Cal.com believes that everyone deserves a customizable scheduling environment. This is why we've designed our product to reduce roadblocks. We don't want a lack of technical background to generate gatekeeping. As part of ensuring that all of our users can tailor things based on their scheduling needs, Cal.com offers a ton of no-code customization methods.
This includes things like separate dashboards to manage availability, workflows, routing forms, and your bookable events. In addition to this, we also have an ever-growing app store that takes the stress out of third-party integrations.
Understanding terminology in event scheduling
Whether you're a beginner or power user, you'll probably notice that some of the terminology you come across within our different settings might seem similar.
A great example of this is hidden events and private links. These two features have a lot in common, but they're also very different. Both of these settings help to preserve your privacy, but they do it in different ways. With this in mind, let's learn a little bit more about both of them, starting with hidden events.
What are hidden events?
A hidden event is also sometimes called a secret event. This is a bookable appointment type that isn't displayed on your public-facing Cal.com profile. Hidden events can always be seen on your account's event dashboard, but if someone wants to book one, you'll need to share the link with them.
Hidden events are great if you want to offer specialized appointments but only to a few specific individuals. For example, you might have a specific event that's used for brainstorming with colleagues. Since this is an internal appointment type, you're not necessarily going to want clients to book brainstorming sessions with you.
This is why the ability to hide events is so useful. It means that you can have as many different types of events as you need, but you get to choose what you show to the world versus what you share with those who are close to you.
Managing hidden events
So now that you know about hidden events, you might be wondering how to manage them. Well, it's very easy. A hidden event is just a normal event that you've chosen to hide using a toggle. This is a feature that all your events have, and you don't even have to go into event-level settings in order to enable it.
How to enable hidden events
Log into your Cal.com account.
Go to your event type dashboard.
On the right-hand side of each event, you'll notice a toggle marked "Hide."
Simply click on that toggle to turn a regular event into a hidden event.
If you have an event that's hidden that you want to make public, just click on this toggle again to do so.
What are private links?
Now let's talk about what private links are. Private links can also be called single-use links, and they are very different from hidden events. You'll notice that the URL structure for all Cal.com bookable events is super straightforward. This means that your URL can be as long or as short as you want it to be. This is because every booking link is just: cal.com/your-name/whatever-you-want-to-call-your-event.
Sometimes, though, you might need a little bit more control over that link. You might want to be able to share the booking link without necessarily exposing your username. Using a private link doesn't in any way impact your regular booking link.
This means that you can generate private links for both public and hidden events. However, one thing to keep in mind is that private links are single-use. This means that once someone uses that link, it expires, and if you need another private link, you'll have to generate a new one.
Finding your private link
Now that we've taken some time to talk about what private single-use links are, you might want to try creating one. If this is something you haven't done before, you can just follow the steps below in order to try it out.
Log in to your Cal.com account.
Go to your event type dashboard.
Click on the event you'd like to edit.
Click on the Advanced tab.
Scroll down until you come to an item marked "Private Links."
Click the toggle button to the right-hand side of that setting.
Copy the private link that's been generated.
If you need more than one private link, you can click the plus "Add New Link" sign.
Once you've finished copying your private links, scroll to the top of the page.
You should see a Save button in the upper right-hand side. Click that.
Great! You're all done. You've found and created your private link.
Now that we've finished looking at hidden events and private links, it's easy to see how they're different. A hidden event can be used as part of protecting your work-life balance or creating unique event types like mentorship that you want to share with a few individuals but not everyone.
A private link, on the other hand, is a single-use link that you can use to share a bookable event without exposing your username. Hidden events won't ever show up on your public profile, and private links can be used with any event, whether or not it's hidden.
I hope this article has helped to clear things up as you continue on your booking management journey. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article, and as always, happy scheduling!
