Schedule Later & Visit Schedule Links | FieldCamp

Q: I sent a WhatsApp reschedule link but the customer sees a generic page.

Confirm the template's variable mapping uses Reschedule Link (or Address + Reschedule link) for the relevant {{N}} placeholder. Without a mapping, the system falls back to a default order and may not include the link.

Q: Can I share a Schedule Later job link before any visit exists?

No. The visit schedule link is generated per visit, so the job needs at least one (even unscheduled) visit on it. Creating a Schedule Later one-off job automatically produces that placeholder visit for you.

Use Schedule Later to park one-off jobs as unscheduled and share a per-visit schedule link so customers can pick their own slot.

Under the hood — see how Jobs work in the FieldCamp data model: the fields they hold, how they connect to your other records, and how to customize them.

Use Schedule Later when you accept a job but don't have a confirmed date and time yet, then send a visit schedule link so the customer can pick their own slot from the customer portal. This guide covers when to use Schedule Later, how to toggle it on a job or visit, how to share a per-visit reschedule link, and how everything flows back into your dispatch calendar.

When to use Schedule Later

Schedule Later is designed for one-off jobs where you're ready to commit to the work but the schedule isn't locked in. The job is created as a draft-style job with unscheduled visits, so it stays out of the team calendar until you (or the customer) pick a time.

Common situations:

A request was approved but the customer hasn't confirmed their preferred date yet.
You need to wait for parts, equipment, or a third-party approval before locking the calendar.
You want to send the customer a self-service link and let them pick from your real availability.

Schedule Later is one-off only. Recurring and multi-day jobs have their own scheduling models and can't be parked the same way. For those, see How to schedule jobs in FieldCamp and How to schedule multi-day jobs.

How Schedule Later behaves

When Schedule Later is enabled on a one-off job:

Start time, end time, and the Any Time option are cleared from the schedule block.
The job is saved with a placeholder visit whose status is unscheduled.
The unscheduled visit appears in the On Hold filter of your job tray (alongside paused visits), and it stays out of day, week, and month calendar views until it gets a date and time.
As soon as the visit is saved with both a start and end time, FieldCamp promotes the visit from unscheduled to scheduled and turns Schedule Later off automatically. Assigning a team on its own is allowed but does not flip the status — the visit stays unscheduled until times are set.

This means Schedule Later jobs are reversible. You can always come back later, set start and end times, and the system promotes the visit to scheduled without you needing to recreate anything.

Turn Schedule Later on or off

Open the job

Go to the job detail page from the job table or from a calendar view.

Find the Scheduling block

The Scheduling section sits near the top of the job's details. For one-off jobs you'll see the Schedule Later and Any Time checkboxes above the date and time pickers.

Tick Schedule Later

Enabling it hides the date/time pickers and clears any times you had entered. Save the change to park the job's visit as unscheduled.

Untick to schedule

Unticking Schedule Later brings the date and time pickers back. Pick a start and end time (you can also assign a team in the same save) and save to promote the visit to scheduled.

If you're creating the job from scratch and don't pass any start date, FieldCamp defaults the job to Schedule Later (a draft-style job) so nothing accidentally lands on the calendar without a time.

Why Schedule Later might be locked

Once work has started on a job's visit, FieldCamp protects the schedule from being silently wiped out. The Schedule Later checkbox is locked, and hovering it shows a tooltip explaining why:

"Schedule Later cannot be changed while a visit is in progress or completed."

The checkbox stays locked when any visit on the job has moved past the scheduled or unscheduled state — that is, the visit is in transit, arrived, in progress, paused, completed, or cancelled. To reverse a job back to Schedule Later you'd need all its visits to be unscheduled or scheduled again.

If you try to flip a job to Schedule Later via the API or an automation while a visit has already started, FieldCamp returns the error "Schedule Later cannot be set: at least one visit has already started or is completed." This guard exists in the API layer too, not just the UI, so data stays consistent across integrations.

For status definitions, see Job and visit statuses in FieldCamp.

Instead of asking the customer over email or phone for a preferred time, you can copy a per-visit customer portal link straight to your clipboard and share it however you'd like (SMS, WhatsApp, email).

The link opens a customer-portal Appointments page filtered to that single visit. The customer can view the slot, reschedule it, or cancel — using the same authenticated portal flow you've set up elsewhere.

Open the visit

Click into the visit from the job's Visits tab or from the calendar.

Open the More Actions menu

Use the visit's actions menu to find Copy Customer Portal Link.

Paste it into your message

The link is copied to your clipboard with a toast confirmation. Paste it into a text or email to the customer.

Each visit schedule link is signed with a token that expires after 14 days. If a link goes stale, just generate a new one from the visit.

You cannot generate a schedule link for visits that are already cancelled or completed — FieldCamp blocks it server-side so customers don't get a link to a visit that no longer exists in an active state.

Send schedule links automatically over WhatsApp

If you use the WhatsApp integration to send appointment reminders or confirmations, the reschedule link can be wired into your approved Meta templates as a variable.

In the template variable mapping admin UI, you can map any {{N}} placeholder to:

Reschedule Link — the standalone per-visit portal URL.
Address + Reschedule link — a single-line composite that packs the job address and a "Need to change the date or time? Reschedule here: ..." prompt into one variable. Useful for templates that don't have a dedicated link slot.

FieldCamp automatically picks the right visit to point the link at — the soonest upcoming scheduled visit on the job, or the latest scheduled one if there's no upcoming visit. This keeps a single reusable template working across one-off, recurring, and multi-day jobs.

Pair this with your messaging setup in Two-Way Text Messaging.

Find your Schedule Later jobs again

Because unscheduled visits don't appear in normal day/week/month views, here's how to find them:

Job tray / Unscheduled tab on the calendar — the unscheduled visit shows in the visit tray as awaiting a date.
On Hold filter on the job tray — combines paused visits and Schedule Later visits in one place.
Save a custom view — use the Custom Data Views guide to save a filtered table of Schedule Later jobs so they don't slip through the cracks.

When you finally set start and end times (and assign a team if you haven't already), the visit moves automatically into the standard scheduled flow you already use in the Calendar Overview.

Troubleshooting

The Schedule Later checkbox is greyed out — why? At least one visit on this job is in progress, paused, completed, cancelled, or otherwise past the scheduled state. Hover the checkbox to see the tooltip. To unlock it, you'd need every visit on the job to be in scheduled or unscheduled state.

I toggled Schedule Later off and the visit didn't move to the calendar. A visit only promotes from unscheduled to scheduled when both a start time and end time are saved on it. Team assignment alone is not enough — the visit will stay unscheduled (and out of the day/week/month calendar views) until a start and end time are entered and saved.

The customer says my schedule link is broken. The token in a visit schedule link is valid for 14 days. If more time has passed, regenerate the link from the visit and resend it. Also confirm the visit is still active — links for cancelled or completed visits are blocked by FieldCamp.

I sent a WhatsApp reschedule link but the customer sees a generic page. Confirm the template's variable mapping uses Reschedule Link (or Address + Reschedule link) for the relevant {{N}} placeholder. Without a mapping, the system falls back to a default order and may not include the link.

Can I share a Schedule Later job link before any visit exists? No. The visit schedule link is generated per visit, so the job needs at least one (even unscheduled) visit on it. Creating a Schedule Later one-off job automatically produces that placeholder visit for you.