The “Availability” tab on the “Booking Page Details” page allows you to specify when you should appear available on your booking page. There are a wide variety of settings you can implement to show your availability, and in this document, we will break those down into standard and advanced settings.
Standard Availability Settings
Calendar
Select which calendar you would like to associate with your booking page. Apptoto will assign all appointments booked to this calendar and will utilize the calendar’s existing appointment schedule to determine your availability.
If you want to connect multiple calendars to a page, see our article on Multiple Calendar Support.
Selectable Times
This option controls the number of time slots that your client can choose from when booking an appointment with you.
By default, the option is set to “Every 30 Minutes.” This means clients can choose a start time in 30-minute increments. For example, they can choose 8:00 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 9:00 a.m., etc. If you change this to “Every 60 Minutes,” they can choose 8:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., etc. There are several preset options you can choose from.
Selecting the “Custom” option will allow you to break those slots up by other increments (must be divisible by 5 minutes).
The “Specific Times” option will allow you to select each available slot on any given day. Clicking the + button will allow you to select a time you are available and add it to a specific day or all days.
If you want to remove a time from your “Specific” availability, hover over the time, and a red X will appear. Click this, and the time will be removed from your availability.
Setting Up Multiple Ranges Using Selectable Times
Using any other option than the “Specific Times” will allow you to set up multiple ranges or windows of time that will be shown as bookable slots. This is handy for setting up a lunch hour that your clients are not able to book:
Date Range
Set the date range for which you’d like to show available bookings. It’s possible to set:
- A range of times using the “From…To.” Ex: From 1 hour to 60 days in the future
- Or set a “Specific Date Range” Ex: 9/15/2023 to 12/24/2023
Availability (Time of Day)
This option controls the start and stop times for your availability schedule.
You can use the Calendar’s availability settings or specify a custom availability range for the booking page by unchecking “Use default availability for each calendar.”
If you would like to disable specific days, then uncheck “All Days” and then uncheck the days that you would not like made available:
Holidays
Apptoto offers the ability to block off holidays for your booking pages. By default, you can now set account-level holidays. To do so:
- Navigate to the Settings > Holidays tab
- Holiday Region: Select the region you are building the booking page for
- Select Holidays: Leave holidays you will be closed checked (Apptoto will automatically show no availability for appointments that day) or uncheck those you will be open.
- Custom Holidays: Add any additional Custom Holidays you will be closed for
However, if you wish to apply holidays on a page-by-page basis, then you can do so.
- Uncheck “Use default holidays” on the Booking Pages > Availability tab.
- Set Holiday Region, Select Holidays, and Custom Holidays for the booking page.
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Availability Overrides
Availability Overrides allow you to alter the start and stop times for specific days or ranges of specific days. So, for example, if you know you will be leaving early on a specific Friday for a trip, you can create an override for that specific Friday with the start time as 9 a.m. and the stop time as 1 p.m. Or, if your company offers seasonal availability, you can create a new schedule for that new availability.
They also allow you to remove availability for a specific date easily. For example, if you will be out of the office on vacation for a week, you can create an override for that specific week that removes all availability.
To get started, you can add an override by clicking “Add Override” here:
Then choose a single date or date range for the availability like so:
You can then specify the new hours for those dates here. These are the times you will be open to take appointments.
If you want to block that day (or range off), click the “-” button here:
Then click “done”, and be sure to save the changes.
To add the new date range, follow the steps above. Then, select your new date range and hit the plus sign to add the available date and times.
Note that overrides only override the Time of Day schedule.
Calendar Availability Overrides
Availability overrides can be specified in the Booking Page Settings AND in the settings for each calendar. The override settings for each calendar can be accessed from the quick settings window on the Appointments tab shown in the image below or on the Scheduling tab in the main calendar settings under Settings > Calendars.
Note: the calendar overrides will ONLY be used if the Booking Page has the “Use default availability times for calendar” option checked. If that is checked, then both the overrides in the calendar AND the overrides in the Booking Page will be used. The Booking Page overrides take precedence if there are any conflicts. For example, if the Calendar settings have an override for a specific date, and the Booking Page has an override for that same date, the Booking Page overrides will be used.
Advanced Booking Page Settings
Bookability
Click to expand the advanced options for your booking page near the bottom of the page, where you will find Bookability Options.
- Bookability: Apptoto will look at all the calendars attached to the booking page to verify when available appointment times should be shown. The options are:
- At least one calendar is free: Apptoto will show availability whenever one or more of the calendars checked are free. This is useful in Example #1 above.
- All calendars are free: Apptoto will only show availability whenever all of the calendars are free at a specific time. This is useful for Example #2 above.
- Appointment exists on any calendar with specific title: Apptoto will show availability whenever one or more calendars have an appointment with an exact title, and are free. This is useful for Example #1 if you want to give your salespeople the ability to mark when they are available on their calendar.
- Appointment exists on any calendar and title includes: Apptoto will show availability whenever one or more calendars have appointments that include a specific keyword, whether independently or tucked in with other info.
- Appointment exists on any calendars and matches condition: Apptoto will show availability whenever one or more calendars have an appointment that matches specific criteria beyond simple keywords, operating similarly to the Rules feature of the Auto Messages tab.
- Appointment exists on all calendars with specific titles: Apptoto will show availability whenever all calendars have an appointment with an exact title and are free.
- Appointment exists on all calendars with titles that include: Apptoto will show availability whenever all calendars have appointments that include a specific keyword, whether independently or tucked in with other info.
- Appointment exists on all calendars that match condition: Apptoto will show availability whenever all calendars have an appointment that matches specific criteria beyond simple keywords, operating similarly to the Rules feature of the Auto Messages tab.
- Ignore: Apptoto will look at the calendars attached to a booking page to determine when to ignore appointments and prevent appointments from being scheduled. The options are:
- Ignore None – all events block off availability: By default, Apptoto will block off availability on your calendar if you have any appointments on your calendar at that time
- Events with a Specific Title: This allows Apptoto to ignore certain events on your calendar with an exact title (e.g.: Lunch or “Check Email” task) and will allow appointments to be scheduled during that time.
- Events whose Title Includes: This allows Apptoto to ignore certain events on your calendar with certain keywords in the title and will allow appointments to be scheduled during that time.
- Events that Match a Condition: This allows Apptoto to ignore certain events on your calendar that match specific criteria beyond simple keywords. This will allow appointments to be scheduled during those times.
The “When” options are different if multiple calendars are connected. See this page for more information.
Allowing more than one appointment per time slot
By default, Apptoto will only allow 1 appointment at any given time on your calendar. Specifically, it will only allow one appointment marked as busy if your calendar type supports busy vs. free appointments.
If you would like more than one client to be able to book a particular time, then you can increase the “Allow up to X appointments at a time” option.
Limit the number of appointments on each calendar per day
If you would like Apptoto to restrict the number of appointments to a certain number, check the “Limit the number of appointments per day” checkbox.
You can limit the number of “busy” or “booked” appointments.
- Booked: Only takes into account appointments booked through an Apptoto booking page
- Busy: Takes into account any appointment on the calendar
Limit the number of appointments total
If you would like Apptoto to restrict the number of appointments and meetings you have each day (may not be client-related, for example, lunch), check “Limit the number of appointments toal
Fix Time Zone
This setting will “lock” the booking page to a time zone of your choice to ensure that the times presented are always in that relevant time zone. If left unchecked, the booking page will present times according to the time zone of the browser viewing that booking page.