Bookings in Riva Portal

With Riva Bookings, you can now reduce email scheduling back and forth by up to 85%!

Contents: 

Signing into Riva Bookings

​Once your organization has been configured for Riva Bookings, the online web portal will be available for you to start using. To start creating availability links for easy scheduling, you have two options to access online: 

1. Navigate to https://byriva.com. You will be prompted to enter your email. Based on your email domain, Riva will show the suitable sign-in method.
    
   • If your organization uses Office 365 or Exchange Online, you can sign in via "Sign in with Microsoft".
      
   • If your organization uses Exchange On-Premise, you will need to manually enter your Microsoft email and password.
      
2. Navigate to https://{your-company-domain}.byriva.com. You will be able to bypass entering the email and will be shown the suitable sign-in method right away.
    
   • Your company domain is most likely your email domain. For example, if it is alex@herbsherb.com, the domain will herbsherb. If not, contact your Riva admin.
      
3. Sign in through Riva Insight with our Riva Bookings Integration.

Settings

After you log in for the first time, it's recommended that you configure your settings via "Settings" under your profile.

Profile

• This is where you can manage the professional details that invitees see in booking confirmations and meeting emails.

Default Availability

• This is where you can set the default availability that is shown when you create your availability link.  This can be overridden if you choose to.
• Recommendation is to set your work hours as the default availability

Meeting Preferences

• My Availability Link: The URL you share with recipients to book time with you. By default, it uses your first and last name, but you can customize it to make the link more personal or easier to share.
   

• Additional Options

  This section will allow you to enable any kind of smart scheduling options, These settings will be selected by default for any new availability link you create.
   

  • Show only first slot per day: When enabled, recipients see only the earliest available time slot for each day. This helps keep meetings scheduled stacked together instead of spread throughout the day. For example, if you are available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for 30-minute meetings, the first recipient sees only 9 a.m. Once that slot is booked, the next recipient sees 9:30 a.m.
     
  • Manually approve meeting requests: When enabled, the organizer can review and approve each meeting request before the appointment is added to attendees’ calendars. When disabled, meeting requests are approved automatically.
     
  • Display recipient name in meeting title: Adds the recipient’s name to the meeting title so the organizer can quickly identify upcoming meetings with clients.
     
  • Minimum notice period: Sets how soon a recipient can book a meeting with the organizer.
     
  • Recipient can book ahead: Limits how far in advance recipients can book. For example, if it is October and this is set to one month, recipients can book through November.
     
  • Pre/Post buffer time: Adds time before and after each meeting to allow for breaks, travel, or note-taking. For example, for a 9:00–9:30 a.m. meeting with 15-minute buffers, the next available time is 9:45 a.m.

• Meeting Types to Mark Unavailable: Organizers have the option to open more meeting slots by showing ‘tentative’ meetings (or other statuses) as available time.  
   
• Meeting Reminders: Use this section to choose when automatic reminders are sent before a meeting starts and who should receive them.

Integrations

• Online Meetings:
  • Currently, we offer 2 different online meetings integration, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams
  • For both, toggling them on will enable Zoom and Teams integration, which means that they can be selected as the location choice when you are creating an availability link.
  • Use my personal ID field for Zoom: You can also select whether a unique meeting ID will be generated, or if your Personal Meeting ID will be used in the Zoom link.

Create an Availability Link

Create availability links to send to your email recipients so they can request to book a meeting with you for a chosen date and time. As a Bookings user, can have one or multiple availability links and choose which one to send depending on your scheduling needs. For example, organizers might have a general meeting link for a "General Meeting", one for a "Customer Support Call" and another for a "Sales Meeting" with a potential client.

Create a new availability link 

Click on "Create Availability link", which will open up creation flow:

Add Meeting Details

1. Meeting Type (Mandatory): Choose Availability link. Refer "article link" for Round Robin link creation.
     
2. Meeting Title (Mandatory): Subject of the meeting invitation.  
    
3. Description (Optional): Meeting description for the invitation. It provides attendees with the context of the meeting.
    

4. Location (Optional): Add one or more location options for recipients to choose when booking a meeting, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, in person, phone, or another online meeting platform. You can set a default location that is preselected when recipients open the availability link.

   For Microsoft Teams or Zoom, selecting the online meeting option automatically creates a meeting link and adds it to the invitation description.

5. Tags (Optional): Add tags to help categorize and manage availability links.
    
6. Personal Note (Optional): A personal note is a reminder or message for the meeting host and attendees only and it is not visible to the public. For example, if I'm a wholesale retailer who uses a regional Availability link, I can use this field to add notes such as, "This is the availability booking link for Edmonton only."
    
7. Duration: Organizers have the option to select multiple durations for a meeting and set a default option for the meeting. The recipient can select their preferred duration.  

Add Internal Attendees

Select who will be the participants of this meeting from your organization.

1. Meeting Host: Owner & organizer for the meeting. This option is used to support delegation scenarios where an assistant can create a meeting link on behalf of their staff.
2. Required Internal Attendees: Riva bookings support multi-stakeholder meetings by utilizing the required attendee field. For all attendees that are added here, Riva will find a cross-section of time that is available for all attendees. 
3. Optional Internal Attendees: Riva will not look to find a time in their calendar and these attendees will be invited to meetings by default. This helps to stay in the loop without forwarding invitations to internal attendees.  

Select My Availability 

The default availability time range configured in Settings is used for this booking link. You can adjust the availability for this link as needed; changes made here override the default availability time range.

Use Meeting Types To Mark Unavailable in Additional options to prevent recipients from booking any time on a selected date. You can also block multiple time periods within a day. Available slots update automatically based on these settings and the host’s calendar.

Note: If you select a delegate host, the availability shown is based on the delegate host’s schedule.

Set Availability Time Range

Availability time range allows the organizer to define a specific time range to be available. For example, this option is helpful for sales rep covering regional offices or attending conferences and tradeshows on the floor and are only available for specific time frames. 

Date-Specific Availability

Use date-specific availability to set different available hours for individual dates, such as during travel, conferences, or other schedule changes. Date-specific availability overrides the availability set for the booking link and the default availability time range in Settings for that date.

Additional Options

This section will allow organizers to enable and adjust any smart scheduling options. By default, the settings will be what you had set in "Meeting Preferences" (see Additional Options). Making changes here will override "Meeting Preferences" for the select availability link.

To learn more about other additional options, see Meeting Preferences.

Publish

From here, you can select “Publish” and your link will show up as a card on the home page. You can also choose to navigate to previous steps via the back button if you want to change any details.

Once the link has been published, you can delete, edit, view, or copy a link. 

1. Delete: This will delete your availability link
2. Edit: You can edit any details of the availability link. Make the necessary changes and click on close & save to make changes or click 'Delete Link' to completely delete the link
3. Preview: This allows you to see the view of what the link recipient will see
4. Clone: Create a duplicate availability link so that you don't have to create one from scratch

Using your availability links

In order to have recipients request a meeting with you, you will need to send it to the necessary recipients. There are a couple of ways to do this.

1. Manually copy and paste: On the Riva Bookings Home page, click on the "Copy link" button on any of the cards you wish to use. Navigate to your communication platform like email or messaging platform and paste it and send it to your recipient.
2. Use Riva Insight: Learn how you can insert availability links directly from Riva Insight here.

Signature Link

A signature link is a type of availability link intended to be inserted into your email signature or on your website to make your availability always accessible to customers.

When you log in to your account for the very first time, signature link details are already filled out with basic information so that you can get started right away.  Of course, you have the option to edit the link to suit your needs. The experience of a signature link is exactly the same as an availability link except that as the signature link is meant for you specifically, you cannot delegate or add other additional internal attendees.

Single Use Links

For one-time meetings that you do not want to store as an availability link, or for meetings that you don't want to expose your whole calendar for, we have a new type of link called a "Single Use Link". 

Step 1: Enter Details

The available options are the same as for an availability link. The only difference is that you can select only one meeting duration.

Step 2: Add Attendees

Again, everything is the same as adding attendees for an availability link. Note that delegation is also supported.

Step 3: Select your availability

As an organizer, you will be manually selecting the exact timeslots that you want to show as available. The reserve selected times toggle will create temporary "HOLD" meetings in your calendar wherever you marked yourself as available so that you don't overbook those slots with another meeting.

As you are manually selecting the times, there is no need to have an "additional options" step as you do for availability links.

Once you have published the single-use link, you can either copy the single-use link or copy a text template that lists all the time slots that were marked as available. The link will expire once it has been used or after its last selected availability slot.

Recipient's Experience

When a recipient clicks on the availability link, they are redirected to a page on the web browser to request a meeting with you. Here is the experience for the recipient.

Step 1: Select Date and Time

1. Select Duration: Recipients can set the duration via the dropdown if multiple durations are available based on their preferences
2. Calendar: Shows the available days that work across all internal required attendees. 
3. View available times in: Option to adjust the time zones. By default, Riva Bookings detects the recipient's time zone and displays the options in their time zone. 
4. Time Slots: Shows the available time slots that work across all internal required attendees. Recipients can view timeslots in different time zones using the "View available times in" dropdown.

Step 2: Enter Details (as a recipient)

1. Name: Recipient to enter their name 
2. Email: Recipient to enter their email 
3. Location: Multiple meeting locations provided by the organizer. The recipient can choose an option to their preference
4. Invite Guests: Recipients can add emails of people they want to invite to the meeting  
5. Recipient Questions: Depending on the questions that the organizer had added as a part of the "Additional Options", those questions will be shown here.  

Step 3: Complete

• The recipient can now close the window and wait for a confirmation email

Confirmation Emails

1. The recipient clicks on "Request Meeting" through the recipient experience described above.
    
2. Initial Emails:
    

   • If "Manually Accept Meeting Requests" is turned on, the meeting host receives an email to approve or cancel the meeting request.
      

     

   • If "Manually Accept Meeting Requests" is turned off, a calendar event is created automatically and the meeting host receives a confirmation via email.
      

     

Reschedule and Cancel

Each meeting invitation allows all attendees to Reschedule or Cancel a meeting. 

Reschedule Flow

1. The Recipient clicks on the Reschedule Link and navigates to select a new date and time on the Bookings Platform. The previously selected details are preserved for the meeting, 

   

2. Then the recipient is prompted to modify any details. 

   

3. Finally, the confirmation page for rescheduling request. 

   

Cancel Flow

1. The recipient clicks on the cancel link and navigates to the Bookings Platform to cancel the meeting.

   

Troubleshooting: Reauthorizing expired integrations

Riva Bookings automatically includes meeting location details, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams links, when a meeting is scheduled. If an integration token expires, Riva may not be able to refresh the connection or add the meeting location until the affected integration is reauthorized.

You may see an error message similar to:

There was an error refreshing your integration connection(s): salesforce.
Your integration may require re-authentication.

The connection that needs to be reauthorized depends on the integration or connected service named in the error message.

• Reauthorize the connected service in Riva Bookings settings

• Reauthorize a Salesforce connection in Riva Cloud

• Reauthorize Zoom or the connected service in Riva Meeting Intelligence

Reauthorize the connected service in Riva Bookings settings

Use this option if the affected service is connected directly in Riva Bookings.

To reconnect the affected service:

1. In Riva Bookings, go to Sidebar > Integrations.
2. Find the integration or connected service named in the error message.
3. Disconnect the existing connection.
4. Click Connect for that integration or connected service.
5. Sign in to the appropriate account.
6. Grant the required permissions.
7. Confirm that the integration or connected service shows as connected.

Reauthorize a Salesforce connection in Riva Cloud

To revalidate a Salesforce connection in Riva Cloud:

1. In the Riva Cloud Dashboard, go to Synchronization > Connections.
2. Find the existing Salesforce (CRM) connection.
3. Open the overflow menu and select Edit.
4. On the connection edit page, select Re-Validate Connection.
5. Read the warning that appears.

6. Log out of all existing Salesforce browser sessions.

   This is important. If you skip this step, the currently signed-in Salesforce user may become the default service account, which can cause errors.

7. Select Re-Validate.
8. On the Salesforce login page, sign in with the Riva connection/admin service account and complete authorization.

For more information, see Manage Connections: Corporate.

Reauthorize Zoom or the connected service in Riva Meeting Intelligence

If the error relates to Zoom and you are using the Riva Meeting Intelligence Zoom integration, reconnect the Zoom integration in Riva Meeting Intelligence.

To reconnect Zoom:

1. Navigate to the Riva Meeting Intelligence Web App.
2. Go to Sidebar > Integrations.
3. Under Zoom, disconnect the existing Zoom connection.
4. Click Connect under Zoom.
5. Sign in to your Zoom account.
6. Click Allow to grant the required permissions.
7. Confirm that the Connected as <your Zoom email> label appears under the Zoom integration.

For more information, see Getting Started with Zoom.