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.
How to add an appointment (staff)
Use the Scheduler calendar when a client calls or walks in and your team needs to book the visit.
Open the Add Appointment panel
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. Once you've chosen an appointment type and location, open and booked times are shaded differently on the calendar, the same way they are when rescheduling, so you can see which slots are actually available before you pick one.
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. You can also click a time that already has an appointment on it: CoolFocus selects that time for your new booking instead of opening the existing appointment, so you can book a second appointment at the same time when your center allows it.
Fill in the booking
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. When you add a new client with a phone number, a Primary phone checkbox is checked by default; leave it checked to make this the number CoolFocus uses for texts and reminders, or uncheck it if another number should stay the client's primary phone. You can also save without a client and attach one later (the panel notes this when none is selected).
If Add new client does not work in this panel: create the client record first from Clients, then come back to Scheduler and open the Add Appointment panel again. Search for that client under Client and finish booking as usual. This is a known issue with the inline Add new client option, not a problem with your account.
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.
Other ways appointments are created
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.
Chat transcript from website chat bookings
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.
Booking Conversation
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
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.
Correcting the date or time in the confirmation
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 can correct it here instead of canceling and redoing 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
Availability check
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
Confirming or canceling
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
Client self-service rescheduling
Clients can also reschedule their own appointment without calling your office, when the appointment type has Allow Client Self-Rescheduling turned on. A client can do this by replying to a reminder text with a reschedule-style word, or by opening the appointment in the Client Portal; either way CoolFocus sends them a link to pick a new time and updates the appointment once they confirm. See Appointment Types and Booking Rules to turn this setting on for a type, and Appointment Reminders — Settings & Sending for how the text-reply reschedule flow works.
Canceling an appointment
Appointments cannot be permanently deleted. To take one off the schedule, open the appointment and change its status to Cancelled. Canceling keeps the appointment and its history on the client's record and in your reports, it just marks the appointment as cancelled instead of removing it. See Appointment Icons on the Scheduler Calendar for how a cancelled appointment shows on the calendar.