline an invitation. Teams will also get a notification if they did not “win” the job (aka staff assigns them to the booking).

Do Teams only get invited to new “first time” bookings, or recurring bookings as well?

Teams will only be invited to new bookings (aka first time bookings) when they are created.

They will not get invited to each booking in a recurring series. Invitations are only sent for the first booking in the recurring series when it is first created.

Can invitations and notifications be re-sent to teams?

Yes, you may resend the invitation or notifications to teams by:

  1. Go to Edit your booking

  2. Click Save and Send Message

  3. Under the Type list, scroll to the Invitations section

  4. Choose the message you want to resend

  5. Choose the team(s) to send the message to

  6. Click Send Email

Can teams reply to an invitation after teams have already been assigned to the booking?

By default, we prevent teams from being able to reply after the booking has been assigned.

However, you can disable this behavior by unchecking the “Prevent teams from replying to invitations AFTER the booking is already assigned” option in the Invite Teams settings in your account.

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