Overview
Plans change. A customer pushes a job a week, a tech calls in sick, or an install runs long and pushes everything behind it.
This article covers moving an appointment to a new time, putting it on a different team member, and canceling it - and what your customer and your crew are told each time.
An Appointment Is Not the Job
This distinction causes most of the confusion, so it is worth being clear about up front.
A work order is the job itself - the work you sold, the money attached to it, and its whole history.
An appointment is one visit to do that work. A work order can have several.
Canceling an appointment cancels one visit. The job is still live and still needs to be scheduled. Canceling the work order cancels the job itself.
If you meant to call off the whole job rather than one visit, see Canceling and Reopening a Work Order instead.
How to Move an Appointment to a New Time
Open the Schedule and find the appointment.
Drag the appointment to the new day and time slot.
Alternatively, open the appointment and change the start date, start time, and end time directly.
Save the appointment and publish changes.
If your customer rescheduling notification is turned on, the customer is emailed about the new time automatically.
How to Put an Appointment on a Different Team Member
The team member on an appointment is set when it is created - including from which calendar row you dropped a job onto when dragging from the Unscheduled Jobs drawer.
Open the appointment on the Schedule.
Drag the appointment to a differen team member row.
Alternatively, open the appointment and edit the assigned team members.
Save and Publish the changes.
If you have team member notifications turned on, your team member will be notified via push notification.
Reassigning an appointment is not the same as removing someone from the job. If the original tech already logged hours, those hours still count against the job's costs. See Unassign vs. Remove a Team Member from a Job.
How to Cancel an Appointment
Open the appointment on the Schedule.
Click on Cancel and confirm cancellation.
If your customer cancellation notification is turned on, the customer is emailed automatically.
The work order remains open. If the job still needs work, it goes back into your scheduling queue. If you need to cancel the entire job, you can do so on the Work Order Overview page.
What Your Customer and Crew Are Told
Appointment notifications are controlled under Business Settings then Notifications.
Under Customer, the Appointments category covers:
Appointment published
Follow-up reminders, 24 hours and 1 hour before
Cancellation
Rescheduling
Each one can be turned on or off where a Configure link is available. Click View Message to read exactly what the customer receives before you rely on it.
Under Team, notifications cover job assignments and schedule changes for your own staff.
Notifications only reach the contacts on the account. If the customer's email is out of date, nothing arrives. See Contacts on an Account.
You can also manage specific customer notification preferences without changing global settings.
Tips & Best Practices
Move the appointment, don't cancel and rebuild it.
Rescheduling keeps the appointment's history and fires the right notification. Deleting and recreating tells your customer the job was canceled and then booked again.
Call before you reschedule, then reschedule.
The automatic email confirms what you already told them rather than being the first they hear of it.
Reassign rather than reschedule when a tech calls in sick.
Moving the job to another available tech keeps the customer's day intact.
Use Day Off events for planned absences.
MotionOps blocks those days on the calendar so nothing gets booked onto someone who is not there.
Check the Unscheduled Jobs drawer after a run of cancellations.
Work that was canceled still needs rebooking and is easy to lose track of.
Things to Know
An appointment is one visit. A work order can have several appointments.
Canceling an appointment does not cancel or close the work order.
Customer emails for rescheduling and cancellation only send if those notifications are enabled in Business Settings.
Notifications reach the contacts on the account, so a stale email address means the customer is never told.
Hours a technician already logged stay on the job even after they are taken off the appointment.
Days off block scheduling for that team member until the day off is withdrawn.
Troubleshooting
My customer wasn't told the appointment moved.
Check that the rescheduling notification is enabled under Business Settings then Notifications then Customer then Appointments, and that the contact on the account has a current email address.
I canceled the appointment but the job still shows as open.
That is correct. Canceling a visit does not cancel the job. To call off the job itself, cancel the work order.
The wrong technician is on the appointment.
If it was created by dragging from the Unscheduled Jobs drawer, the technician came from the calendar row it was dropped onto. Open the appointment and change the assignment.
The job I canceled isn't showing in the Unscheduled Jobs drawer.
The drawer defaults to jobs that have never been scheduled, so work that had an appointment at some point may not appear. Use the Unscheduled Jobs report for the wider list. See Unscheduled Jobs Panel.
I can't drop an appointment on a technician's calendar.
Check whether they have a day off scheduled for that date. Days off block new appointments until withdrawn.
My customer got a cancellation email I didn't mean to send.
Cancellation emails fire automatically when the notification is enabled. If you were only moving the appointment, reschedule it rather than canceling and recreating.
Have questions? Reach out via the support chat or email support@motionops.com.