Create and test a personal booking calendar in 6am

Create a public, one-host booking calendar in 6am and verify the visitor's reservation, contact and occupied slot.

• Outcome: visitors can reserve one available appointment with immediate on-page confirmation.
• Responsible: the company administrator or a team member with Manage contacts permission.
• System: 6am dashboard. Select the correct company before changing settings.

Scope and prerequisites

Use this procedure only when the named host can honor every offered slot without separate approval. Have a verified, unblocked company member as host; agreed working hours and IANA time zone; meeting instructions; a privacy notice and its public URL. Use a synthetic name and an example.test email for QA.

This release supports one host per calendar, weekly availability, full-day closures, buffers, minimum notice and a rolling calendar-day horizon. It confirms on the page and saves the appointment immediately. It does not send confirmation emails, reminders, invitations or marketing messages; connect external calendars, generate meeting links, take payments, offer group/round-robin bookings. Customer cancellation and rescheduling require the separate policy and private-link setup in SOP 079. External commitments do not block slots. Keep offered hours accurate manually until a verified integration exists.

01. Agree on the meeting

1. Choose the host and one clearly described meeting. Write a public title, purpose and location/instructions visitors can use. Do not promise a video link the system does not generate.
2. Agree on duration, preparation/transition time, notice and how far ahead the host can commit. For example, 30 minutes, a 10-minute buffer on both sides, 120 minutes of notice and 30 calendar days are example choices, not required defaults.
3. Confirm the calendar's time zone with the host. All public times use that zone and show a UTC offset; the page does not automatically convert to the visitor's zone.

02. Create a draft

1. In the correct company, open Booking calendars → Create. Fill Internal name, Host, Public title, Description and Location or meeting instructions. Only verified, unblocked members of this company can host.
2. Set the public language to English or Português (Brasil), then select the time zone. Company defaults are starting values; verify them explicitly.
3. Choose duration: 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 or 120 minutes. Starts are spaced by the duration from the beginning of each availability block; there is no separate slot-interval setting.
4. Set the buffer in minutes, applied before and after every booking (0–120). Set minimum notice in elapsed minutes (0–10080) and the booking horizon in calendar days (1–90). The horizon includes its final local date, subject to the weekly hours and notice.
5. Add weekly blocks with day, start and end, using 24-hour local time. Split blocks around lunch or travel; same-day blocks cannot overlap or run through midnight. Up to 14 blocks are supported.
6. Add unavailable dates for holidays and exceptions. Each entry closes the whole local date; it does not replace hours with a special one-day schedule. Up to 120 dates are supported.
7. Add an appointment-specific privacy notice and a valid HTTP(S) privacy-policy URL. The form collects name and email only. A booking is not marketing consent and does not subscribe the visitor to a newsletter.
8. Save. Reopen and verify all values, including zero buffers and an empty unavailable-dates list when intended. Saving any edit returns the calendar to Draft; review and publish again when ready. Existing bookings retain their original time, duration, buffer and meeting instructions.

03. Publish and inspect

1. From Booking calendars, select Publish and confirm. Publication makes the link accept immediate bookings. A draft or unpublished calendar is unavailable publicly; unpublishing preserves existing bookings.
2. Choose Open booking page. Copy the actual link from the browser; do not construct it from the internal name. Inspect title, description, location, duration, privacy link, language and time zone as a visitor.
3. Choose an available date and click Show available times. Check an expected slot and a closed/out-of-window date. If nothing appears, check weekday blocks, notice, horizon, closures, host membership and existing reservations before changing rules.
4. Reservations in any 6am calendar belonging to the same host block overlapping time, even across companies. Only availability is exposed; other companies' appointment details are not shown. Both bookings' buffers participate in the conflict check.

04. Reserve and verify end to end

1. Select one slot, enter a synthetic name and example.test email, and choose Confirm booking. Check the confirmed date, UTC offset, time zone, original meeting instructions and reference on the page. Save that reference. No email will arrive from this feature.
2. In the company dashboard, open Appointments from the calendar row. Verify the calendar filter, confirmed status, time and attendee. Open Details to check the stored email, end time, instructions and reference.
3. Choose View contact when available. A unique active contact with the same normalized email is linked without overwriting its existing details; a new contact is created otherwise. Archived, retired or ambiguous identities require review and are not silently restored or duplicated. The booking can still be confirmed without a contact link. If contacts are later merged, the booking follows the surviving contact while preserving its original attendee snapshot.
4. Reopen the public page and the same date. The reserved start and any overlapping buffered slots must be unavailable. A concurrent visitor attempting that slot must receive an unavailable message, not a second reservation. Reposting the same confirmation must not create another appointment.
5. Cancel the synthetic appointment through Appointments → Cancel appointment and confirm. Check Cancelled status and that the slot returns when all other rules permit it. Cancellation sends no notice: for a real appointment, inform the attendee through your agreed channel and keep the reference.
6. Unpublish a QA-only calendar. Publish a real calendar only after the checks pass and the host has agreed to the schedule.

Acceptance and operating routine

Keep evidence of the company/calendar, saved rules, public link, test reference, confirmed record, contact result, occupied slot and cancellation. A published link alone is not acceptance. Review closures and existing commitments before sharing it; after edits, recheck and republish. If settings changed or the form expired, reload the booking page and choose a current slot. Do not lower notice or remove buffers just to make a test pass.

Next procedures

SOP 078: calendar on a WordPress page and SOP 080: appointment booking operations are follow-on guides pending adaptation to 6am. Their legacy instructions do not establish functionality in this release.