Customize Online Booking Availability By Event Type and Resource

Online Booking rules can be customized to allow only certain types of events to  be booking into specific time-frames.  You can even specify which resources (rooms, equipment, etc) must be available in order for a booking to occur.  These customization are all configured in your Event Type properties, and your scheduled Hours of Operation.

Configure Hours Of Operation by Event Type

When creating your Hours Of Operation events in the calendar, you can add more event types to the list to specify exactly which event types you wish to allow within those hours.  If you do not specify which event types to allow, then all events types are allowed.  Specifying an event type or a series of event types will only allow patients to book those specific event types when using the online booking system.  As always, when you are booking manually, there are no restrictions.

For example, if you wanted to create an Hours Of Operation event where you wanted to restrict booking to only Acupuncture and IV sessions, you would first select the Hours Of Operation event type, and then continue to select the Acupuncture and IV event types as well.  Everything else will be the same as a Simple Hours Of Operation event.  Here is what that would look like:

Select additional event types to restrict the hours of operation to only those event types.

Important: if you create any Hours Of Operation event where there are no additional event types selected, then you are allowing all online booking events types to be booked during that time period.

Configure Hours Of Operation by Resource Availability

When creating your hours of operation in the calendar, you can also specify a specific resource that those hours apply to.  Selecting no resources simply means that the hours of operation you are creating apply to the practitioner alone.  The online booking system will then only verify that the practitioner is available in order to determine if a booking can be made at a designated time.

If, on the other hand, a resource like “Room 1” is selected, then the online booking system will verify not only the practitioner’s availability, but also the availability of Room 1.  Both will need to be available in order for a booking to occur.

Restricting your Hours of Operation to a specific set of resources or rooms.

Note: If you want to use the resource availability tracking along with Online Booking, then your Event Types will need to specify that they are allowed to use that resource.  For example if you set your hours for 9am to 5pm for Room 1, then you must ensure that all Event Types that you want to allow to be booked into Room 1 are properly configured for that room.  See next section for details on this.

Configure Allowable Resources For Your Event Types

If you intend to use the Resource Availability Tracking, you must indicate which resources your events are allowed to use, and in which order of priority.  Resources can be rooms, IV chairs, and even equipment or people.  A resource is simply something that is in use during the time of the appointment.

To set up your Event Types to work with specific resources, you need to set them up in the Event Manager.

1. Open the OutSmart Calendar, and click on the “gear” icon at the top right of the calendar.  Select Event Manager.
2. In your Event Manager, find the event that you want attach to a resource. Click on the edit button to edit the Event Type properties.
3. You can now specify which resources are in use during the Event Type by adding them to the “Can be held in which room:” field.  See image below.

Attaching resources to an Event Type.