TimeTap offers a direct integration with Microsoft Teams, which allows you and your team to take advantage of the 2-way calendar sync as well as send Teams meeting links to your clients directly through TimeTap.
In this documentation, we will cover -
Syncing your Outlook 365 Account to your TimeTap Account
Each staff member who would like to accept meetings through Microsoft Teams must sync their account individually using the specific Outlook 365 sync that is designated for Teams. To start by logging into your TimeTap account, click on your name in the upper right corner and then click on My Profile -
From your profile, click on the Calendar Sync tab on the left-side menu, and then select the Office 365 with Teams logo -
After selecting this option, Office 365 will guide you through the typical sign-in process, after which you will be returned to the Calendar Sync page. You will now see the Office 365 email address that you synced at the top of the page -
An External Calendar Sync Feed should appear automatically at the bottom of the page, but if it does not (or if you want to sync with an additional calendar on that Teams account) you will need to select the Upload/Download from Another Calendar button seen indicated by the red arrow in the previous image.
A new window will appear, and here you will be able to modify a few things before you finalize the Teams sync process -
- This is the Teams account this staff member has been granted access to.
- This is a list of all calendars associated with the Teams account selected in step 1. These are typically other calendars created within your Microsoft Teams account or calendars other people have shared with you.
- Check this box to upload all appointments set in TimeTap for this staff to the selected Teams calendar.
- Check off which reasons you want to sync to the Teams calendar (most of our users have all of them selected, but you can pick and choose if you'd like).
- For service-based appointments only - This is the title of the TimeTap appointment once it appears as an appointment in the Teams calendar. If you leave it blank, it will display the client's name, phone number and reason, or you can use our email tags to display information of your choice.
- For class-based appointments only - This is the title of the TimeTap class session once it appears as a class session in the Teams calendar. If you leave it blank, it will display the client's name, phone number and reason, or you can use our email tags to display information of your choice.
- This is what displays as the event location once this event appears in the Teams Calendar. If you leave it blank, it will display the location name.
- For service-based appointments only - Once the TimeTap appointment gets added to the synced calendar, this is what would appear in the class session's description. If you leave it blank, it will display the client's details and any custom fields information, or you can use our email tags to display information of your choice.
- For class-based appointments only - Once the TimeTap appointment gets added to the synced calendar, this is what would appear in the class session description. If you leave it blank, it will display the client's details and any custom fields information, or you can use our email tags to display information of your choice.
- Here you can set how long before the event start time you want your external calendar to remind you about the event.
- Check this box to download all appointments from the Teams calendar you've selected to the staff member's TimeTap calendar.
- Check this box to allow this user to download the appointment details from the Teams calendar you have granted access to.
Once all necessary changes have been made, click on the green Save New Sync Details button at the bottom of the window.
After this, you should begin to see all appointments begin to sync. The process could take up to 10-15 minutes, depending on how many appointments need to be synced both ways.
Adding a Microsoft Teams Virtual Location
If you'd like to accept or create appointments that will simultaneously set up a Microsoft Teams link to the space where the appointment will take place, you can do that by creating a Microsoft Teams specific location in TimeTap. All appointments booked through TimeTap at this location will create a Teams event link, and that information will be sent to TimeTap automatically. First, you’ll need to create a virtual location. If you already have a virtual location, you may use it for this purpose, just note that you may need to implement some additional features and messaging templates if you intend to accept virtual appointments using more than one method (like Zoom, Chime, etc.).
Once you have a virtual location set up, you'll want to go to that location’s profile by navigating to Settings > Locations > clicking on the View button next to that specific location. From the location profile, click on the blue Edit button in the top right corner and choose Microsoft Teams from the Virtual Location Type field -
Once you have selected the appropriate virtual location type, you'll need to click on the green Save button in the upper right corner of the page, and the location will be configured to create Teams event links whenever appointments get booked for it.
Updating Appointment Templates to Include the Teams Meeting Link
The last step you'll need to take to ensure that clients receive the appropriate meeting information is to update the appropriate appointment templates. You may want to add the relevant information to several different templates, as it can be helpful for clients to receive this information in the confirmation email as well as in any reminder emails and texts that are sent. The important thing to note is that anywhere you want this appointment-specific Teams meeting link to appear, you can use this email tag - %APPT_VIRTUAL_ROOM_URL% - and it will populate a URL for the Teams meeting that is unique to that appointment. In this guide, we’ll outline the steps for adding this to the most common appointment template, New Appointment by Client.
First, navigate to Messaging > Appointment Templates > click on the View button next to the template you want to edit (in this case New Appointment by Client). From this page, you’ll see a list of all the templates in the category. In this account, there is a specific template just for virtual meetings that is different from the other templates (if you only have virtual meetings, you could apply this information directly to your default template). You can always clone the default template and make changes to it if you want to create a template specifically for virtual meetings! Click on the View button next to the template you want to edit -
From the template profile, you'll first need to go to the Template section and click on the blue Edit button. While in edit mode, you’ll be able to paste the appropriate email tag - %APPT_VIRTUAL_ROOM_URL% - into the template body. This will populate the unique meeting link when the email gets sent to clients! If you want the URL to be a live hyperlink, you can click on the link icon in the edit toolbar -
From here, you’ll be prompted to enter some information in order to insert the link -
URL - In this field, you can add the %APPT_VIRTUAL_ROOM_URL% email tag. Even though it isn’t a URL while the email is in edit mode, it will become 1 when the email gets sent.
Text to display - by default, this field will be populated by the information entered in the URL field. You can leave it as is or enter something the client will read to indicate what the link is.
Title - this field is optional, and any text entered here will appear when a mouse hovers over the link.
Target - choose New page or Same page, depending on whether you want the link to open in a new page/tab or open in the current browser tab.
Click OK, and your link is all set in the template -
Before moving on, it’s a good idea to add some additional verbiage to the template to help point the user to the Teams link. Once your template is completely edited to include the new tag, click on the green Save button -
After completing all of the steps above, from syncing to setting up the location and template, we recommend booking a test appointment just to make sure it’s working as expected. To do this, you’ll just need to create an appointment for a staff member who has an Office 365 with Teams calendar sync set up at the proper virtual location. You should see this appointment sync to the Office calendar, complete with the Teams link -
Using the Teams Integration with Classes
The Teams integration is now compatible with classes, but only for class sessions created with the Sync only class setting enabled -
When this setting is checked, only the main class session event is synced externally, and all attendees’ names are added to the event description as they register. This ensures that only 1 Teams meeting link is created and tied to the session, which staff and attendees can all use.
If this setting is not enabled, TimeTap will create both a session event and individual appointment events for each attendee on the staff's Teams calendar, which will cause everyone to receive different links for their meeting.
For reliable Teams integration with classes, always create sessions with the Sync only class option enabled.