Learn how to manage staff and resource schedules to create appointment availability.
Availability at a store location is determined by a combination of staff and resource schedules as well as booking rules. You can provide your clients the flexibility to book an appointment at their convenience by managing these schedules appropriately.
Staff Availability
Booxi proposes three different options to define the availability of each member of staff.
Open Business Hours
A merchant business hours schedule can be used to define when staff are available for appointments by assigning these business hours as appointment availability schedule. While only one schedule is active at a time, it is possible to create several schedules in advance to meet a business changing schedule throughout a year would it be for the summer period or end-of-year holidays.
Open hours are managed manually in the Back Office and can be updated from the Head-Office in all or only selected stores.
Weekly Work Schedule
For staff working limited hours or working on a special schedule, their availability can be set by creating one or several work schedules. For a specific merchant, weekly work schedules are managed manually from the Back Office. Take note that work schedules can be copy-pasted from one staff member to another one.
When creating weekly work schedules, take note that overlapping schedules are not supported or allowed. Therefore, schedules must be planned and defined precisely.
Important
Weekly work hours are not restricted by the open business hours if any have been configured. For example, if the business is closing at 5pm and a staff has a weekly work schedule finishing at 7pm, the staff is still bookable until 7pm.
Busy Time Slots
Staff availability can be further limited by adding busy time slots in their respective calendar. Merchants can use a set of predefined time slots or create their own custom ones.
Calendar
For member of staff with no specific working hours week after week, their availability can be defined in a calendar where available and busy time slots are added manually. For a specific merchant, all schedules and availability are managed manually from the Back Office.
Resource Availability
If the service requires a resource to be available, it is important to set up a resource's availability as well. Resource's availability are managed as you would a staff's hence using the same options: business open hours, weekly work schedule and calendar.
Booking Rules
Based on the "time selection mode" set in a service's booking rules, merchants can determine how clients will pick a time for their booking. Selection modes are divided into two groups: presenting time slots for a client to choose from or ask a client for his time preferences. If you opt for the latter, the account owner or the selected staff will be required to select a time slot and manually approve the appointment request. For more information regarding manual approval and dispatch, please consult this article.
How Availability Are Displayed Online
The process of booking an appointment in the Booxi Booking Widget is determined by a specific series of steps. Availability will differ depending on the choices made through out the selection process as shown below.
Important
This is the general appointment booking flow. Multiple other booking flows can be implemented such as skipping the service selection or starting with the personnel selection.
① Merchant Selection
When prompted with the widget, a client might be asked to choose a store location if your merchant is part of a merchant group. The widget can be configured to open for a specific store location thus skipping the merchant selection step. Depending on a client's choice, availability presented in future steps will vary based on the store that was selected.
② Category Selection (optional)
Once a store has been selected or preconfigured, the client can choose a service category if services are categorized. As this step in the booking process is optional, it doesn't have an impact on the overall availability (categories being time- independent).
③ Service Selection
Next, clients can select a service of their choice. Availability will then be limited to a number of factors such as staff schedules, the availability of any associated resource as well as the service's booking rules and the time selection mode the service is set to.
④ Staff Selection
Depending on how your services are configured, a client might be presented with a list of staff to choose from. If a staff is chosen, availability will further be reduced to the selected staff's availability for the chosen service and its associated resource if any.
⑤ Time Selection
Once all the previous steps are complete, the resulting availability will be presented in a calendar format. Client can then choose time slots per their preferences.
Confirmation/Approval
Once the booking process is completed, the appointment will be automatically confirmed or manually approved by a member of staff based on how your services and booking rules are configured. To be learn more about how appointment are dispatched and approved, consult the next topic below.
Next topic: Dispatch and Approve Appointments