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Mastering TimeBlocks

Mark Demicoli  26 April 2013 04:15:00 PM
A very important feature of ClickBook is the ability to create TimeBlocks.  A TimeBlock is a way of telling ClickBook how and when you are available or not-available for services, and for which services and location.

TimeBlocks work to adjust your weekly schedule, or can be used exclusively instead of the weekly schedule, if your services are more irregular than regular in the weekly sense.

While this is not a unique feature to ClickBook, ClickBook's TimeBlocks are by far the most flexible and sophisticated of any scheduler we know of, and sometimes for this reason can be confusing to the uninitiated.

This article will focus on "AVAILABLE" TimeBlocks.  The other type is "NOT AVAILABLE" TimeBlock, a far simpler animal.


WEEKLY AVAILABILITY

First, it's important to understand the basic functioning of ClickBook before you delve into TimeBlocks.

ClickBook assumes that your availability rotates on a weekly basis and is generally stable.

By default, ClickBook makes you available at your Main Location from 9AM - 5PM with an hour break.  Here's an example setup with varying availability from weekday-to-weekday:

Image:Getting your Tongue around TimeBlocks

CREATING EXCEPTIONS

The Weekly Availability is a good starting basis for a regular schedule, which is typical of most businesses in, for example, Health & Wellness industries.

Lets look at a few scenarios, in increasing complexity, where you will want to create exceptions to your weekly routine.



CHANGED AVAILABILITY

Lets say you need to extend your availability for particular day.  You work from 9-5 and decide to add 2 hours on a particular day.  In this case, we are not changing anything about the normal schedule except to add more hours for 1 day.


Image:Getting your Tongue around TimeBlocks

Taking it slightly further, lets say you want to extend hours for a whole week or longer.  You set the Start and End Date, and ClickBook will show you that it understand that you are changing the schedule for a multi-day period.  This is still a simple extension of availability, however it is possible to also adjust particular weekdays in that period.  For example, you may want to also change the start time on Thursdays only.  This is possible in the Advanced Duration Options section, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.


Image:Getting your Tongue around TimeBlocks
You'll notice from the image above that "This is a Special Event" is ticked.  The effect this has is to alert customers on your profile page that there is a change to the normal schedule.



CHANGED FUTURE PRICING

Sometimes, you have to raise (or lower?!) prices.  An Available TimeBlock is your friend in this regard.


Step 1:

Create new services with changed pricing.  It's important to place the new services in separate categories so as to clearly denote the purpose.  For example, lets say we have massage services, create a category first called "NEW PRICING JUNE 2013 - Massage", and add your newly priced services under that category.

Step 2:


The second step is to create an Available TimeBlock, fill in details as you would normally, and extend the End Date to at least several months from the start date of the new pricing.

Additionally, you must tick "OVER-RIDE WEEKLY AVAILABILITY", and specifically select the NEW SERVICES in the Locations & Services section:

Image:Getting your Tongue around TimeBlocks

Step 3:

On the day (or shortly after) that new pricing kicks in, change the prices on your pre-existing services to match the new pricing, then you can also delete the "Changed Pricing" Available TimeBlock created previously as it is no longer required.



MULTIPLE STAFF

An existing TimeBlock can be used as a template and copied to other staff / resources.  If you need to apply a TimeBlock to multiple staff, firstly get it right by testing it as yourself and from your public profile page as an anonymous user (ie sign out) first.

Once you're satisfied, use the Tools menu in any of the main views to copy the TimeBlock to multiple staff / resources:

Image:Getting your Tongue around TimeBlocks


ADVANCED CONFIGURATION (ADVANCED USERS ONLY!)

ClickBook's powerful flexibility features such as Appointment Start Interval, Custom Start Times and Weekday Availability Ranges (hereforth referred to as Advanced Customisation), can all be adjusted in Available TimeBlocks.

Any new Available TimeBlock inherits it's settings for these features from your default preferences,  which is why it's so easy to simply extend or reduce availability for a day or range of days.

Lets say, for example, that you use Custom Start Times to over-ride some or all weekday appointment times, the Custom Start Times will be automatically set in any Available TimeBlock you create, but can be changed for specific TimeBlocks as required.


MULTIPLE "AVAILABLE" TIMEBLOCK  (RECOMMENDED ONLY FOR SCHEDULES WITH PREDOMINANTLY IRREGULAR AVAILABILITY).

ClickBook allows you to create multiple Available TimeBlocks that interact with one another on any particular day.

This is NOT recommended for users that generally work with weekly availability.  This feature is designed for users that offer more irregular time than regular weekly time for their services.


In this mode (ie if more than one Available TimeBlock exists on a particular day):

a) Advanced Customisation is disabled and all Advanced Settings are taken from the default configuration in your preferences.

b) Availability created is merged with Weekly Availability (ie the Over-ride Weekly Availability option is not available).