Get Started with Salesforce Scheduler
Learning Objectives
After completing this project, you’ll be able to:
- Describe Salesforce Scheduler and its features.
- Set up permissions and configure service territories.
- Create service resources and assign service resources to service territories.
- Create work type groups and work types.
- Book and modify service appointments.
Get Started with Salesforce Scheduler
Ryan Dobson is a rising-star financial advisor and Matt O’Brien is one of the best admins at Cumulus Bank. Ryan and Matt are chatting about a supercool Salesforce product called Salesforce Scheduler.
With Salesforce Scheduler, Cumulus Bank can provide personalized experiences to its customers by precision-scheduling appointments—in person, or by phone or video—with the right person at the right place and time. With Salesforce Scheduler, it’s easy to embed appointment scheduling into standard Salesforce workflows, such as leads and referrals, opportunities, and accounts.
Ryan is thrilled at the prospect of having more free time to focus on creative tasks and spending less time on coordination-intensive tasks such as scheduling appointments.
What Salesforce Scheduler Can Do
Matt explains to Ryan the benefits of Salesforce Scheduler.
- Create records that represent the bank’s service resources (appointment attendees), and add details about their skills (areas of expertise), service territories (office locations), and availability.
- Define service territories (branch and office locations), and their operating hours.
- Create work type groups (appointment topics), such as home loans or investment.
- Define work types (appointment templates) to:
- Link work type groups with locations.
- Specify key appointment parameters such as appointment duration, preparation and wrap-up buffers, and availability timings.
- Specify skills that are needed for a work type group (appointment topic).
- Schedule inbound and outbound customer appointments with defined topics, attendees, time slots, and location.
- Find the right resources for appointments based on skill matching.
Inbound scheduling is the booking of appointments by customers with an organization’s agents. Outbound scheduling is the booking of appointments by an organization’s agents with customers.
Ryan recommends Salesforce Scheduler to his team. Ryan’s boss, Fola, speaks to Matt to learn more about Salesforce Scheduler. Matt explains to Fola what Salesforce Scheduler can do for Fola’s team and how it also makes reporting easy for Fola.
Fola likes the idea of having greater visibility and more intelligent insights into her staff’s appointments: Is Ryan’s expertise in wealth management being adequately used to help out the bank’s high-net-worth clients? Is that new insurance advisor spending enough time with her clients? What about the mortgage specialist?
Fola typically spends several hours a week tackling these types of questions and generating reports manually. But with Salesforce Scheduler, she doesn’t have to—the entire appointment scheduling process is managed via a single window and all appointments-related data resides in a single, seamless system. And she can assign resources more efficiently and help her team address customer needs in a better way.
In this project, we follow along as Matt sets up Salesforce Scheduler for Cumulus Bank.
Sign Up for a Developer Edition with Salesforce Scheduler
To complete this project, you need a special Developer Edition org that contains Salesforce Scheduler and our sample data. Get the free Developer Edition and connect it to Trailhead now so that you can complete the challenges in this project.
Note that this Developer Edition is designed to work with the challenges in this badge, and may not work for other badges. Always make sure that you’re using the Trailhead Playground or special Developer Edition org that we recommend.
- Sign up for a free Developer Edition org with Salesforce Scheduler.
- Fill out the form.
- For Email, enter an active email address.
- For Username, enter a username that looks like an email address and is unique. It doesn’t have to be a valid email account (for example, yourname@lm4ever.com).
- Click Sign me up. A confirmation message appears.
- After you receive the activation email (it can take a few minutes), open it, and then click Verify Account.
- Set a password and a challenge question.
Tip: Write down your username, password, and login URL for easy access later. - You’re logged in to your Developer Edition.
Now connect your new Developer Edition org to Trailhead.
- Make sure you're logged in to your Trailhead account.
- In the Challenge section at the bottom of this page, click the playground name, and then click Connect Org.
- On the login screen, enter the username and password for the Developer Edition you just set up.
- On the Allow Access? screen, click Allow.
- On the Want to connect this org for hands-on challenges? screen, click Yes! Save it. You’re redirected back to the challenge page and are ready to use your new Developer Edition to earn this badge.
Now that you have a Salesforce Scheduler-enabled org, let’s set it up and book appointments.