Scheduling an Appointment

There are two ways an appointment gets a time on your calendar, and this article covers both:

You book it yourself — a customer calls, walks in, or a repeat customer needs another visit, and you put the job on the calendar directly.
You schedule a request — a request already created an appointment in the Needs Scheduled status, and you give it a time.

The difference comes down to where the appointment starts:

Key point: When you book an appointment yourself, you pick the time up front, so it's created at Scheduled — it never passes through Needs Scheduled. The only way an appointment lands in Needs Scheduled is through the requests flow, where the job is captured before a time is chosen. If you're capturing a lead that isn't ready to book yet, create a request instead.

Booking an appointment yourself

This is the fastest way to put a job on the calendar without waiting on a request. You pick the date, the time, and who's assigned before the appointment is created, so it lands directly at Scheduled.

Where to start

Appointments page — Click Schedule Appointment in the top bar.
A calendar slot — Click an open slot on the calendar and the date and time come pre-filled.
A customer's page — Click Book Appointment on the customer's Appointments tab to start with that customer already selected.
Integrations — For example, from a CompanyCam project, with the customer's details pre-filled.

The steps

You'll move through a short, fixed flow — type → time → customer → details.

1. Schedule appointment

Choose the service the customer needs — "Roof Inspection," "AC Tune-Up," "Drain Cleaning." Your appointment types are listed with their icons; click one to continue.

2. Select a time

Pick the date, time, and who's assigned:

Date — Choose the day from the calendar picker.
Time — Set the start and end time. The end time defaults to the appointment type's duration.
Assign To — Select at least one user for the job.

Important: You can't continue without a time and at least one assigned user — booking yourself exists to put real, staffed appointments on the calendar. (If the service books by arrival window, you'll pick a window here instead, and assign the technician later on the Dispatch board.)

3. Customer

Choose who the appointment is for:

Search existing — Type a name, email, or phone number to find a returning customer. Selecting one takes you straight to the details step, and Driive auto-fills their saved service address.
New customer — Toggle to a short form and enter first name, last name, and optionally a business name, email, and phone. Driive creates the customer record along with the appointment.

4. Appointment details

Wrap up the job-specific information:

Service address — Confirm or change where the work happens. Driive seeds this from the appointment type's default location or the customer's saved address, with Google-powered autocomplete when you type a new one.
Booking questions — Answer the appointment type's questions on the customer's behalf (e.g., "What type of roof do you have?").
Tech notes — Add private notes for your crew. Customers never see these.

Click Schedule appointment and you're done.

What happens after you book

The appointment is created at Scheduled with the time and users you picked, and appears on your calendar.
Driive takes you to the new appointment detail page. If you started from a calendar slot, you stay right on the calendar with the new appointment in place.
The customer receives a confirmation, depending on your notification settings.
The activity feed records that the appointment was booked by your team.

Tip: Search returning customers by phone number while you're still on the call — pick the customer and their saved address fills itself in. And starting from an open calendar slot pre-fills the date and time, so you're only confirming the who and the what.

Scheduling an appointment from a request

When a job comes in through a request, Driive creates the appointment already populated with everything the customer told you — but in the Needs Scheduled status, because no time has been booked yet. Getting it on the calendar is the next step. You can pick the time yourself, or share a booking link and let the customer choose a slot that works for them.

Two ways to schedule

Option 1: Pick the time yourself. Open the appointment — a Needs Scheduled appointment lands you straight on the Schedule tab with the Choose a time picker. Browse your team's real availability and confirm a slot.

Option 2: Share a booking link. Click Share Booking Link — the primary button on every Needs Scheduled appointment. You can copy the personalized link to paste anywhere, or use Send to customer to text or email it directly. The customer opens the link, sees your live availability, picks a slot, and the appointment is confirmed automatically. This is the fastest path when you'd rather let the customer choose a time that works for them.

Using the Find a Time picker

The picker shows a calendar grid of genuinely bookable slots, computed from your availability, the users and teams eligible for this appointment type, existing appointments, and external calendar blocks (like Google Calendar events).

Navigating the calendar

Week view — Each column is a day; available slots appear as clickable blocks.
Month view — A month-level overview showing which days have availability. Click a day to see its time slots.
Arrow controls — Page forward and back between weeks or months, or jump back to today.

Drive-time aware slots

Driive doesn't just check who's free — it checks who can get there. Slots factor in drive time from each user's previous appointment, and the best options are highlighted so you can pick times that keep your crew's routes tight instead of zig-zagging across town.

Adjusting the search

A row of setting pills above the calendar lets you tweak the search without leaving the page — change the duration, who's eligible, the earliest bookable date, or the service location. The slot grid updates as you go.

Selecting a slot

Click an available time slot. A confirmation bar appears showing the date, time, and who the slot is with.
Click Confirm Booking to finalize (or Cancel / Clear Selection to pick a different slot).

Service area and location

Availability is searched around the appointment's service address — slots only appear for users who can serve that location. If the appointment has no address yet, the picker prompts you to add one before showing times.

Tip: Need to book a job outside your normal service area? An admin can enable the service area override on the appointment, which bypasses the restriction for this one job.

What happens after scheduling

The appointment moves to Scheduled and appears on your team's calendar.
The customer receives a confirmation (email and/or SMS, depending on your notification settings).
The originating request is automatically archived — its job is done, and it stays linked to the appointment for reference.
The Needs scheduled issue clears from your Inbox on its own.
An entry is recorded in the appointment's activity feed.