Scheduling and managing bookings

Sharing the scheduling link

On the study’s agenda, click Access Links. Under Participant Scheduling Link, copy the Self-scheduling link and send it however you reach your participants: your own email, a recruiter, a calendar invite.

One link serves the whole study. Each person who books through it gets their own personal join link by email, so there’s nothing else to send them.

To book on someone’s behalf, open the link yourself and enter their details. The link applies the same rules to everyone, including the minimum notice.

What participants do

The scheduling page lists the open times by day, in the participant’s own timezone. They pick a time, enter their first name, last name, and email address, and click Confirm Interview. That takes them to their booking page, which shows the date and time, a countdown to when the room opens, calendar links, and options to reschedule or cancel.

Each email address can hold one upcoming interview per study. Someone who tries to book a second is told to use the link in their confirmation email instead.

The participant’s side is described in full in Booking and joining an interview, which you can send to participants directly.

Emails participants receive

• Confirmation, sent when they book. The subject is the study title followed by “Interview Scheduled”. It contains the date and time, a Join your interview link, an Add to Google Calendar link, a calendar invite both attached and as a download, and Reschedule and Cancel links.
• Rescheduled, sent when the interview moves, whether they moved it or you did.
• Day-of reminder, sent at 7:00 AM Eastern on the day of the interview to anyone whose interview hasn’t started yet. It goes out once per booking.

These come from the same sender address as your account’s other session emails.

Emails your team receives

Leaders with Booking emails on are told when an interview is booked, rescheduled, or cancelled, whoever made the change. See Team and calendars.

The Interviews page

Click Interviews on the agenda to see every booking in the study. The table shows Participant, Email, Start, and Status. Filter by status, or search by name, email, or external ID.

Bookings don’t stream in live. Click Refresh to pull the latest.

Each row’s menu has:

• Edit details. Correct the participant’s first name, last name, or email address.
• Reschedule. Pick a new time from the open slots. Tick Include a message to the participant to add a note. The participant gets the rescheduled email, their join link stays the same, and calendar events move with it.
• Resend confirmation. Sends the confirmation email again, with an optional message. Select several rows to resend in bulk.
• Copy login link. Copies the participant’s personal join link, for when they can’t find their email.

Click a participant’s name to open their detail panel. It has a Status dropdown, a menu with the same actions, and tabs for Overview, Recording, and Notes. Overview shows the scheduled time and the participant’s link.

Export all downloads every booking with its recording and transcript as a spreadsheet. See Recordings, transcripts, and analysis.

Booking statuses

• Scheduled. Booked and still to happen. An interview stays Scheduled until you change it; ending the call doesn’t change the status.
• Completed. Set by you, with Mark Complete on the agenda or the Status dropdown in the detail panel.
• No Show. The participant didn’t turn up. The calendar events are removed.
• Cancelled. Cancelled by the participant from their booking page, or by you from the Status dropdown. The slot is released for someone else, calendar events are removed, and the participant’s join link stops working.

Setting a cancelled interview back to Scheduled restores the participant’s link and puts the calendar events back.

Cancelling from Converge doesn't email the participant

When you change a status to Cancelled, your team is notified but the participant isn’t. Let them know yourself. Rescheduling does send them an email, so if the interview is moving rather than ending, use Reschedule instead.

Changes participants make themselves

Until their interview starts, a participant can reschedule or cancel from their booking page or from the links in their emails. A reschedule keeps the same booking and the same join link, has to respect the minimum notice, and isn’t possible while bookings are paused. Either way your team gets a booking email.

Once the start time has passed, the booking can no longer be changed from the participant’s side.

Recruited participants

Bookings that come from a User Interviews recruit show an External ID and gain Participant, Screener, and Characteristics tabs in the detail panel. Their scheduling runs through User Interviews, so a few things differ:

• Edit details, Reschedule, and Resend confirmation aren’t available. Changes go through User Interviews, which also sends their confirmations and reminders.
• Setting the status to Completed tells User Interviews to pay the participant’s incentive. No Show marks them as a no-show there. Converge asks you to confirm both.
• Cancelled isn’t offered as a status.

See Recruiting participants for setting up the recruit.

Good to know

• The room opens for the participant a few minutes before the start, set by Early Access in the scheduling settings, and stops letting them in six minutes after the scheduled end. A participant who arrives later than that is offered the scheduling page to book a new time.
• A participant’s personal link stops working altogether 24 hours after their interview’s scheduled end.
• Removing or shortening availability doesn’t cancel interviews that are already booked inside it.