Setup guides
Create your communities
Add each location, fill in its profile, and understand why the placeholders matter.
A community is one location or unit of your business. Each phone number belongs to exactly one community, and each community fills in its own facts: what callers hear it called, where it is, when it is open, when tours can be booked and who gives them. Its prices are on its own Pricing tab.
Your playbook is written once for the whole account. Communities supply the values that differ.
Info
Your app may call this page something else. An owner sets the word under Settings → Your words; senior living accounts usually choose "communities". See Key concepts.
Add a community#
Only owners and admins can create one.
Open Communities
Go to Communities in the left-hand menu. The list shows every community, how many numbers it has, which playbook it follows, how many items it has customized, and whether its human backup plan is complete.
Press New community
Fill in three things and press create:
Field What to put Name What your team calls this community. Time zone Where the community is. Its hours and tours use it. Playbook The account playbook this community follows. You can customize it afterwards. A matching community is created in your sandbox CRM at the same time and linked to the profile, so the community works end to end straight away.
Tip
Setting up a second community that is much like the first? Use Copy a community on the list instead. It copies the profile, the customizations and the default playbook into a new one.
Fill in the profile
You land on Details, the first of the community's Profile sections in the list beside the page: Details, Location, Hours and closures, Staff and Highlights and values. Each section has its own Save to unpublished changes button and saves only what is in it. If you move to another section with changes you have not saved, you are asked first.
The top panel on Details lists the values your account playbook expects and marks each one filled in or not filled in. Press one that is not filled in to go to the section where you fill it in. A section with something missing or wrong has an amber or red dot in the list.
Green means the playbook has something to say. Amber means callers will hear a gap. Then work down the Basics section:
Field What to put Name What your team calls this community. Name callers hear The full name callers should hear. Leave empty to use the name. Main phone International format, for example +15555550123.Reply-to email Where a caller's reply to one of this community's emails goes. Empty: the account's default. Only an owner or admin can change it. Time zone Used for this community's tours and staffed hours. CRM location This community's number in your CRM. Set for you in the sandbox CRM. Say where the community is
Open Location. Fill in the Address, which is read out when a caller asks where you are, and check the pin on the map. Under Getting here, Location and what's nearby is what you are next to and the landmarks people navigate by: "next to the Publix on Main Street, two blocks from the courthouse, park across the road". Callers ask what is around, and an address does not answer that. The assistant reads from this, so write it the way you would say it. Parking, Which door to use and Getting in without steps show on the follow-up page.
Set when tours can be booked
Open Hours and closures. Opening hours are in words, as the assistant should say them: "Monday to Saturday, 9 to 5". They decide nothing.
The assistant offers tour times inside the booking windows. Add one row per pattern: pick the days, the start time and the end time, or tick Until midnight. When a booking rule books through a booking page, these windows do not apply: the page's own hours, if it has any, and the hours of the people on it do.
Warning
With no booking windows the assistant cannot offer a single time, so it will take callbacks instead of booking tours.
Add holidays and closures
Under Holidays and closures, press Add a holiday or closure, name it (for example Christmas Day) and choose the first and last day. Tick Only part of the day for a day you close early, for example from 2 PM Until midnight. Dates and times are in the community's time zone.
Press Save holidays and closures. Closures go live as soon as you save them, without publishing, so a sudden closure reaches callers, pages and numbers at once.
While a closure lasts, no tour times are offered on calls, the website chat, follow-up pages or booking pages, and nobody counts as staffed, so a caller who needs a person gets a callback instead of a transfer, due when the community reopens. A number's schedule can also answer with its own playbook while the community is closed.
Add the staff who give tours
Open Staff. Each person needs a Name, a Job title and, once you are on your real CRM, a CRM user number so booked tours land on their calendar. Choose their Login from the people on your Team to give them their own calendar, hours and pages, and leave Gives tours on for everyone who may be booked; switch it off for staff who never give tours.
The Job title is what booking rules use. If a rule says a memory care enquiry gets the memory care director, there has to be somebody here with that job title. It is not the sign-in Role on Settings → Team, which only decides what a login may see and do.
If your reps specialize, turn on Reps specialize by service and pick what each person Handles. Then a caller or a booking page visitor who chose a service is offered only the people who handle it. Someone with nothing picked handles every service. A warning shows when a service nobody handles is offered.
Add nearby communities (optional)
On Location, Nearby communities is an ordered list of your other communities. When this community does not offer something a caller asks about, the assistant can name the nearby ones that do, if the playbook turns that on. It never quotes their prices.
Add local highlights and any custom values
Open Highlights and values. Local highlights are what makes the community stand out, which the assistant can mention: a new courtyard, a new chef. They never hold prices or offers. Prices come from the Pricing tab, and an offer or deal is a special, which is dated and approved. A highlight you add that states a price or an offer is refused when you save, with a note saying where it belongs.
A highlight saved before this rule that states an offer is flagged on the profile and is not said on calls. Press Move to a draft special under it to turn it into a draft special for this community, then save the section. Check the special's dates and send it for approval on the Specials page.
Custom values are anything else your playbook refers to by name, such as a parking note or a gate code. They are not for prices or offers either: the assistant says an offer only when it is one of your running specials.
Press Save to unpublished changes in each section you changed. You should see: Saved to the unpublished changes. Callers hear them after you publish. An Unpublished changes bar appears at the top of the community with what you changed. Nothing reaches callers yet: see Test and publish a community's changes.
Prices are not on the profile. Each community's starting prices live on its Pricing tab: see Prices and care types.
Note
If something goes wrong. If the message is amber instead, the save worked but publishing now would hold something back, for example a customization pointing at an item the account playbook has since changed. Open the Customizations tab and resolve it before you publish.
Why placeholders matter#
Your account playbook does not name a community. It leaves a gap, and each community fills it. The brief and any line the assistant speaks can use:
| Placeholder | Fills in with |
|---|---|
{{group.name}} | The community name |
{{group.displayName}} | The name callers hear, falling back to the name |
{{group.address}} | The address |
{{group.hours}} | The opening hours, in words |
{{group.phone}} | The main phone number |
{{group.timeZone}} | The time zone |
{{group.prices}} | The community's published starting prices, and any running specials |
{{group.pricePoints}} | The same as {{group.prices}} (before prices are published, the old price points), so older briefs keep working |
{{group.services}} | The care types the community offers |
{{group.startingPrice}} | The community's lowest starting price |
{{group.talkingPoints}} | Every local highlight, one after another |
{{group.staff}} | Every staff member as "Name (role)" |
{{group.custom.<name>}} | One of your custom values |
There are also {{vocab.group}}, {{vocab.meeting}} and {{vocab.contact}} and their plurals, which
fill in with your own words.
A placeholder with nothing behind it comes out as nothing at all. That is why the panel at the top of the profile flags unfilled values: the sentence still gets spoken, just with a hole in it.
Tip
Write your brief as though every community were the same, and put the differences here. That way one publish updates every location at once.
When a community needs more than a profile#
If a community does something differently — a different booking rule, its own wording for a price — use the Customizations tab rather than a second playbook. A care type only it offers goes on its Pricing tab, and a local offer is a special.
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Keep | The default. The item follows the account playbook, including future updates. |
| Change | This community's version replaces the item and stops following account updates for that item only. |
| Turn off | The item is skipped for this community. |
| Add | An item only this community has. |
| Reset | Throws the customization away and goes back to the account version. |
Items the account has locked show a padlock and cannot be changed. The AI disclosure, the recording notice and the guardrails are locked by default.
A change that would leave a booking rule, a condition or a tool reading a question this community no longer asks is refused when you save, with the same message the publish checklist shows. Change or turn off what reads the question first, or keep the question.
The same goes for talking points. A community can change, turn off or add its own, and a Talk about point can use a tool the community added. A change that would leave a point using a lookup result it can no longer have (the tool is turned off, or no longer runs once all required answers are in) or an answer to a question this community no longer asks is refused. Change or turn off the talking point in the same save.
Changes, turn-offs, additions and resets save to the community's unpublished changes, like the profile. They reach callers when you publish them.
To see where every community differs at a glance, press Overview grid on the Communities page. The grid shows what callers hear now, not unpublished changes.
Check what callers will hear#
The What callers hear tab assembles the community's actual effective playbook: the greeting with its placeholders filled in, the facts it can state, the questions it asks and the booking rules it follows.
When the community has unpublished changes, the tab can show them: set Community settings to Unpublished changes.
Test and publish a community's changes#
The profile, the human backup plan and customizations save to the community's unpublished changes, the way a playbook saves to its draft. Callers keep hearing the live settings until you publish. Holidays and closures are the exception: they go live as soon as you save them.
Check what changed
The Unpublished changes bar at the top of the community says what differs from what callers hear: the profile, the human backup plan, or customizations. If publishing now would hold something back, for example because the human backup plan is incomplete, the bar says so in amber.
Test it
Press Test call or Test chat on the bar. The test runs your published playbook with the community's unpublished changes, and the panel says so: Testing the published playbook with Lakeview's unpublished changes. Switch off Use this community's unpublished changes to hear the live settings instead. Test calls and chats are not billed and not logged in your CRM.
Group managers can run test calls and chats for their own communities.
Publish or discard
Press Publish. Callers hear the changes from the next call. A change that no longer fits the account playbook is held for review and calls keep the last good version, as before. Publish is refused, with the reason, when it would make an incomplete human backup plan live.
Press Discard to throw the unpublished changes away. Callers keep hearing what they hear now.
If someone else saved unpublished changes after you opened the page, your save is refused with Someone else changed this group's unpublished changes since you loaded them. Reload and make your change again.
What good looks like#
- Every community shows Complete under Human backup on the list.
- Nothing on the profile is flagged not filled in.
- What callers hear reads like a sentence a person would say, with no gaps where a place name should be.
Next: Human backup, which a community must have before a playbook can go live for it.