Outlook appointment scheduling: how do you settle a time in one email?
Outlook appointment scheduling usually takes three rounds of email; Bombos puts three times that are actually free in one proposal, travel time included, and after your approval the invitation goes out.
Works with your own scheduling software, calendar and accounting package.
One email instead of three is the first step toward helping more customers with the same team.
This is how it goes now, and how it goes with Bombos.
Three rounds of email back and forth to plan a single appointment.
The customer emails when they will be home, and you already know it will take two more messages. You look up the address, read the surrounding appointments and work out how much time is left for the visit. Outlook does not calculate travel time between addresses, so you factor that in separately. If you wait until after the customer chooses, the back and forth starts again.
The appointment proposal is ready with travel time included; after your approval, the invitation goes out.
You start with a visit proposal that includes travel time. Bombos reads the email and finds the customer and calendar details, along with the recorded travel-time information. The proposal explains why that time was chosen and shows the surrounding appointments. A draft email offers that time to the customer. You check that the visit and journey fit the day and send it. After your approval, the appointment enters your schedule.
After three months, scheduling an appointment takes one email with a time that truly fits. Your dispatcher no longer puzzles over calendars and travel time, but reviews a proposal. The same people schedule more visits, and do it better because the route works. By then, your team knows how Bombos learns a task and chooses what comes next.
What's ready for you then
- One email with a time that truly fits
- Travel time included, no puzzle of addresses
- Appointments confirmed sooner, without three email rounds
- Your dispatcher keeps time for harder work
Where do you see that?
The appointment proposal sits on the list in Bombos with the customer email as its reason. You read the appointments from Outlook next to the visit address that was found and the recorded travel time, and adjust the proposed time. The reason next to the proposal shows which details were used for that choice. The draft email sits alongside it, so you can compare the time in the message with the appointment you are reviewing.
With "ready for you", Bombos shows that the proposal can be reviewed. "Waiting on your input" makes clear that information is still needed, such as how much time you want to allow for the drive. That question sits with the visit it concerns. Every action with an effect outside Bombos goes into the log. There you can see what happened to the chosen visit time and the message to the customer.
How does it start?
In the first week we set up preparing technician visits together. We take about an hour for that. Which inbox holds the requests, which calendar can Bombos read, and where is the visit address? We also look at which travel time details are available and how much room you want to allow when scheduling. That way the task starts with details and rules you actually use for an appointment.
Bombos then starts the first task at "proposing". You keep Outlook and your own schedule, without moving appointments or needing training. If you adjust a proposal because a certain appointment gets scheduled differently, that correction becomes the rule for next time. A task type only gets more room once you move it to "run after approval" or "run on its own". A final appointment and the email to the customer do not go out without your approval. The next time you plan a visit in that same area, the proposal is ready for review with the travel time you agreed on back then.
Visits are the first task, not the whole offer. We take you along on that first step, and after that your own dispatcher teaches Bombos the next task. After three months, your schedule is ready in the morning instead of you having to put it together.
Less email, more work with the same team.
Three rounds of email for one appointment may seem small. Add them up across a week and your whole office team, and you can see what is holding back growth. Fast-growing businesses often look for another dispatcher. Bombos helps your current people handle more work, and better work, for less than half a day a week of the person you would otherwise hire.
After scheduling appointments, your team teaches Bombos the next task. No technical skills are required. Anyone who reviews and improves proposals every day naturally learns to work with AI. We guide you through the first step. We do not want you to keep coming back to us.
Leave your number and we call you back to talk through how your team schedules work today.
What Bombos does, in three steps
It reads what comes in
An email, a message, a photo or a PDF: Bombos reads it, looks up the client and the details in the systems you already have, and sees what is missing.
It drafts the work, you approve it
The proposal sits on one list with the reasoning next to it. You read it, adjust it and approve. Only then is anything sent, booked or filed.
It remembers what you decide
Every correction becomes the rule for next time. Once a kind of task has gone well for a while, you hand it over step by step, and you check the log afterwards.
What can Bombos not do here today?
For this appointment proposal, Bombos uses the information you make available. If the travel time is missing, you have to judge the drive yourself first. The proposal also cannot take into account an appointment that appears nowhere in the available calendar or email. An appointment like that exists only in your head, or in the head of the technician. That is why Bombos can interview you: it asks the questions needed to record that appointment and its travel time, so the proposal can take it into account next time.
An email with a proposal does not guarantee that the customer accepts the time or that no further back and forth is needed. Bombos never sends a message to a third party without approval from a staff member first, whatever the channel. For a visit proposal, that limit is technically enforced. Only Bombos can switch it off, at your explicit request and at your own risk. When in doubt, Bombos asks for information instead of guessing. A ready proposal can contain mistakes in the address, the time and the room allowed for the visit; those details need checking before the appointment goes ahead. A workable visit time starts with the whole drive the technician has to make.