🔄

Schedule your Matches and Invites

What is a Matching Round?

A matching round is a set of matches created by Intros and sent to your community as a specified time. Each round allows you to choose the time members will match, details of how members will schedule to meet, and whether the round should be opt-in or opt-out. Rounds can also be set to recur, every week, two, three, or four weeks. Multiple matching rounds can be scheduled at once, and each is capable of being uniquely customized.

Creating a Matching Round

Begin by selecting the Date and Time at which you would like to send matches to your organization.

Check it out

Head to “Schedule Your Matches” and select the date & time you’d like your matching round to happen (or your recurring matching round to begin):

image

You can edit the date & time at any point by scrolling down the page to “Upcoming Matches” and clicking the “edit” button:

image

View after you click in:

image

Matches will begin sending 15 minutes before they are scheduled.

Times are always shown in the timezone you’ve configured for your organization.

Timezones will default to Eastern Time, unless otherwise changed.

Choosing your Scheduling Details

After choosing your Date and Time, you can customize scheduling details for your match. You can customize:

  1. How should members schedule to meet each other?
  2. What should be the duration of each meeting?

Sending a Scheduling Link

The default setting is to include a scheduling link with the Intro.

The scheduling link will allow members to propose and accept proposed times between each other, or allow for one of the members to auto-book with their match if their match has enabled Automatic Bookings on their profile.

Example You are participating in a matching round on Friday, April 28, 2023 at 10:00am EST. You receive your match with Rob between 9:45am and 10:00am EST, and this includes a link to schedule with him. You hit the link to schedule, propose times to meet, and these are sent in an email to Rob. Rob accepts one of the times, and you both receive a confirmation email with a Calendar Invite for the agreed upon time.

Sending a Calendar Invite

Alternatively, you can configure your Intros round to send a Calendar Invite with the Matching email.

This Calendar Invite will be set for the time at which the matching round was scheduled.

Every calendar invite will include a meeting link, a link to reschedule, and a link to cancel if necessary.

Example You are participating in a matching round on Friday, April 28, 2023 at 10:00am EST. You receive your match with Rob between 9:45am and 10:00am EST, and this includes a calendar invite to meet him at 10:00am. You either join the meeting, or hit the reschedule link, which prompts you to propose alternative times to meet.

Sending a Calendar Hold

If you are sending a Calendar Invite with your match, you can choose to send a Calendar Hold when members sign up. This calendar hold will be for the same time and duration as the matching round is scheduled.

Example You sign up to participate in a matching round on Friday, April 28, 2023 at 10:00am EST, which will include a 45 minute meeting. Immediately after sign up, you receive a calendar invite that is a [HOLD] for Friday, April 28, 2023 at 10:00am - 10:45am EST. You receive your match with Rob between 9:45am and 10:00am EST on the proper day, and this includes a calendar invite to meet him at 10:00am.

No Scheduling or Calendar Link

Choosing to send Intros without a scheduling or calendar link is most common when matches are sent out during an in-person event. Members will be matched via Intros, and then meet up with each other however decided by your community.

Example You sign up to participate in a matching round on Friday, April 28, 2023 at 10:00am EST, which will include no scheduling or calendar link. You will then receive your match with

Rob between 9:45am and 10:00am EST on the proper day, which will include a custom note from your Intros Club admin on next steps (ie: Meet your match by the designated Intros booth!)

Adding Recurrence

Recurrence allows you to “set it and leave it” as far as your upcoming matching rounds are concerned.

You can configure matching rounds to occur weekly with up to 4 weeks between matching rounds.

These are great for long-term evergreen communities, where members may want a match every month, or alternatively for cohort-based learning communities where members want to more aggressively meet every week.

Note You will notice a button labelled “+ intros (back to back matches)” in the upper-righthand corner of the Matching Round Scheduler. If you enable back to back matches, this will disable you from scheduling recurrence for that given matching round.

Opt-In vs. Opt-Out

Opt-In and Opt-Out are the two ways you can specify how your members sign-up for a matching round.

Opt-In requires a member to choose to participate via an Invite you send to them or via them member profile.

Opt-Out automatically signs all members up for the round, and gives them the ability to choose not to participate via an invite you sent to them, or via their member profile.

Note Both Opt-In and Opt-Out have separate invite templates which you can customize and send to users. Opt-In is recommended, other than in tightly-vetted organizations where members are highly engaged.

Sending Invites for Matching Rounds

After scheduling a matching round, it will be visible under Upcoming Matches.

Note Any recurring match will always show you the next two matches in the recurrence schedule.

You can schedule Invites for a match by hitting the 🖊️ Edit icon on any Match Round row, and then hitting “Scheduling Invites”, as shown in the image below:

image

This will take you to the Invite Scheduler and allow you to customize to who and for what upcoming match you are scheduling invites.

Selecting Members to Invite

When scheduling an invite, you can choose whether to include All Members or Uninvited Members Uninvited Members is with regard to the matching round for which this invite is sending.

Check it out
image

Choosing the Associated Round

Every invite is associated with a matching round. You can choose to manually set the matching round, which is useful for boosting engagement to off-one or ad-hoc matches.

Alternatively, you can select Any Upcoming Match. This will cause the invite to pick up and associate itself with the next upcoming match in your Intros Club, at the time that it sends.

This is recommended for Recurring Matching rounds.

Check it out
image
Note It is recommended to keep member engagement high, that every group has at least 1 recurring invite scheduled. Out system will not send an invite to your members in the event that no upcoming matching rounds are scheduled.

Scheduling Recurrence

Similarly to Matching Rounds, you can schedule Invites to occur to send on a recurring schedule.

Note You can only configure Invite recurrence if Any Upcoming Match is selected. We highly recommend each organization have a recurring invitation scheduled.

Customizing the Invite

For email-based Intros, we expose a full invite editor for both Opt-In and Opt-Out.

See Invite customization for a full walkthrough of how to utilize the editor for your needs.

✉️
Invite Customization

Recommended Configurations

For Evergreen Communities

Matching Configuration

We recommend having an Opt-In style of match for Evergreen or long-running communities.

A weekly or biweekly occurrence seems to operate best for these communities.

Invite Configuration

We recommend having an Opt-In style of match for Evergreen or long-running communities.

A weekly or biweekly occurrence seems to operate best for these communities.

For Customer Communities

Matching Configuration

Invite Configuration

For Employee Engagement

Matching Configuration

Invite Configuration

For Event Organizers

Matching Configuration

Invite Configuration