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Booking resources

When one calendar isn't enough — give each staff member, room, table or chair its own timetable and let the agent book into whichever is free.

For: Businesses with multiple bookable things
On this page

The simple calendar assumes one bookable thing. That breaks the moment you have three dentists, six tables, or four vans — each with different hours, different holidays, and a different idea of how long a job takes.

Resources fix that. Each bookable thing gets its own timetable, and the agent books the caller into whichever one is free.

CRM → Booking Resources

Note

Creating one active resource switches your workspace into resource mode automatically. The simple calendar stops being used.

The three concepts

Resource

A person or thing that can be booked — Dr Patel, Table 4, Chair 2, the mobile unit. Has its own timetable, capacity and timezone.

Booking type

A named category that groups resources — "Dental check-up", "Teacher meeting". What the agent offers callers.

Block

A one-off exception — a holiday, a training afternoon — that punches a hole in the recurring timetable.

Setting up a resource

Create it with just a name, then open it. There are three tabs.

Timetable

The main settings:

  • Capacity — how many bookings may share one slot. A dentist is 1. A yoga class might be 12.
  • Timezone — per resource, so a multi-location business works correctly.
  • Slot length — how long each appointment is. Set it to 0 to switch that resource into open time, where the caller picks their own start and duration.
  • Gap between bookings — turnaround time, cleaning, travel.
  • Booking type — which category this resource belongs to.
  • Active — switch a resource off without deleting it.

Below that, a weekly schedule. Each day can hold several windows — Monday 9:00–12:00 and 14:00–17:00, for example, giving you a lunch break for free. A live badge shows how many slots each window produces, so you can see immediately if a slot length gives you something silly.

Careful

Saving replaces the entire weekly timetable at once. Any window you removed is gone — there's no partial save.

Blocks

One-off exceptions. Pick a date and optionally a time range; leaving the times empty blocks the whole day. Add a reason so you remember why in three months.

Use blocks for holidays, training, sickness and appointments outside the system. Don't use them for recurring patterns — put those in the timetable.

Preview

Pick a date and see exactly the slots a caller would be offered. Use it after every change — it takes five seconds and catches nearly every configuration mistake.

Booking types

Types are what the agent talks about. Callers ask for a "check-up", not for "Dr Patel's chair", and the agent shouldn't have to enumerate your staff.

Each type has a name and a description of when to use it — that description is what tells the agent which type fits a caller's request:

Emergency appointment — use when the caller mentions pain, swelling, a broken tooth, or says it's urgent. 20-minute slots with the on-call dentist.

Group resources under types on the list page, with a dropdown or by dragging. Anything ungrouped falls into "Uncategorised" and still works.

Choosing what an agent offers

Agent → Actions → Appointment booking

Select which booking types this agent offers, and optionally override the description for this agent.

Leave it empty and the agent offers every active resource. That's fine for a single-purpose business and confusing for a complex one — an agent that could book you into anything tends to book you into the wrong thing.

Fixed slots vs open time

Fixed slots (slot length above zero) — the agent offers discrete times: 9:00, 9:30, 10:00. Right for appointments of predictable length.

Open time (slot length zero) — the agent offers a window and asks the caller how long they need. Right for room hire, studio bookings, and anything charged by the hour.

In open time the agent must collect a duration; it'll ask if the caller doesn't say.

How the agent picks

  1. The caller describes what they want.
  2. The agent matches it to a booking type using the description you wrote.
  3. It asks for availability across every resource in that type.
  4. It offers real times, tagged internally with which resource each belongs to.
  5. The caller picks; the agent books that specific resource.

Availability is re-checked at the moment of booking, under a lock, so two simultaneous callers can't overfill a slot beyond its capacity.

Rules and limits

  • 15 minutes' notice minimum — nothing can be booked closer than that.
  • The advance horizon on each resource caps how far ahead callers may book.
  • Capacity is respected exactly — a slot with capacity 3 accepts three bookings and then closes.
  • Monthly booking caps apply as normal — see Plans & limits.

Gotchas

  • Deleting a booking type doesn't delete its resources. They become uncategorised and keep working.
  • Deleting a resource removes its timetable and blocks. Existing appointments survive but lose their resource link.
  • Each resource's timezone is its own. A wrong one silently offers wrong times — the Preview tab is how you catch it.
  • Blocks older than yesterday aren't shown, though they still exist.
  • Mixed slot lengths across windows on the same day can record a duration taken from the day's first window. If your morning slots are 30 minutes and afternoons 60, split them across separate resources.