Requested Meeting
A Requested Meeting is an appointment request in Salesforce Scheduler that captures a customer's or agent's preferred time slot before that appointment is finalized.
Definition
A Requested Meeting is an appointment request in Salesforce Scheduler that captures a customer's or agent's preferred time slot before that appointment is finalized. It records the chosen topic, location, and time, but it sits in a pending state until the right service resource is assigned and the details are reviewed and booked.
In practice the request becomes a Service Appointment record once it is confirmed. The intermediate state gives you room for workflow: routing the request to a qualified specialist, checking availability, or sending it through an approval before it is locked in as a committed booking.
How a requested meeting moves from a time slot to a booked appointment
Where the request fits in Salesforce Scheduler
Salesforce Scheduler (formerly Lightning Scheduler) helps you book the right person at the right place and time, whether the meeting is in person, by phone, or by video. A requested meeting is the front end of that process. A customer or an agent picks a topic, a location, and an open time slot, and Scheduler captures that intent as an appointment request. The request is not yet a promise. It is a held position that still needs a service resource and a review before it counts as a real booking. Scheduler computes which slots are even offered by checking operating hours, existing appointments, required skills, and service territories, so the slots a customer sees are already filtered to what is feasible. Treat the requested meeting as the bridge between what the customer wants and what your team can actually commit to. That bridge is where assignment logic and confirmation rules do their work, and it is the reason Scheduler can support self-service without handing out commitments your staff cannot keep.
The appointment request becomes a Service Appointment
When a requested meeting is confirmed, Scheduler stores it as a Service Appointment record. The Service Appointment is the object that holds the scheduled start and end time, the assigned resources, the location, and the status. It can be linked to a Lead or an Opportunity so the booking lives next to the rest of the customer relationship. Before confirmation, the request carries the customer's chosen slot and topic. After confirmation, that data is written onto the Service Appointment and the appointment enters your normal lifecycle of statuses such as Scheduled, Confirmed, Completed, or Canceled. Thinking in terms of the Service Appointment matters because reporting, reminders, reassignment, and cancellation all run on that record. The requested meeting is the moment of intent, and the Service Appointment is the durable artifact your team manages afterward. If you want to report on demand that never converted, look at requests that were captured but never booked, since those reveal gaps in availability or staffing.
Inbound flows let customers request their own meetings
Scheduler ships standard flow templates for inbound scheduling, where customers and partners book for themselves instead of calling an agent. The Inbound New Appointment flow walks an authenticated external user through choosing employees or contractors, a topic, a location, and a preferred date and time. The Inbound New Guest Appointment flow does the same for unauthenticated visitors on an Experience Cloud site or an embedded website, creating a Lead along the way so you still capture who the person is. Both flows turn the customer's selection into a requested meeting and then a Service Appointment once the details are confirmed. Inbound scheduling is how a requested meeting most often originates today, because it pushes the time-slot selection to the customer while your availability rules stay in control. You decide which resources, topics, and territories are exposed, and the flow only offers slots that satisfy those constraints. The result is self-service that still respects your team's real calendar.
The review step before anything is booked
The Review Service Appointment flow screen component is the checkpoint between picking a slot and saving the appointment. It shows the customer or agent the full set of details, including the date, time, location, service type, and any comments, so they can confirm before the record is written. Some fields on this screen are read-only on purpose, which prevents accidental edits to values the scheduling logic already resolved. For guest flows, the screen can create the Lead automatically when guest handling is enabled, so an unknown visitor still becomes a tracked record at the point of booking. This review moment is exactly what separates a requested meeting from a confirmed one. Until the person passes this screen and commits, the appointment is still a request. Building a clear review step reduces booking errors and no-shows, because the customer sees and agrees to the specifics rather than guessing. Admins can modify this screen to match their branding and to surface the fields that matter most for the appointment topic.
Assignment and approval workflow in the pending state
The value of a requested meeting is the room it gives you before commitment. While the request is pending, you can route it to a qualified service resource, verify availability, or require an approval for higher-value appointments. Scheduler can assign a resource automatically based on skills and territory, or you can hold the request for a person to confirm. This is useful when the wrong assignment would be costly, such as a financial consultation that must go to a licensed advisor, or a premium service that needs manager sign-off. Without an intermediate state, you would have to commit on the spot, which risks booking the wrong specialist, or you would track the pending appointment outside Salesforce in a spreadsheet or inbox. Neither is good. The requested meeting keeps that workflow inside the platform where it is visible and reportable. A word of caution though: do not add a pending step where none is needed. If any available resource can take the appointment and no approval is required, confirm directly and skip the extra hop.
Designing requests so they actually convert
A requested meeting only helps if it reliably turns into a booked appointment. Start by exposing realistic availability. If your operating hours, shifts, and service territories are misconfigured, customers will request slots your team cannot honor, and you will spend effort declining or rescheduling. Keep work type groups and work types accurate, since they drive appointment duration and the skills a resource must have. Decide deliberately where a confirmation or approval belongs and where it only adds friction. For self-service, test the inbound flow end to end as a real customer would, including the guest path, so you catch dead ends before they reach production. Add reminders and a simple modify or cancel path so a confirmed appointment does not quietly become a no-show. Finally, watch the conversion gap. If many requests never become Service Appointments, the cause is usually thin availability, an approval that stalls, or a confusing review screen. Fix the bottleneck rather than blaming the customer, and the requested meeting earns its place in the flow.
Set up a self-service flow for requested meetings
Set up a self-service inbound flow so customers can request a meeting that becomes a Service Appointment once confirmed. This assumes Salesforce Scheduler is enabled with service resources, service territories, and work types already created.
- Confirm Scheduler foundations
Make sure service resources are created and mapped to service territories, and that work type groups and work types define your appointment topics, durations, and required skills. These records control which slots a request can offer.
- Add the inbound flow to a page
In Experience Builder, drag the Flow component onto a public page and select Inbound New Guest Appointment for unauthenticated visitors, or Inbound New Appointment for logged-in customers and partners.
- Configure the review and booking step
Use the Review Service Appointment flow screen so the customer confirms date, time, location, and topic before the record is saved. Enable guest handling if you want a Lead created automatically for anonymous bookings.
- Decide on assignment and approval
Choose whether a resource is assigned automatically by skill and territory, or whether the request waits for a person to confirm or approve. Keep the pending step only where the wrong booking would be costly.
- Test the full path and publish
Walk the flow as a real customer, including the guest path, and confirm the request lands as a Service Appointment with the right resource. Add reminders and a modify or cancel option, then publish the site.
Standard template that lets authenticated customers or partners request a meeting with one or more employees or contractors.
Template for unauthenticated visitors on an Experience Cloud site or embedded page, creating a Lead during booking.
Flow screen component that shows read-only and editable appointment details for final confirmation before the record is created.
Option to let Scheduler pick a qualified service resource based on skills and service territory instead of manual selection.
- A requested meeting is not a confirmed booking. Reporting, reminders, and reassignment run on the Service Appointment record that is created after confirmation, not on the raw request.
- Misconfigured operating hours, shifts, or service territories let customers request slots your team cannot honor, which drives cancellations and rework.
- Do not add a confirmation or approval step where any resource can take the appointment. The extra hop adds friction and lowers conversion for no benefit.
- Guest flows need the right user and object permissions plus sharing for guest users, or anonymous booking will fail silently.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Requested Meeting in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Requested Meeting.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Requested Meeting.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What does a Requested Meeting represent in Salesforce Scheduler before it is finalized?
Q2. When does the Requested Meeting state add the most value in a Scheduler booking flow?
Q3. What becomes of a Requested Meeting once Scheduler confirms it?
Discussion
Loading discussion…