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Calendly

Connect Calendly and your Voka AI assistant can check your real availability while a caller is still on the phone, book them into one of your event types, and move or cancel that booking later in the same call or a future one.

Calendly is built around event types — "30 Minute Meeting", "Discovery Call", "Consultation". Your assistant works with the event types you have already set up. It does not create them, rename them, or change their length.

Booking requires a paid Calendly plan

Checking availability works on any Calendly plan. Creating a booking does not. Calendly gates its booking API behind a paid plan, so on a free account your assistant can tell a caller when you are free but cannot put anything in the diary. If that happens the assistant says someone will follow up, rather than pretending the booking went through.


Will it do…?

QuestionAnswer
Check what's genuinely free before offering a time?Yes. Live, during the call.
Book the caller in?Yes — on a paid Calendly plan. See the note above.
Find a booking the caller already has?Yes, by their email address.
Move a booking to a different time?Yes. See how rescheduling works — it is not a simple move.
Cancel a booking?Yes.
Quote a price?No. Calendly has no prices.
Take a deposit or payment?No.
Know which staff member does what?No. Each event type has its own host in Calendly.
Handle group classes with a seat count?No.
Send the confirmation?Calendly does, by email, as it does for online bookings.

If you need prices, deposits, staff rotas or classes, use Square or Acuity Scheduling instead.


What your caller needs to give

An email address is required to book. Calendly sends the invite and the confirmation there, and there is no way to create a booking without one. Your assistant will ask for it and repeat it back before booking.

That is worth knowing before you go live: on a phone call, spelling out an email address takes time and is the step most likely to need a second attempt. If most of your callers would rather not spell out an address, a booking system that files people by phone number — Square or Acuity — will feel smoother on the phone.


How rescheduling works

Calendly has no "move this booking" operation. To change a time, your assistant cancels the existing booking and creates a new one at the new time. That is the only route Calendly offers.

Two consequences worth knowing:

  • The invitee gets two emails — a cancellation for the old time, a confirmation for the new one. That is Calendly's doing, not something your assistant adds.
  • If the new time is taken in the seconds between the two steps, the caller is left without a booking. Your assistant says exactly that — "I cancelled the old time but couldn't grab the new slot" — and offers to find another. It never claims the move succeeded when it did not.

If the very first step fails, nothing is changed and your assistant says the original appointment is still in place.


What the caller hears

The assistant only offers times Calendly itself reports as open, in the caller's own time zone when they mention one, and in yours otherwise. It confirms the time out loud before booking, and books exactly once — a caller who repeats themselves, or a line that drops mid-sentence, does not produce two meetings in your diary.

After booking it tells the caller Calendly will email the confirmation, because Calendly is what sends it.


Setting it up

  1. Go to Integrations in your Voka portal.
  2. Find Calendly and click Connect.
  3. Sign in to Calendly and approve access.

That is the whole setup. Your event types are read live from Calendly on each call, so anything you add, rename or pause there takes effect on the next call without touching Voka.

What Voka can see

Unlike most integrations, Calendly does not offer a tick-list of permissions. Connecting grants access based on your own Calendly permissions — there is no narrower option to choose, on either side.

What Voka actually uses it for is narrow: reading your event types and availability, and creating, rescheduling and cancelling bookings. It never reads or changes your Calendly plan or billing.

You can withdraw access at any time from Calendly → Integrations → Connected Apps, or by disconnecting in your Voka portal.


Limits worth knowing before you go live

  • Booking needs a paid Calendly plan. Availability does not.
  • Email is mandatory on every booking.
  • Rescheduling is a cancel-and-rebook, with the two emails that implies.
  • No prices, no deposits, no payment. Calendly does not carry them, so neither can your assistant.
  • No staff choice. "Can I see Sarah instead?" is not a question Calendly's model can answer — the host is fixed per event type. If a caller asks, the assistant will not invent an answer.
  • No group classes. Calendly event types have no seat count your assistant can read.

Troubleshooting

"The assistant found a time but couldn't book it." Almost always the paid-plan gate. Check your Calendly plan; availability works on free accounts and booking does not.

"It says it can't find my booking." Bookings are found by the invitee's email address. If the caller booked under a different address from the one they give on the phone, the lookup will not match. Ask which address it was booked under.

"A caller was told a time was free and it wasn't." Availability is read live from Calendly at the moment of the call, so this normally means the slot was taken in the seconds in between. Your assistant will say so and offer alternatives rather than book over it.

"Nothing happens when I try to connect." Reconnect from Integrations. If it keeps failing, contact support — Calendly access tokens expire and occasionally need re-authorising.