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Connect Google Calendar

Google Calendar is the default MVP scheduling source for Porchlight pilots. The customer calendar remains the source of truth; Porchlight owns buyer qualification, source capture, and the context-rich booking handoff.

What you need

  • A customer-owned Google Calendar used for consults, showroom visits, design calls, or site visits.
  • Clear appointment types, durations, service areas, buffers, and owner assignment rules.
  • A buyer-facing appointment URL or scheduling bridge while direct calendar sync is being configured.
  • Source-tagged links for Google Business Profile, website CTAs, campaign pages, and customer-domain lead pages.

Pilot setup

  1. Confirm which Google Calendar is operationally trusted by the customer.
  2. Define the appointment types Porchlight can offer.
  3. Save availability rules in Settings -> Availability if direct calendar slots are not connected yet.
  4. Add the customer-domain lead page or website embed in Settings -> Branding so source hosts are allowed.
  5. Use tracked links with utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign anywhere buyers can start the consult flow.

How the agent uses it

When a buyer is ready, the agent should:

  1. Offer real consult, showroom, design-call, or site-visit options from the customer's operational calendar path.
  2. Confirm name, email, phone, location, and the right next step.
  3. Attach buyer details, project summary, budget, timeline, transcript, source, campaign, and collected photo references when available.
  4. Update the lead handoff so the front office sees the booked next step and source context together.

Fallback order

Use this order for MVP pilots:

  1. Google Calendar first: preferred source of truth for most target customers.
  2. Cal.com second: useful when the pilot already runs booking through Cal.com or needs a fast scheduling bridge.
  3. Fallback availability last: temporary Porchlight-held windows for pilots without a usable calendar path.

Fallback slots must be labeled as fallback availability. They are not proof that Porchlight has direct access to the customer's calendar.

Source attribution

Every scheduling link should preserve attribution into the lead handoff:

https://book.example.com/site-visit?utm_source=google_profile&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=booked_consult

For customer-domain redirects to Porchlight, forward the original host, path, full URL, source, campaign, and UTM fields as described in the embed guide.

Verification

After setup:

  1. Open the customer-owned lead page or website embed.
  2. Start a test conversation from a tracked source.
  3. Ask for a consult or site visit.
  4. Confirm the lead handoff includes source, host, path, campaign, transcript, budget, timeline, and requested next step.
  5. Confirm the operator can reconcile the appointment against the Google Calendar path or fallback availability used for the pilot.