Publish reviewed free services, declare local calendars, handle customer requests and preserve private appointment access and original reservation facts.
Follow a deliberate reservation workflow#
Use the correct corporate workspace. The owner or administrator reviews booking setup, creates resources and their actual local calendars, assigns explicit staff access, prepares service terms and publishes the exact draft. Saving a draft alone never makes it available to customers.
A customer searches available times, reviews the service and contact facts, creates a five-minute temporary hold, then explicitly commits the held reservation. The service policy records either a request for business approval or an automatically confirmed appointment. A request is not a confirmation.
Bookings are free in this release. No deposit, payment, refund, external email, SMS, calendar invitation or conference session is performed. The record on screen is the outcome; do not interpret a stored contact address or a completed booking as external delivery.
Install the corporate booking purpose before operating it#
Appointments belongs to a corporate workspace and its current app allowance and any separately priced licence still apply. It does not force-install Project Resource Planning, Accounting, Invoicing or a payment gateway. Booking resources and their reservation capacity are independent from project planning calendars.
CRM is optional. If you deliberately enable CRM linking, install and configure CRM first and retain the current licence and required CRM permissions. The system refuses an unavailable prerequisite; it does not silently install CRM, copy customer records or bypass package staff limits.
Expired workspaces, revoked memberships, unavailable module licences and current subscription ceilings are checked again. A three-hour demo is disposable and must not hold your only copy of a real customer reservation.
Official references: App prerequisites and installation ↗
Declare the actual business and public purpose#
Enter the public business name, business IANA timezone, contact email and optional phone. These contact details are shown in reviewed service snapshots; they are not proof that email or SMS delivery is configured.
Write a plain-language privacy notice describing the appointment purpose, information needed, who can access it, retention and how to contact the business. Keep unnecessary sensitive information out of service descriptions, venue instructions and customer requests.
Choose operating access and optional deliberate CRM linking. Review the declared business country, customer terms and privacy purpose, then save. Setup is versioned and keeps immutable administration history; a stale concurrent change is refused with your entered choices retained.
Separate service administration, booking operation and schedule viewing#
The current workspace owner and administrators alone configure setup, resources and calendars, resource grants, service drafts and publication. The label Booking operator does not grant catalogue, calendar or workspace administration.
With eligible team operation enabled, a current working member explicitly granted Booking operator on a resource can read its private customer facts and operate its bookings below the current module writing ceiling. Choosing owner/administrators-only operation removes ordinary member writing while preserving explicitly authorized reads.
A Schedule viewer sees the permitted resource schedule, service and capacity facts. Customer contact, customer-local clocks, confidential notes and internal decision history are withheld. Unassigned members receive no booking/customer list. Removing current workspace membership stops access even if a retained grant has not yet been cleaned up.
| Choice | When it fits | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Booking operator | Handle customer reservations for an explicitly assigned resource. | Permits private booking reads and eligible actions; it does not manage service publication, resources or calendars. |
| Schedule viewer | Coordinate a resource schedule without private customer access. | Shows authorized reservation timing and capacity with customer and internal fields redacted. |
| Owner and administrators only | Restrict writing to current workspace managers. | Ordinary assigned staff remain subject to the module write ceiling; current read grants are not automatically erased. |
Create operational booking resources without inventing staff accounts#
Choose Staff, Room or Equipment, an operational name, explicit IANA timezone and concurrent capacity from one to fifty. A Staff resource is a service availability record, not an automatically created or mapped user account. Grant current staff access separately.
Declare the resource model that represents real availability. A room or equipment unit is not proof of legal occupancy or sector certification. Capacity is consumed by the booked party size over the appointment and its reserved buffers.
Keep operational resource names appropriate for everyone who can read the schedule. Customer details and confidential reasons belong in their protected booking fields. Renaming a resource does not rewrite original reservation source.
| Choice | When it fits | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Staff | Offer an operational service provider or team schedule. | Does not create a login, invite staff or establish payroll/attendance facts. |
| Room | Reserve concurrent room capacity under your declared model. | Reservations consume actual configured units; legal occupancy is separately reviewed. |
| Equipment | Reserve an operational equipment pool or item. | Does not move inventory, depreciate assets or create a financial entry. |
Declare real local windows and literal exceptions#
Enter explicit Monday–Sunday local opening windows. An empty day is closed. Up to eight nonoverlapping windows per local day are supported; a closing time may be 24:00. Split overnight availability across its two dates. No national, religious or legal workweek is inferred.
Copying a reviewed day replaces only the explicitly chosen target days. Copying a closed day closes them. Review the complete result before saving. A literal date override replaces that date’s weekly rule; an empty override closes the date, and removing the override restores the weekly rule.
Resource calendar, timezone, capacity or activity changes are blocked while future live holds, requested or confirmed reservations remain. Coordinate explicit cancellation or rescheduling first. Historical sources remain retained; changing today’s calendar does not reinterpret original booked clocks.
Understand real capacity, buffers and short-lived offers#
The appointment duration is customer-facing. Before and after buffers also reserve resource capacity. A party of three consumes three concurrent units through the occupied interval; a display cadence is not a reservation guarantee.
Available times respect the current published service, eligible active resources, declared calendars, lead time, booking horizon, party-size limit and all retained live capacity. Hidden customer facts still consume capacity without becoming public.
Offers last five minutes and are checked again when holding and committing. Another reservation or policy change can make an earlier choice unavailable; your entered contact facts remain so you can review a new offer. Public searches cover up to fourteen local dates and return up to five hundred offers, with any result limit disclosed.
Choose exact clocks and retain their original interpretation#
Business, resource and customer zones have different purposes. Staff date filters use the explicitly declared business timezone and include both chosen calendar dates. The server converts them to an exclusive upper UTC instant, respecting daylight saving. Show all dates is a deliberate retained-history choice.
A staff operator enters a resource-local minute and resolves it using the server’s resource timezone rules. A missing spring clock has no valid instant and is refused without rounding. A repeated clock presents both exact offset/UTC occurrences and requires a deliberate choice.
Reservations retain authoritative UTC starts/ends and the original resource and customer offsets/local clocks captured with the source. Historical clocks are not silently reinterpreted using later timezone rules. Customer offers display both customer and business local clocks, with offsets distinguishing repeated occurrences.
Prepare a service draft with meaningful terms#
Describe the free service and venue publicly, choose one to twenty active booking resources, and declare duration, buffers, lead time, future horizon, slot cadence and maximum party size. Assigned resources reserve capacity; operator grants separately control staff access.
Choose business approval or automatic confirmation after the customer’s final review. Set the approval-request lifetime (up to the configured hours or appointment start if earlier), cancellation and rescheduling cutoffs, and write clear customer change terms. These values are deliberate business policy choices, not automatic statutory compliance.
Review the business country, sector requirements and current privacy/customer terms, then save a separate immutable draft. Changes to a published service prepare a draft without silently replacing the customer-facing source.
Publish an exact reviewed draft and preserve older facts#
Review the complete saved snapshot and its assigned resources. Confirm publication deliberately. New customers receive that current published version; existing bookings retain their original service, customer facts, clocks and policy source.
A draft remains separate from a current published service. A stale version or changed review source cannot be published as though it were the earlier review. Current publication is checked again before a temporary hold becomes a requested or confirmed reservation.
Stopping new booking offers makes new catalogue/availability unavailable. It does not erase existing reservations or prevent authorized staff from deciding a previously retained request. Republish a reviewed current draft before offering new times again.
Reserve a free appointment as a customer#
Open the business’s exact published booking page. Review the public service, venue, privacy and change terms. Choose your IANA timezone, local date range and party size, then search. A displayed time is an offer, not a hold or final booking.
Select an exact offered time, enter contact details and review all terms. Creating a temporary hold reserves capacity for five minutes. Save the private management access, then make the separate final confirmation before expiry.
Read the actual result: Requested means business approval is still needed; Confirmed means the appointment is confirmed in this booking record. No email, SMS or external calendar invitation was sent. Refresh the private record to see later current state.
Distinguish holds, requests, confirmation and expiry#
Held is temporary reserved capacity pending the customer’s final action. A hold lasts five minutes. Requested is a recorded request awaiting staff approval under the published review lifetime. Confirmed is the accepted reservation state.
Expired holds and requests stop consuming capacity at their effective expiry even if the scheduled expiry-recording job has not yet materialized a history event. Server time and synchronous checks determine the effective state; the countdown is guidance, not authority.
An expired, revoked or superseded capability cannot repeat a successful operation merely because the request identifier matches. Current host, access, publication and expiry are reread before mutation or replay.
Keep customer management access private and recoverable#
The private management key authorizes only its reservation. Save the displayed key or explicitly download the private access record locally. The page keeps access in memory; it is not emailed, placed in a URL, or automatically stored in browser local storage. Reloading clears in-memory access. Clear private access also removes the entered customer fields and private operation records from this page; keep your saved key if you still need the reservation.
To reopen, visit /book/manage on the same business host and paste the complete private key. An email address, guessed reference or arbitrary booking ID does not grant management access. Keys are sent only in same-origin protected request bodies. Anyone holding a valid key can use its permitted actions, so keep it secure.
If the key is lost or revoked, contact the business through its published contact route. The software does not pretend it can recover private access through an unverified email. Authorized operators can revoke that booking’s customer management access without deleting booked capacity or original history.
Cancel or reschedule through explicit retained decisions#
Customer cancellation and rescheduling obey the acknowledged service cutoffs. Outside a cutoff, contact the business for review of applicable rights or an explicit exception; the configured policy is not a waiver of statutory rights.
For rescheduling, search current published offers. Read the displayed Current destination service & policies, including any changed venue, cancellation, privacy and confirmation terms, separately from the original reservation. Review the exact new time, enter a reason and confirm deliberately. A successful replacement atomically supersedes the original and returns a new management key. Save the replacement access; a failed replacement leaves the original reservation intact.
Staff can deliberately handle a policy exception under current resource and writing permissions, with a confidential reason retained. Staff rescheduling uses the original service’s current published source and preserves customer and party facts. It is not a free-form rewrite of an original reservation.
Record a staff outcome without inventing actuals#
Current eligible operators can approve or decline a requested appointment, cancel an active reservation, and record completion or a no-show only after the appointment end. Enter a meaningful confidential reason and explicitly confirm the decision.
Completion is a booking outcome. It does not prove attendance, create worked time, payroll, a Timesheet, invoice, payment or statutory service delivery. Add those integrations only through a separately reviewed module workflow.
Private internal notes are immutable operational records, never customer-facing messages. Customer history exposes only the permitted event kind and time; confidential staff reasons and notes remain internal.
Link an existing CRM customer deliberately#
CRM linking is an optional configured integration. A staff operator needs current CRM access and licence as well as booking access. Search authorized existing active customer contacts and deliberately select an identity; duplicate names remain distinguishable by ID.
The link does not copy a CRM record into public metadata, create a contact automatically or make unrelated CRM details visible to a schedule viewer. Booking customer facts remain their own retained source.
Once retained bookings deliberately link CRM customers, that connection cannot be silently disabled or removed through a prerequisite change. Review retained sources and supported correction paths first.
Keep public terms, private customers and schedule views separate#
Public service pages contain reviewed business and service terms. Public availability offers reveal customer/business clock choices and opaque short-lived offers, without internal staff/resource identifiers, private customer records or internal reasons.
A management key reveals only that capability’s own retained customer/service record and permitted history. Public contact email is unverified contact information and never an authorization substitute. Customer keys, offers and purpose tokens must not be pasted into support tickets, analytics or public screenshots.
Staff private facts require current resource-level customer access. Schedule viewers receive customer and private fields withheld; ordinary unassigned members receive no list. Current membership and grants are rechecked, including after offboarding and on repeated operations.
Remove current staff access while preserving customer reservations#
Removing workspace membership stops that staff member’s access immediately, even if an old resource grant remains. The owner and administrators retain access to reservations; no automatic reassignment, cancellation or rescheduling is invented.
Use the complete per-resource access directory to review and remove grants, including a stale grant for a departed person. The global summary is bounded and discloses truncation; the per-resource directory is paginated through every retained grant.
Resolve future reservations deliberately before changing a resource calendar, capacity, timezone or activity. Retained customer source and history remain available under current authorized management.
Read current state beside retained original source#
Reservation source retains the original service snapshot, customer facts, party size, occupied interval and original clocks. Current effective state and current permissions control what can be done now; editing a later service draft does not rewrite those historical facts.
Booking detail displays up to one hundred authorized events and private notes. Owners and administrators can review the latest one hundred immutable administration snapshots for setup, resources, grants, service drafts and publication. These are bounded views, not a claim of unlimited full-history export.
Exact actor-scoped request identifiers prevent accidental duplicate successful writes. Changed retries and stale versions are refused. Validation failures retain entered input; review the current source before a deliberate new attempt.
Review local and sector requirements before marketing a service#
The declared business country selects the business context; it does not certify a service or choose an automatic workweek. Review applicable privacy, consumer cancellation, accessibility, recordkeeping, sector licensing, age/consent and service-specific requirements before public launch.
Australia, Saudi Arabia and other target countries can impose different rules depending on service, customer location and sector. Use appropriate local advice and official guidance. A configurable cancellation cutoff or a recorded completion cannot establish compliance on its own.
No ZATCA, FBR, ATO, healthcare, payroll, payment or other authority integration is performed by Appointments. Review those separate verified workflows and approvals before making a country-compliance claim.
Official references: Business country, recordkeeping and tax review ↗
Recover safely from conflicts, expired offers and interrupted requests#
If a service review or offer expires, use Refresh current service terms. Your entered contact facts remain; previous offers and acknowledgements are cleared. Find current availability and review the current terms and exact time again. If capacity changes, review another available time. A failed atomic replacement leaves the original intact. Refresh the private record before assuming an interrupted request failed; an exact successful retry cannot create a duplicate reservation.
If a secure session expires, reload the business page and paste the locally saved management key. If the service is unpublished, the host changed, access was revoked or the business/workspace is unavailable, contact the business through its known contact route. Do not send the private key publicly.
The public flow is protected by same-origin checks, CSRF and bounded rate/capacity limits. Wait when a rate limit is reached; repeated refreshing does not reserve a place. A disposable demo expires under the administrator’s current demo duration.
Keep the active workspace, actual business requirements and current setup summary in view. A guide explains a choice; it does not make that choice for you.