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Booking an appointment isn’t just about picking a time slot — it’s about making sure the customer shows up. People don’t just schedule; they ask about locations, pricing, discounts, business hours, and whether the visit is worth their time.
Đối với các doanh nghiệp đa chuỗi, việc xử lý các yêu cầu này ở nhiều địa điểm có thể rất khó khăn. Các cuộc gọi và email chồng chất, khách hàng bỏ cuộc và các cuộc hẹn bị mất có nghĩa là mất doanh thu.
The solution? Build an AI chatbot that not only automates scheduling but also provides instant, accurate answers — right on WhatsApp.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to create a WhatsApp chatbot using Botpress and Calendly to streamline scheduling, handle customer questions, and ensure every appointment turns into real business.
Before we dive into building, let’s take a step back.
The goal of this chatbot is simple: help customers book appointments with confidence — and reduce the back-and-forth your team deals with every day. But appointment booking isn’t just about picking a time slot. Customers want to know things like:
- Which location is closest?
- Are there any discounts running?
- What time does the gym open on weekends?
- Can I reschedule if something comes up?
A good booking bot doesn’t just handle scheduling — it answers these questions too. And when you deliver all that in a single WhatsApp conversation, more people follow through with their bookings.

To build your chatbot, you’ll need:
- Calendly (Standard Plan) – Required for API access. You can start with the 14-day free trial.
- Meta Business Account – Free and required for WhatsApp integration.
- Botpress Account – Free to create and used for building and managing the chatbot logic.
You can either set these up beforehand — or follow along with the guide step by step.
Step 1: Define Bot Purpose
Before opening any tool, take a minute to sketch out what your bot needs to do — this saves time later when you're connecting Calendly, uploading info, or wiring workflows.
Hãy tự hỏi mình:
- Who is your audience? First-time gym visitors? Members looking to reschedule?
- What should the bot help with? Booking appointments, answering FAQs, sharing locations?
- What kind of inputs should it handle? Quick replies like “Book a class” — or natural language like “I want to visit the downtown location this weekend”?
- Should it offer handoff? If someone’s confused, will the bot bring in a human or try to guide them back?
Sketching this out now helps you design cleaner flows — and avoid rebuilds when you start layering in knowledge bases or logic triggers.
Pro tip: Start small. A single-location booking bot that answers 5–10 key questions is way more valuable (and launchable) than an over-engineered bot that tries to do everything.
Bước 2: Thêm Cơ sở kiến thức
A knowledge base is a collection of information that your chatbot can use to answer questions — like a reference library for your business.
Instead of hardcoding every response, you can upload documents or tables that the bot can search through when users ask about things like pricing, services, or operating hours.
You can think of it as the content that powers your chatbot’s brain.
Upload static business information
Start by uploading a simple, structured document that covers the most common questions customers ask. This could be a PDF, Word doc, or spreadsheet — just make sure it’s organized clearly.
Your document should include:
- Branch locations and addresses
- Services available at each location
- Pricing, discounts, and membership options
- Operating hours and contact details
Each topic should have its clear section, so the chatbot can easily find and return relevant answers.
Tip: Use headers and bullet points in your document to keep things scannable for both the bot and your team.
You can upload this document by heading to the Knowledge Base section:
- From your project, open the left-hand menu.
- Click Knowledge Base.
- Select Upload document and add your file.
Give the document a clear name (e.g., Branch Details – March 2025) so you can reference it later in workflows or queries.
Once uploaded, the chatbot can instantly start using the document to answer user questions — no extra training or coding is needed.
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Using tables for dynamic information
For things like upcoming events, seasonal offers, or rotating schedules, it’s better to use a table instead of uploading a static document. Tables let you update just one row without touching the rest of your data — making it faster to maintain.
Here’s how to create a table in your knowledge base:
- Go to the Knowledge Base section from the left-hand menu.
- Click Create New, then select Table.
- Name your table (e.g., Event Schedule).
- Add columns for the types of info you want the chatbot to retrieve, like:
- event_name
- date
- location
- price
- description
- Start adding rows for each event or item you want the bot to reference.
Once your table is saved, you can use it to power dynamic responses. For example, when a user asks, “What events are happening next weekend?”, the bot can pull the relevant row and give them a direct answer.
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Optimizing costs with cached FAQs
One of the biggest challenges with AI-powered bots is cost — especially if the bot hits the LLM every time someone asks a common question.
The knowledge base helps reduce this by automatically caching answers to frequently asked questions. That means if five people ask, “What’s the gym’s weekend schedule?”, the platform only queries your knowledge base or LLM once — then reuses that answer instantly the next time.
You don’t need to configure anything. Caching kicks in automatically if:
- The answer comes from structured content (a document, table, or FAQ)
- The bot is connected to an LLM or RAG pipeline
- The user stays in the same topic thread
This keeps your bot fast — and cuts down on token usage without compromising the experience.
Bước 3: Thêm Calendly Tích hợp
Để cho phép chatbot của bạn lên lịch cuộc hẹn, bạn cần kết nối Calendly với Botpress . Điều này cho phép bot truy cập vào các khung thời gian khả dụng và tạo liên kết đặt chỗ cho người dùng.
Install the Calendly integration
Start from your project dashboard:
- Go to the Hub from the left-hand menu.
- Search for Calendly and click Install.
- Once installed, open the Calendly Integration settings from your project.
Generate and add your Calendly API key
Next, you’ll need to generate a personal API key from Calendly and add it to the workflow:
- Log in to your Calendly account.
- Click Integrations & Apps from the left-hand menu.
- Scroll down to API & Webhooks and click Get a token now.
- Name the token (e.g., Access) and complete two-factor authentication if prompted.
- Copy the API key — you won’t be able to view it again later.
- Return to Botpress and paste the key into the Calendly Integration settings.
- Click Save to finalize the connection.
Once connected, your chatbot will be able to fetch availability data and generate scheduling links based on the user’s location or preferences.
Step 4: Build Chatbot Workflow
Now that Calendly is connected, it’s time to build the chatbot logic — or what Botpress calls a workflow. This is where you decide how the conversation will go: what the bot should say, what info it should collect, and how it should respond based on the user’s choices.
Think of it as setting up a flowchart for a front desk assistant. If someone walks in and says, “I want to book a trial session at the downtown gym,” the assistant would:
- Ask which location
- Pull up the right schedule
- Share a link to book
- Confirm the appointment
- Answer any follow-up questions
Your chatbot needs to do exactly that — but on the platform of your choice.
1. Ghi lại Lựa chọn Nhánh của Người dùng
Since your business likely has multiple locations, the bot needs to know which branch the user wants before showing availability.
- Add a single-choice node to ask the user to pick a location.
- Create a variable (e.g., workflow.branch) to store their selection.
- You’ll use this later to send the right Calendly link based on the chosen branch.
Điều này đảm bảo rằng tất cả các liên kết và phản hồi lập lịch đều được điều chỉnh theo đúng nhánh.
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2. Sử dụng Calendly Quy trình sự kiện
The Hub also provides a prebuilt workflow that connects directly to your Calendly setup.
- In the Workflows section, search for Calendly Event Workflow.
- Click Clone to create your editable version.
- Customize the flow if needed — it’s already set up to generate a booking link tied to the user’s session using the conversationId.
By passing the conversation ID, the chatbot generates a unique booking link that can be tracked to individual users. This prebuilt workflow saves time and ensures your scheduling logic is already wired up correctly.
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3. Thiết lập Calendly Sự kiện kích hoạt
Once a booking link is sent, you want the chatbot to detect when the user has scheduled their appointment.
- Right-click inside the workflow and add a Calendly Event Trigger node.
- In the settings, pass the conversation ID using:
{{event.payload.conversation.id}} - This allows the chatbot to listen for the user’s specific booking.
- When triggered, the bot can send a confirmation message automatically.
This makes the bot feel smart and responsive — and ensures users know their appointment was booked.

4. Xử lý thông tin kinh doanh và câu hỏi thường gặp
Not everyone will jump straight into booking. Some users might ask about pricing, hours, or services first. You can handle this by connecting your knowledge base.
- Add an autonomous node that’s linked to the knowledge base.
- Enable knowledge search so the bot can pull responses from uploaded documents or tables.
- Use this node as a fallback when users ask general questions.
This way, your bot stays helpful — even for users who aren’t ready to book yet.
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Step 5: Deploying Chatbot
With the chatbot fully built, the final step is to deploy it on you channel of your choice. For this example we will be choosing WhatsApp so users can interact with it directly. This allows seamless appointment scheduling and instant responses to common inquiries — all within a familiar messaging app.
Here’s how to connect your chatbot to WhatsApp:
- Go to Home from the left-hand menu.
- Click Authorize WhatsApp and connect it to your Meta Business Account.
- Làm theo các bước trên màn hình để hoàn tất thiết lập.
Once connected, your chatbot will be live on WhatsApp — ready to handle real conversations with your customers.
Ready to launch your first appointment bot?
With just a few tools — Botpress, Calendly, and WhatsApp — you’ve built a system that automates booking, answers questions, and reduces your team’s workload.
From here, you can continue expanding your bot to support events, promotions, and follow-up messages — or deploy it across more channels like Slack, Telegram, and Teams.
Start building today — it’s free, and you already know how.
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