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How-to

Make a collection bookable

A collection becomes bookable when it has a date-and-time field marked as the bookable one, and a capacity profile saying which location and department the bookings belong to, how slots are offered, and how long each runs. A readiness checklist tells you exactly which piece is still missing.

Requirements: a role that can manage collections and booking settings, and a department with working hours already set — see set up locations, departments, and working hours.

Any collection can take bookings — appointments, classes, service jobs — once two things are in place: somewhere to record when, and a profile describing how slots are offered.

Steps

  1. Check what is already done. Booking has a readiness checklist that reports each requirement in order — an active location, a department, that department's working hours, the bookable field, and the capacity profile. Work only the items it flags; it tells you what is missing rather than making you guess.
  2. Add a date-and-time field to the collection to hold when the booking is, and mark it as the bookable one. A plain date is not enough — slots need a time as well as a day.
  3. Turn on booking for the collection and build its capacity profile.
  4. Point the profile at a location and department. This is what ties bookings to a real schedule — the department's working hours are where availability comes from.
  5. Choose how slots are offered. By the day, when the booking takes a whole day and time of day does not matter; or by the hour, at a set interval — every hour, every half hour, or every fifteen minutes — when people pick a specific time.
  6. Set how long a booking lasts. A fixed length that suits the work: thirty minutes for a consultation, two hours for a service slot.
  7. Verify. Run the checklist again — it should report the collection as ready to book. Then check availability to see real open slots.

Choosing the interval and duration

These two decide what a customer sees. A fifteen-minute interval with a thirty-minute duration means slots start every quarter hour and each takes half an hour — dense and flexible. An hourly interval with an hour duration gives clean, simple hours. Denser intervals mean more choice for the customer and more fragmentation for you; pick the granularity your work actually runs at rather than the finest available.

Notes and limitations

  • Working hours come first. Without an open day on the department, availability is empty no matter how the profile is configured.
  • The field must hold a date and a time, and be marked as the bookable one.
  • A profile is tied to one location and department — that pairing is what supplies the schedule.
  • The interval only applies to hourly slots; daily slots take the whole day.
  • A booking is a normal entry — once made it can be viewed, filtered, reported on, and trigger an automation.
  • The checklist is the fastest diagnostic when something is not bookable — use it before changing settings at random.

The whole chain from hours to a booked appointment is in setting up booking end to end. Adding the date field is covered in add or change a field, and sending a reminder once a booking exists in create and activate an automation.

Frequently asked questions

My collection will not take bookings.
Run the readiness checklist — it names the missing piece. Most often it is the department's working hours, or a date field that holds a date but not a time.
What is the difference between daily and hourly slots?
Daily slots take the whole day and ignore time of day; hourly slots start at a set interval — every hour, half hour, or quarter hour — and are what people pick a specific time from.
Interval or duration — which controls slot length?
The interval is how often a slot starts; the duration is how long it lasts. A fifteen-minute interval with a thirty-minute duration means overlapping start times every quarter hour.