Calendar Tab

The Calendar tab in Dispatch HQ gives dispatchers and service managers a unified view of their team's schedule without ever leaving the Dispatch HQ interface. Here, you can see your technicians' PSA and Outlook calendars side by side, view all TimeZest appointments in one place, and take action on appointments directly, including rescheduling, reassigning, and canceling, all with just a few clicks.

Having your team's calendar accessible within Dispatch HQ means you can make smarter dispatching decisions in real time. When you can see who has appointments coming up and when, you are better equipped to route tickets to the right technician at the right time.

The Calendar tab relies on appointment caching to display your team's calendar data. This means TimeZest will store details about existing appointments, including their names, start times, locations, participants, and any related tickets. This is what allows the Calendar tab to load and display appointments quickly and accurately.

If your account has appointment caching disabled, the Calendar tab will not be able to display your team's appointments. To verify or enable caching, go to Settings > Calendar > Cache and confirm that the cache option is active.

Opting out of caching: If you prefer not to have TimeZest store appointment data, you can select the Don't Cache option under Settings > Calendar > Cache. TimeZest will continue to function for scheduling purposes, but the Calendar tab in Dispatch HQ will not be available to you.

Before a technician's calendar appears in the Calendar tab, their TimeZest profile needs to be configured correctly. For each user, you have three controls available under the Calendars section of their profile:

Display — Whether the user's appointments are visible in the Calendar tab at all.

Modify — Whether appointments on that calendar can be actioned directly from the Calendar tab, including rescheduling, reassigning, and canceling.

Privacy — Whether appointment details are shown in full or displayed as unnamed "Private Appointments" without location or attendee information. This is useful for keeping personal calendar events discreet while still showing the time as blocked.

One important note on privacy: any appointment marked as "Private" in Microsoft Outlook will always have its details hidden in the Calendar tab, regardless of how the privacy setting is configured in TimeZest. This behavior is set by Microsoft and cannot be overridden.

Access to the Calendar tab is controlled by the role assigned to each user's TimeZest profile. Regardless of role, a user must also have an Active TimeZest licensed profile to use the Calendar tab. To activate a user, navigate to the Users screen and enable the License toggle next to their name.

For more information on roles and access, refer to the Permissions Matrix.

If you need to monitor a specific group of technicians, click Add users to view and select the team members whose calendars you want to see. This is especially useful for dispatchers who manage a subset of the team rather than the full roster.

Once added, each user's calendar will appear in the Calendar tab and update in real time as appointments are scheduled, rescheduled, or canceled.

Click the Calendar icon in the top-right corner of the Calendar tab to toggle between Month view and Day view.

Month view gives you a broad look at your team's upcoming schedule, useful for spotting busy periods or planning ahead. Day view zooms in on a single day and is better suited for real-time dispatching decisions when you need to know exactly what a technician's day looks like before routing a ticket to them.

Filters let you narrow down what is displayed in the Calendar tab so you can focus on the appointments that matter most in the moment.

For example, if you want to see only TimeZest-scheduled appointments across your team, select the TimeZest-scheduled tag filter. All other appointments will be dimmed, leaving only the ones that match your filter active and visible.

Filters work in combination with tags, which can be applied to individual appointments to make them easier to find and group.

Tags let you attach additional context to an appointment so it is easier to identify at a glance and filter for later. You can apply tags that reflect the nature of the appointment, the client type, or any other attribute that is meaningful to your team.

Some examples of useful tags include:

Tags are particularly valuable in a dispatching context because they help you quickly understand what kind of commitment a technician has before deciding whether they are the right person to pull a ticket.

When an appointment needs to be canceled, you can do so directly from the appointment's flyout within the Calendar tab. Click on the appointment to open its flyout and select the Cancel option.

This is the same cancellation capability available in the TimeZest Dashboard and within your PSA's TimeZest integration, now available without leaving Dispatch HQ.

When a client or technician cannot make a scheduled appointment, you can reschedule it without canceling and starting over. Open the appointment's flyout and select the Reschedule option.

Use the Date dropdown to choose a new day. Available dates are color-coded to help you find the best fit quickly:

Once you select a date, choose the available time slot that works and confirm the reschedule.

When a technician is unavailable for a scheduled appointment, whether due to illness, a schedule conflict, or simply not being the right fit for the client's needs, you can reassign the appointment to another team member without canceling it.

Open the appointment's flyout and select the Reassign option. From there, choose the user or users you want to reassign the appointment to. If a workflow action is available and applicable to the reassignment, you will have the option to trigger it at the same time.

This keeps the client's appointment intact and ensures continuity of service even when your original plans change.