How Appointments Work

An Attendara appointment is created automatically whenever a new event appears in your synced calendar. You don't create appointments in Attendara — you create events in your calendar, exactly as you always have, and Attendara takes it from there.

From calendar event to appointment

1. You create an event in Google Calendar or Outlook.
   Write the event title (e.g. Jane Taylor — Consultation) and add the customer's contact information in the event description.
2. Attendara detects the new event within seconds.
   Via a real-time webhook, Attendara receives a change notification from your calendar provider.
3. Customer details are extracted automatically.
   Attendara's AI reads the event description and extracts the customer's name, email address, and phone number. It matches them against existing customers in your database or creates a new customer record.
4. An appointment is created.
   The appointment appears in your Attendara dashboard with a Pending status, ready for notifications to be sent.
5. Notifications are sent according to your rules.
   The configured notification rules trigger — for example, a confirmation email is sent immediately, and a reminder is queued for 24 hours before the start time.

How to include customer contact details

Attendara reads the event description. You don't need a special format — the AI understands natural language. Examples that work:

Jane Taylor
Email: jane.taylor@example.com
Phone: +44 7700 900123

Client: Marco Bianchi
marco.bianchi@company.it
+39 02 1234 5678

Appointment with Sarah Chen (sarah@example.com, 07911 123456)

What happens when you reschedule

When you move an event to a different time, Attendara detects the change and:

• Updates the appointment's start and end times.
• Triggers any notification rules set to fire after reschedule — for example, a message saying "Your appointment has been moved to Thursday at 3pm."
• Cancels any pending notifications that no longer apply (e.g. a reminder scheduled for the old time).

What happens when you delete an event

Deleting a calendar event marks the Attendara appointment as deleted. Any pending notifications for that appointment are cancelled. If you have a cancellation notification rule, it fires at this point.

Matching customers by name

Attendara identifies customers primarily by email address or phone number. The Find customer by name setting (in Settings → Preferences → Customer Search) is enabled by default. When active, Attendara also attempts to match an extracted customer name against existing records as a fallback when no email or phone is found in the event description. This reduces errors in workflows where contact details are already on file but events are created with just a name.

Private events

By default, events marked as private in your calendar are completely ignored by Attendara — they will never appear in the dashboard or trigger notifications. This lets you keep personal blocks in the same calendar without any processing.

There is an optional setting in Settings → Preferences → Calendar Sync to recognise private events, with a custom AI instruction for how to handle them. See Sync Settings → Private events for details.