Thunderbird’s appointment user interface is very well designed and easy to use.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Do you have a small business that requires appointments? If so, you might want to know that team behind Thunderbird email client has created an appointment service aptly named Thunderbird Appointments and it seems to have become something special.
I was invited to try the beta version and I was really impressed. Thunderbird Appointment is a standalone web service that provides the ability to deploy services on your own LAN via a Docker container. If deploying a service on your own LAN isn’t your thing, the off-the-shelf service will work fine.
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With Thunderbird Appointments, you can plan an event, set availability, and share with others. You can even connect your Google Calander (choose specific calendars to use for appointments), set one-time appointments or recurring events, add details to meetings, enable booking confirmations and confirmation of each booking is sent to you via email. Once you accept an appointment, it’s automatically added to your Thunderbird Appointments calendar and the calendar you’ve linked to the service (if applicable).
I even tested Thunderbird Appointment by deploying it on a test server on my LAN (using docker-compose) and was impressed with how easy it was to get it up and running. In less than 2 minutes, my booking service was running on my LAN.
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I’ve tested other appointment software (even Google’s services) and found Thunderbird Appointment to work the best of them all.
As for the settings, you can configure it as follows:
- Language
- topic
- Time format
- Time zone
- Calendar available
- Account information
- Connected accounts (on beta you can connect Mozilla, Google and Zoom accounts)
Once you’ve created your Thunderbird Appointments account (currently, the service is free), you can set your availability (time and days of the week), add scheduling details — e.g. such as calendar, earliest booking, furthest booking, and duration booking), meeting details (video links and notes), and registration settings (enable/disable quick links and confirm registration) .
The first step is to configure your availability, which is really the only thing needed to use the service. By default, availability is set Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. After you customize your availability, you can copy your quick link and share it with anyone who needs to make an appointment with you. People with the link will be sent to the booking calendar, where they can select a date/time, click “Confirm selection” and fill in their name and email address. Once they click Schedule, you’ll receive an email confirming their appointment.
This is where customers can make private appointments with you or your business.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
It’s easy to use. And because you can set the furthest space, you can control how far someone can book (default is 14 days).
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The only caveat to Thunderbird Appointments (other than the fact that it’s in early development) is that there’s no dedicated app you can use. This is completely web-based. To solve that problem, you can always use your web browser and create a web application. Additionally, there is (surprisingly) no integration with the Thunderbird email client, and there’s no indication that there will be.
Even with those minor issues, I found Thunderbird Appointments to be an outstanding service that is fully capable of serving individuals, nonprofits, or small businesses looking to provide customers with the ability to ability to schedule your own appointment.
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However, keep in mind that Thunderbird Appointment is very much in beta, so there will be bumps along the way until it’s officially released. If you want to sign up for the beta, be sure to visit the official page Thunderbird appointment website and register.
Note: There is no indication whether this service will always be free or whether there will eventually be costs involved. If I had to guess, it will remain free in beta but will eventually be offered as a paid service. We’ll see how that plays out.
