Lesson 3: No more demo-class no-shows

VCVidya Coaching CentreLesson 3 of 6 · 10 min

Goal: Remind every student three hours before their demo class.

Demo bookedAdjust Date: −3 hoursMinutes until thenDelayWhatsApp reminder

You'll learnDate toolsDelaySchedules & activity

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The situation

Parents book a free demo class for Saturday at 5 pm, then forget. About one in three seats stays empty, and a faculty member has prepared for nobody. A reminder on the morning of the class used to work, when someone had time to send it.

Neha Joshi, Operations head · Vidya Coaching

How waiting works in Auto Appy

A workflow can pause in the middle with a Delay step, then carry on later. The Delay (Auto Appy) app has one action, Add Delay, with two fields:

• Delay Unit: seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks or months;
• Delay Value: how many. It can be typed, or mapped from an earlier step.

So to remind a student three hours before their demo, we work out how many minutes that is from now, then wait exactly that long.

Build it

1. Create a new agent from the Remind before meetings job. Name it Meera, job Remind students before their demo class.
2. Start with a Webhook (Auto Appy) trigger, and point the demo-booking form (or the Google Form you use for bookings) at its URL. Capture one booking. Vidya’s form sends student_name, phone, course, branch and demo_at (for example 2026-10-10 17:00).
3. Add Date And Time Formatter New (Auto Appy) → Adjust Date. Map demo_at into Input Date, choose its Input Date Format (YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss style) and set Input Timezone to Asia/Kolkata, then subtract 3 hours. The output is the reminder time.
4. Add Date And Time Formatter New (Auto Appy) → Calculate Date Difference between now and the reminder time, in minutes.
5. Add Delay (Auto Appy) → Add Delay. Set Delay Unit to minutes and map Delay Value from the previous step’s result.
6. Add Auto Appy WhatsApp → Send approved template with a demo_reminder template: “Hi {{1}}, see you today at {{2}} at our {{3}} branch.”

autoappy.com/workflows/…Sample data

Meera's workflow: work out the time, wait, then remind.

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autoappy.com/workflows/…Sample data

Delay Value can be mapped from the date step.

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Where to see waiting runs

While a run is waiting, it isn’t lost or stuck. Open Schedules → Activity: waiting delays appear under Current and Upcoming, with the time they’ll resume. The editor’s ⋯ → Schedules & delays shows the same for one workflow.

Time zones

Always set Input Timezone on the date steps (for Vidya, Asia/Kolkata); otherwise a 5 pm class can be read as 5 pm in another zone. Check the reminder time in Activity after your first test booking.

Bookings made at the last minute

If someone books a demo two hours before it starts, “three hours before” is already in the past. Add a condition on the line into the Delay: minutes until reminder (Number) Greater than 0, and a second path that sends the reminder straight away.

✍️Try it yourself

1. Add a second reminder, the evening before the class (subtract 18 hours instead of 3).
2. After the class time, send a short “How was the demo?” message with a link to a feedback form.
3. Book a test demo for 20 minutes from now and watch it appear in Schedules → Activity.

Using this for your own business?

Clinics remind patients of appointments, salons remind clients of bookings, and Skyline Realty reminds buyers of site visits (Skyline Lesson 3).

What you learned

• Date toolsAdjust a date, or measure the time between two dates.
• DelayPause a run for a set or mapped number of seconds up to months.
• Schedules & activitySee every waiting delay and when it will resume.

Next: Collect fees on time →

🎓 For trainers: how to teach this lesson

• Ask first: “How many of your bookings don’t show up?” Most classes give a surprisingly high number.
• Live demo: book a test demo for 10 minutes from now; by the end of the lesson the WhatsApp arrives on the projector.
• Common mistake: mapping the date in the wrong format. Show the Adjust Date step’s output on its Test tab.