Book Meetings Through SalesLoft

SalesLoft’s meetings allow you to utilize your calendar within your engagement platform. Whether you send meeting links via an email or book a meeting on demand, you have the control to send calendar invites to the SalesLoft People you need to connect with.  

In this article, you will learn about meeting booking processes, including: 

• How to Book Meetings on Demand
• The Book a Meeting Module
• Lofting Google Calendar Invites
• Calendar Sync Updates to SalesLoft
• How a Person Books a Meeting 

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How to Book Meetings On Demand

Book Meetings on Demand allows you to schedule a meeting in seconds from the Person Profile page. This way you get to follow a scheduling process as simple as using a calendar app, with the added bonus of keeping track of all meetings in SalesLoft.

Things to Note: A user who is assigned to the meeting will be shown as Organizer on the calendar invite, even if the event was scheduled by another team member.

To book a meeting on demand, follow these steps: 

1. Go to the Profile page of the Person you want to send the meeting invite to.

2. Click Book a Meeting from the Quick Actions or the Meetings tab in the Activities panel.

3. The Book a Meeting module will appear. Inside the module, follow these steps listed in Book a Meeting Module

4. After the invite is sent, the Person will see the meeting on their calendar. An email will be sent to the Person informing them about the meeting invite.

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The Book a Meeting Module

You will set your meeting details and send the invite from the Book a Meeting module. 

Things to Note: You can select an alternative Salesforce record to log to when booking a meeting on demand. To learn more, check out our CRM Record Selection article. 

To book a meeting from the module, follow these steps: 

1. Select a Meeting Type in order to populate meeting details automatically. You can choose from one of the following: 

• Standard Meeting Types
• Round Robin Meeting Types: Once the Round Robin meeting type is selected, the Meeting Owner will be defined automatically based on the Round Robin queue.
  • Things to Note: To ensure fair distribution, the user who scheduled the meeting will not be able to manually update the Meeting Owner.

 

2. Use the Select a Calendar feature to assign the meeting to anyone on your team who has their calendar set up in SalesLoft.

3. Confirm your Meeting Details. Each detail may be edited using the available text box. The details include the following: 

• Title
• Duration
• Location
• Description: The description allows you to apply different font style to the meeting description and use numbered or bulleted lists to make the text comprehensible and easy to read. The description box will expand to fit your text as you add to it. 

4. The Attendees section is where you will add guests. You may also view calendars for any user who has their Calendar setup.

When you create a meeting, the Person you are booking the meeting with will appear as the Main Guest. Add any additional guests by typing in their email address to invite them to the meeting.

The Attendees list contains the following details: 

• Circle icon: To the left of the attendee's email address, the circle icon will be in the color that  indicates the color of that attendee's events on the calendar.
• Attendee's email address
• Attendees meeting role: Below the email address, designates if the attendee is the Meeting Owner, Organizer, Main Guest, or Guest of the meeting. 
• Eye Icon: To the right of the attendee's email address, click the eye icon hide or show that attendees calendar in the Book a Meeting module. 
  • Things to Note: Calendar's will be visible for calendars you have access to, which typically include members of your SalesLoft team who have their Calendar set up. If you do not have access to a calendar, the eye icon will by grey. When you hover over the grey eye icon you will see the You do not have access to this Calendar message. 

4. Once a required time slot is selected and all meeting details are filled in, click the Book Meeting button. The invite will be sent to the prospect.

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Lofting Google Calendar Invites

If you're a G Suite user, you probably live on your Google Calendar page. While scheduling meetings within SalesLoft is possible, you can also schedule meetings from your Google Calendar and Loft the meeting invite so everything syncs into SalesLoft. Google Calendar Lofting performs the following: 

• Logs new events to SalesLoft and Salesforce directly from the Google calendar.
• Allows to to retroactively log events which were not previously synced to SalesLoft. To complete this, go into your Google calendar and edit the event. In the event details, toggle Lofting on, and click Loft It.
• Control which Person record an event will be logged in SalesLoft if there are multiple guests
• Designate which CRM record will log an event in Salesforce.
• Create a new Person in SalesLoft if an invitee doesn't have a Person record in the SalesLoft platform.

To enable Lofting in your Google Calendar, you must have a connected Google Calendar and an up-to-date SalesLoft Chrome Extension. In the Chrome Extension, turn on the Event Lofting Enabled setting. This setting controls whether the Lofting feature will display in your calendar.

Once the setting is enabled, the Lofting toggle and CRM Record Selection widget will appear when you create of edit events in your calendar.

Things to Note: Lofting a Google Calendar invite will not appear from the event invite slots on the calendar page. In the event module, click More Option to go to the calendar event page. This is where the Lofting toggle will appear. 

The page will appear as the standard Google Calendar invite page until Lofting is turned on. 

Lofting will be automatically disabled for certain events. If any of these occur, hover over the toggle to view the reason Lofting is disabled. Errors include the following reasons: 

• Events without guests
• The primary guests is on the Domain Exclusion List (both Team and Personal)
• Private events
• Recurring events
• Events with the guests not existing in SalesLoft: In cases where the user does not have permission to Create People when Lofting.

Follow these steps to Loft Google Calendar invites: 

1. Go to your Google Calendar. Create an event time in the calendar. Click More Options.
2. Add guest(s) to your invite list. 
3. Toggle Lofting on. The first added guest will populate as the Lofting to Person.
4. (Optional) Manually update the main guest by selecting the Lofting to contact from the dropdown. This will change which Person the meeting invite will log to in SalesLoft. 
5. (Optional) Teams with CRM Records Selection enabled will see the CRM record selection widget. After adding a guest, the records will be selected by default if that guest has an existing record in Salesforce with that same email address. Update the default records by clicking the Edit button and selecting a different record in the pop-up.
6. Click Loft It to the right of the meeting title. The event will be logged to SalesLoft and Salesforce. If an event is Lofted and the Person doesn’t exist in SalesLoft, you will receive a  prompt to select what action they would like to take:
   • Save Without Logging: Will the send the meeting invite without logging the meeting in SalesLoft.
   • Create Person and Log: Add the Person in SalesLoft and logs the meeting invite to their record.  

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Calendar Sync Updates to SalesLoft

Once a meeting invite is sent, it's not always set in stone. People reschedule meetings, decline them, or add colleagues, they send agenda requests and may even set some requirements directly in the meeting invite. 

When these changes happen, it's just as important for that information to be updated and logged for your records. 

For users with a Google, Outlook 365, or Microsoft Exchange calendar connection, SalesLoft syncs event updates from the calendar to SalesLoft and connected CRM, in real-time.

Things to Note: If you use a  calendar source that is not listed above, SalesLoft will not reflect the changes of any meeting that is rescheduled or canceled. Once an event has been created, SalesLoft does not track or maintain any further updates on the event.

Once an event is updated on the calendar, the updates will be automatically synced to SalesLoft and Salesforce.

Users will see updated meeting information on the activity feed on the Person Profile page.

For meetings that are canceled, Meeting Canceled Date can be mapped to the custom Activity field to your CRM so that your team can build reporting around canceled meetings. 

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How a Person Books a Meeting

Apart from setting up and sending invites, you may be wondering how meetings actually get booked. 

When a Person receives a meeting link, they will click the link to book time on your calendar. Let’s walk through the steps a recipient will take to book a meeting:

1. When a Person clicks a meeting link, they'll be taken to a calendar view.

2. The Person will select a date for the meeting. Available dates will be in black with blue dots below the date that represents the number of meeting slots that are available. Unavailable dates will be greyed out.

3. After they choose a date, any available time slots will appear to the right of the calendar. Select a time slot.

4. Click Next.

5. The Person will enter their contact information. The contact information will appear in SalesLoft when the meeting is confirmed. The following fields are required: Name, Email, and Account.  

• Things to Note: When a person not in SalesLoft books a meeting through the meetings calendar, a new SalesLoft Person will be created. SalesLoft will use the Person's email address to verify whether they are a Person in SalesLoft. 

6. Click Confirm. If they need to make any changes, click Change Meeting Date. 

 

7. A confirmation message will appear. The Person will also receive an email confirming the meeting. 

8. The meeting will appear on the Person Profile page in SalesLoft. It will also log the task in Salesforce as a closed activity task or an event (depending on your team's Salesforce Activity Logging Settings). For more information on the Profile page view, check out the Person Profile Page article.