The Interviews Scheduler allows you to set up your calendar availability and let participants book sessions directly. You can also manage collaborators and automate reminders, confirmations, and thank you messages.
The team is continuing to expand on the capabilities with the following on the roadmap:
Video platform integrations: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams
Automatic session recordings: Option for automatically recorded sessions
Calendar integration: Connect with Google, Microsoft, and Apple calendars
Recurring schedules: Set up a weekly repeating schedule
Moderated recruitment via Optimal's Managed Recruitment services is not currently widely available. Optimal is currently looking into panel integrations in the future to automate this process so we can offer this service more widely.
If you are interested in learning more about current and future options, please reach out to the customer support team.
Getting Started
Accessing the Scheduler
After creating an Interviews study, click on Audience in the left panel, then Schedule.
Under Schedule, you can:
Set up your availabilities
View upcoming sessions
View completed sessions
Add meeting links to your scheduled sessions
Invite participants via email or a link
Setting Up Your Availability
Click Create Schedule to create a new schedule or Edit at the top of the Schedule page to make edits to an existing schedule.
Click directly on the calendar to add an availability time slot.
To adjust the slot, you can:
Drag the bottom or top to extend/shorten the time
Drag-and-drop to move the session to a different day/time
Change the timezone in the top-right corner if needed.
Expand sections in the left panel to customize additional scheduling settings.
Click Save Schedule when finished.
Tip: If you’re recruiting participants through a panel provider (e.g., Respondent), you can still use Optimal’s scheduler. Some panels may require participants to book via the panel’s own scheduler.
In these cases, we recommend setting aside separate time slots: one for participants you recruit independently, and another for participants recruited through the panel. This ensures there’s no overlap and scheduling remains smooth.
Customizing your schedule
Under the Schedule section, you'll also have options to customize your session details e.g. title, description, duration, preferences for buffers times and limits, as well as add collaborators.
Collaborators will be invited to any booked sessions and notified of any changes via email.
Expand and collapse the sections as needed.
Managing Messages
Go to the Messages section. There, you can customize booking confirmations, invitation emails, session reminders, and thank-you messages.
Inviting Participants
On the Schedule page, click Invite participants. Send participants a link to view your availability and book a time or invite them via email.
Adding a meeting link
For pre-scheduled sessions, click Attach link under Upcoming Sessions to copy & paste a meeting link.
Managing upcoming sessions
If you would like to reschedule, edit link, or cancel a session, access these options by clicking on the three dots at the top right of each scheduled session.
Joining a meeting
Once a session is scheduled, hosts and collaborators can click Join call links in Optimal to start the session or use the links available in the confirmation emails. Participants can click the join call links available in their email messages.
Uploading meeting recordings
After your sessions are completed, you can upload the recordings to Interviews. Once processed, they'll be automatically added to your Interview Recordings along with auto-generated transcripts.
If these are your first recordings, automated insights will be generated automatically.
If you’re adding recordings to an existing set, click Regenerate insights (above the Insight Summary under Insights) to include the new recordings in new insights and automatically have the recordings referenced in citations, evidence, and highlight reels
You'll also be able to use the recordings as sources when using AI Chat.
