Simplify Scheduling: All About Salesforce Lightning Scheduler

What is Salesforce Lightning Scheduler?

Lightning Scheduler helps you in scheduling appointments with the right person at the right time and location in an organization. Lightning Scheduler is best suited for quickly setting up appointments. With the help of a lightning scheduler, you can manage and utilize your resources efficiently. Lightning scheduler is created on standard objects like Lead, Opportunities and Accounts.

Field Service Lightning v/s Lightning Scheduler

Salesforce Lightning Scheduler has similar features to Field Service Lightning. However, they are not the same. While Salesforce Lightning Scheduler only focuses on scheduling a person, Field Service Lightning can schedule other resources as well. Field service Lightning has more advanced scheduling features with the use case in Field service.

Required Edition:

• Lightning Scheduler is available for an extra cost in Lightning Experience.
• Salesforce Lightning Scheduler is available as an add-on product with Enterprise and Unlimited editions of Salesforce. 
• Lightning Scheduler is only available with Lightning Experience of Salesforce.
•  Lightning Scheduler is not available with Force.com licenses.
  

Setup & Enable the Lightning Scheduler App

1. Lightning Scheduler App assignment:

• Go to Setup -> Quick Find Box and enter App Manager.
• Select the Lightning Scheduler Setup dropdown and click Edit.
• In the App Settings, Select the profiles you want to give access to and click Save.

2. App setup and Getting Started:

We need to setup the below mentioned configurations in order to get started wiuth the Lighting Scheduler App:

• Create appointment attendees and assign them to branch locations. For this we need to create a new Service Resource record.
  
  

• Create Skills and assign them to Service Resources. Navigate to the Service Resource record and click on the Assign Skills quick action.
  
  

• Configure the Appointment Templates. This can be done in the Work Type object.
  
  

• Create a new Appointment Template and assign the required skills to these templates.
  
  

• The user experience can be easily simplified by adding Schedule Appointment Lighting Action on the Account/Lead/Opportunity page layouts.
  
  

• Review the created Appointment using the Review Appointment where all the important details are summarized.
  
  

PERMISSION SETS AND LICENSES

• Service Resource users require a Lightning Scheduler User Access permission set license and permission set.
• In order to grant access for the Lightning Scheduler App, go to the System Permissions section in the Permission Set and enable the option ‘Let a user be included in appointments in Lightning Scheduler’. Make sure that the Lightning Scheduler permission set license is added to the permission set.
• Make sure the user’s profile also has the required level of access (as per requirements) to all the Lightning Scheduler objects.

The table below explains the minimum permissions required for the corresponding tasks to the Lightning Scheduler:

Capabilities of Salesforce Lightning Scheduler

• Maintain employee information including their skills, locations, and availability 
• Create your company locations and hours of operation.
• Setup appointment context – a business activity for which you will be setting up the appointments.
• Match the employees with the right skills for appointments evaluating their skills, expertise etc.
• The scheduler will schedule appointments and add relevant attendees. 
• We can use Lightning Scheduler within Salesforce workflows and processes.
  

Limitations of Resources, Service Territories, and Location Hierarchies

• Maximum number of service resources per user – 1
• Maximum number of service territories in a service territory hierarchy – 10000
• Maximum number of locations in a location hierarchy – 10000

Summary

Salesforce Lightning Scheduler is a must-have tool for businesses that depend on effective appointment management. By integrating scheduling capabilities directly within Salesforce, it offers a seamless, unified solution that saves time, reduces scheduling errors, and improves the customer experience. Whether you’re in financial services, healthcare, retail, or any other industry that requires frequent appointments, Lightning Scheduler can enhance your efficiency and help deliver a smoother, more personalized customer journey.