Let customers reschedule or cancel appointments in 6am

Let customers change their own 6am appointment through a private, appointment-specific link. Configure the policy before accepting bookings, then verify a reschedule and cancellation end to end.

• Owner: Operations administrator with permission to manage the company's calendars and appointments.
• System: 6am dashboard.
• Outcome: One existing appointment changes safely, its CRM contact stays linked, and the change history shows what happened.

Scope and prerequisites

Use a published, single-host 6am calendar configured with SOP 077. The same flow works from its public link or the website embed in SOP 078.

Prepare a synthetic attendee and two eligible future times. Keep the calendar timezone, minimum notice, booking window and buffers in mind. This flow sends no email, connects no external calendar and creates no meeting link. Customer changes are disabled by default. Older appointments without a saved change policy remain staff-managed; enabling the options does not retroactively enroll them.

01. Configure a clear change policy

1. Select the correct company in 6am. Open Booking calendars, edit the intended calendar and find Customer changes.
2. Enable cancellation, rescheduling, or both according to the business policy. Set each cutoff separately, in minutes before the appointment starts. For example, 1,440 means 24 hours; 0 allows changes until the start. At the exact cutoff, the action is closed. These cutoffs are separate from the minimum notice required for a newly selected time.
3. Complete Contact the organizer with a monitored email, phone or instructions. This is required when either option is enabled and gives customers a route when their link or action is unavailable.
4. Save and publish again. Saving creates a draft and closes new bookings and customer rescheduling until the calendar is republished. Review the policy shown on the visitor booking page before accepting new appointments.

Each new booking saves its own policy and cutoffs. Editing the cutoffs affects later bookings. Turning an option off blocks that action on existing bookings as well. Turning it back on only restores eligibility when that appointment's original policy allows it and its deadline has not passed. Update customer communication deliberately when changing policies.

02. Give the customer the correct link

1. Create a fresh synthetic booking from the public calendar. Confirm the time, timezone, location and reference shown on the confirmation.
2. Open Manage your appointment on the confirmation. Save this private URL. It is specific to this appointment; the general calendar URL only creates new bookings.
3. In Appointments, find the same reference through Details. Customer management link lets authorized staff copy the current link when assisting the attendee. Verify the attendee through your normal support process before sharing it through an agreed channel.

Anyone possessing this private link can perform the enabled actions within their deadlines. Do not post it publicly, paste it into analytics, or share it with unrelated people. After each successful change, save the updated link shown on the page: previous links stop working. No confirmation, reminder or replacement-link email is sent automatically. A management link also expires one day after the appointment start; expiry does not extend the change cutoff.

03. Test a customer reschedule

1. Open the private management link as the attendee. Review the current appointment and saved policy.
2. Under Reschedule appointment, choose a date and select Show available times. The initial date is the appointment date. All times use the displayed calendar timezone and UTC offset.
3. Choose a different available time and select Confirm new time. Your original time remains reserved until the change succeeds. If another booking takes the selected time first, choose another slot; the original appointment remains unchanged.
4. Read the updated confirmation and save its updated management link. Check that the reference is unchanged.
5. In Appointments, verify the new time, confirmed status and existing CRM contact. Open Change history: it must show a customer reschedule with previous and new times. Refresh the public calendar: the new occupied interval is unavailable and the old interval is eligible again only if current notice, availability and buffer rules allow it.
6. Reopen the old private link. It must no longer authorize a change. Do not create a second appointment to represent the reschedule.

Rescheduling requires the same eligible host and a published calendar. If the host, timezone, location, duration or buffers changed since the booking, use staff assistance. Current availability, blocked dates, notice and booking window still apply to the new time. Overlap protection includes this host's other 6am calendars; it does not include Google, Outlook or iCloud events.

04. Test customer cancellation

1. Use the latest management link, before the cancellation cutoff.
2. Under Cancel appointment, read the explanation, check the acknowledgement and select Confirm cancellation. Merely opening the page never cancels anything.
3. Confirm Booking cancelled. In the dashboard, verify the cancelled status and the customer cancellation in Change history. The appointment and linked contact remain recorded; this action does not delete them.
4. Check that its occupied interval has been released, subject to the calendar's current availability rules. Reusing the previous link or submitting again must not create a second change.

Cancellation cannot be undone on the customer page. A new appointment requires the public calendar. Unpublishing the calendar does not by itself remove an otherwise eligible customer's cancellation option. Disabling customer cancellation does.

05. Handle exceptions and close QA

• Expired or outdated link: ask the organizer for the current appointment link. Staff should verify the attendee before sharing it. A current link does not bypass the deadline or disabled policy.
• Deadline passed, option disabled, older appointment or changed calendar: use the published organizer contact. Authorized staff can cancel from Appointments after confirming the request; this records a staff change. There is no staff rescheduling editor in this delivery.
• No slots or rejected selection: check the date, timezone, booking window, notice, blocked dates and host conflicts. Refresh and choose an eligible time. Do not lower production rules merely to make a test pass.
• Form open too long or calendar edited: reopen the current link before submitting. The short-lived form authorization is separate from the appointment's private URL.

Cancel remaining synthetic appointments and return the test calendar to draft when finished. Record the reference, original/new times, resulting statuses, history entries and tested browser/device. State any untested device or external integration explicitly. Never send a test to real customers.

Acceptance criteria

• Policy and support contact are visible before booking and saved with the new appointment.
• A reschedule preserves the appointment reference and contact, releases only the old interval, and records the change.
• A cancellation requires explicit confirmation, preserves the record and releases its occupied interval.
• Stale links, expired forms, disabled actions and passed deadlines cannot change the appointment.
• Staff can inspect the history and obtain the current private link with company-scoped permissions.
• No email delivery or external calendar synchronization is implied by a successful booking change.