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:
Calendar integration: Connect with Google and Microsoft
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
Set scheduled meetings to automatically record and upload
Invite participants via email or a link
Setting Up & Customizing Your Schedule
Under the Schedule section, you have options to customize your session details, duration, preferences for buffers times and limits, as well as add collaborators.
You can expand and collapse these sections as needed.
Click Create Schedule to create a new schedule
Under Details, you can:
Add a title (required)
Add a description
Customize the session duration e.g. 60 minutes
Choose to add your own links or connect with your video conferencing tool (available integrations: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams; Zoom coming soon)
Choose if you want to enable automatic session recordings. This will invite the Optimal Recorder to your sessions to automatically record and upload interviews. Learn more.
Under Link under Details, you can:
Choose to connect with your Google Meet or Microsoft Teams account to automatically generate session links and attach to your scheduled sessions.
After selecting your video conferencing tool, you’ll be directed to connect your account and grant that tool access to Optimal.
The sessions link will be included in your automated booking confirmation and session reminder email messages.
Under Availability, you can:
Select if you'd like participants to be able to reschedule
Note: Connecting your Google Meet or Microsoft Teams account does not mean recordings are automatically recorded. To ensure sessions are recorded and uploaded to Optimal Interviews, click the checkbox under Recording.
Under Limits, you can:
Set a minimum amount of time required before a participant can book a session.
Set a maximum number of sessions per day, per week, and/or overall per study.
Add a buffer time - time in between session slots. This only applies to availability blocks.
Under Collaborators, you can:
Add multiple collaborators. Collaborators will be invited to any booked sessions and notified of any changes via email.
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.
Adding a session link
Add your own link option:
For pre-scheduled sessions, you can click Attach link under Upcoming Sessions to copy & paste a session link.
Connected with Microsoft Teams or Google Meet:
You do not need to take any additional action. A session link from your video conferencing provider will be automatically added to your sessions.
If you would like to change the link, click on the three dots at the top right of each scheduled session and select Edit link.
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.
