An appointment is a client coming in for a service, tied to an appointment type, a location, and (when required) a resource or staff member. Appointments appear on the Scheduler Calendar and Visit Board, and can be created by staff, through online booking, or by a connected scheduling integration.
The Scheduler holds client appointments only. Staff meetings, "who is working today", closures, and notices for the team each have their own place — see The Scheduler Is Client-Centric. If you are coming from CoolFocus 3 and used all-day appointments for staffing notes, start there.
Calendar icons: Small symbols in the top-right of each appointment square (blue clock, green check, green bell, orange slash, and more) show status and reminders. Full legend: Appointment Icons on the Scheduler Calendar.
Use the Scheduler calendar when a client calls or walks in and your team needs to book the visit.
1. Open Scheduler from the main navigation.
2. Stay on the Calendar tab.
3. Start a new booking in either of these ways:
• Select the blue + (Add appointment) button in the Scheduler header, or
• Click an open time slot on the calendar.
The Add Appointment panel opens on the right. The calendar stays visible so you can pick or change the time while you fill in the details.
Tip: The panel subtitle says Pick a time on the calendar behind this panel. If you opened + without choosing a slot yet, click an open slot, or use Use next available after you select an appointment type.
In the Add Appointment panel:
1. Choose the Appointment type (the service you are booking).
2. Confirm the Location. If more than one location offers that type, select the correct one.
3. Confirm Selected time (date and start time). You can:
• Click a different open slot on the calendar
• Edit the time in the panel
• Select Use next available to jump to the soonest opening CoolFocus finds for that type
4. Under Client, search for an existing client or add a new one. You can also save without a client and attach one later (the panel notes this when none is selected).
5. Under Client notifications, choose whether to send anything for this booking. Nothing is sent unless you opt in.
• Send confirmation email — sends right after you save (client needs a valid email address)
• Send confirmation text — client needs a valid mobile number, OK to text, and an active texting service for your organization
• Scheduled reminders only enroll when your center's reminder settings allow it and you opt in for this visit
6. Add Notes if your team needs internal comments (optional).
7. Answer any Booking Questions configured for that appointment type. Required questions must be completed before you can save.
8. Select Save appointment (or Save for [first name] when a client is attached). Use Cancel to close without saving.
After save, the appointment appears on the Scheduler calendar (and on the Visit Board when your workflow uses it). Open the appointment any time to review details, messaging, intake, or notes.
• Online booking — clients book themselves through your public or private booking link
• Scheduling integrations — call centers or website chat tools (for example HopeSync/Clara, Olive or Chloe) can create appointments in CoolFocus. Some of those bookings include a chat transcript (see below)
Setup for types, hours, and online booking lives under Settings → Scheduler Settings. See Scheduler Settings: Complete Setup Guide.
Day-to-day reminder sending is covered in Appointment Reminders — Settings & Sending.
Some appointments are booked after a client chats with an online assistant on your website or a partner scheduling tool (for example HopeSync/Clara, Olive, or Chloe). When that tool sends CoolFocus the booking and the chat that led up to it, CoolFocus saves the conversation on the appointment so your team can see what the client already said before they arrive.
Where to find it:
• Open the appointment and go to the Details tab.
• Look for the Chat Transcript group. It is read-only — you can read it, but you cannot edit or delete the text there.
• When CoolFocus has a full back-and-forth chat to show, you will also see a Booking Conversation section with the same exchange laid out like chat bubbles.
What goes where:
• Chat Transcript / Booking Conversation — the client's chat with the website assistant before they booked
• Notes — for your staff comments. For these chat-origin bookings, Notes may only hold the client's date of birth captured at booking. The chat is not dumped into Notes
Not every appointment will have this:
• Bookings your staff create by hand will not show a chat transcript
• Bookings from the standard online booking form (no chatbot) usually will not either
• Some chat tools send the appointment but not the conversation. If nothing was sent, Chat Transcript stays empty and Booking Conversation does not appear
If you reschedule the appointment, the saved chat moves with it to the new appointment.
Some scheduling integrations collect a chat conversation with the client before the booking is created. When a booking includes that conversation, the appointment detail panel shows a read-only Booking Conversation section with the full exchange between the client and the assistant.
• Messages display as a conversation, styled like chat bubbles: the client's messages appear on one side, the assistant's on the other
• If the integration identifies itself, the assistant's messages are labeled with that source name (for example, "Clara"). Otherwise the assistant is labeled generically as "Assistant"
• There is no reply composer. This is a read-only record of the conversation that led to the booking, not a live conversation, and it is separate from Inbox conversations
• The Booking Conversation section only appears when the appointment has a stored transcript
• Rescheduling an appointment carries its Chat Transcript, and therefore its Booking Conversation, forward to the new appointment
This conversation is stored separately from appointment Notes. Notes are reserved for staff comments and information such as date of birth.
There are two ways to reschedule an existing appointment:
• Drag it on the calendar to a new day or time slot
• Open the appointment and choose the reschedule option
Either way, CoolFocus opens a reschedule confirmation dialog before the change is saved.
The confirmation dialog opens prefilled with the destination date, start time, and end time. If a drag lands a few minutes off from where you meant to drop it, you no longer need to cancel and redo the drag:
• The date, start time, and end time fields are all editable directly in the dialog
• Changing the start time shifts the end time to keep the original duration, as long as you have not already edited the end time yourself. Once you edit the end time directly, CoolFocus keeps that end time fixed while you continue adjusting the start time
• If the end time is set to the same time as or earlier than the start time, CoolFocus flags the range as invalid and disables Confirm until it is fixed
• Times display using local wall-clock values, so they read correctly across a daylight saving time change
CoolFocus re-checks availability every time you change the date, start time, or end time in the dialog:
• If the new time is available, Confirm is enabled once the range is valid
• If the new time is not available, CoolFocus shows the specific rule or conflict that is blocking it (for example, a resource already booked or a staff member unavailable)
• Staff who are authorized to override conflicts when creating an internal appointment can use the same override checkbox and reason field here to proceed anyway. This override path is not available on the client portal or booking widget, where availability is always enforced
• Confirm Reschedule saves the date and times shown in the dialog at the moment you click it, including any corrections you made
• Cancel (or closing the dialog) discards any edits and leaves the appointment on its original date and time
• The Scheduler Is Client-Centric: What Belongs on the Calendar
• Appointment Icons on the Scheduler Calendar
• Assign a Client to an Existing Appointment
• Appointments vs. Visits
• The Visit Board
• Appointment Reminders — Settings & Sending
• Scheduler Settings: Complete Setup Guide
