Setting specific start times

There may be times when you want to offer only specific slots on your calendar to be booked, instead of offering up all of the free time on your calendar. Follow this guide to learn how to use Calendar Managed Availability and offer up specific booking times to your clients. 

Set your Grid display

Before you can designate the time slots you want to offer for booking, you need to determine the increments of time YouCanBookMe will use to determine the start time of your booking times. 

We call this the Grid Display, the setting under Times & Availability > Duration & Display.

In general the rule is, the smaller the grid display, the more flexible the booking page can be with your start times. 

• A grid display of 1 hour only allows for booking times every 60 minutes.
• A grid display of 15 minutes allows your start times to be at :00, :15, :30 or :45 past the hour. 
• A grid display of 10 minutes allows your start times to be at :00, :10, :20, :30, :40 or :50 past the hour.

Choose your booking duration

Since you have a specific start time for the appointment slots you want to offer, you no doubt have a specific end time for these appointments as well.

You'll want to set the booking duration to indicate how long each booking will be, under Times & Availability > Duration & Display. 

The booking duration you set can be any multiple of your grid display. 

• A 30 minute grid display will allow for booking durations of 30, 60, 90 minutes, etc.
• A 15 minute grid display will allow booking durations of 15, 30, 45, 60 minutes, etc.
• A 10 minute grid display will allow booking durations of 10, 20, 40, 60 minutes, etc.

Set your available booking days

Next you will navigate to Times & availability >  Availability. Select Calendar Managed Availability.

Tell the system which days you want us to look for availability on your calendar. Uncheck any day you'll never offer time slots for booking.  

For each day of the week you're available, set your widest range of working hours. This can be any hour you might possibly want to offer a time slot for booking, even if it is just one time per month. 

Choose a key phrase for your booking slots

When using Calendar Managed Availability, you will indicate exactly when your specific booking slots start directly on your linked Google or Microsoft calendar. Our system will search your calendar and find any event with a unique key phrase and display these times for booking. 

First, you'll need to indicate that unique key phrase on your booking page. 

Once you've entered the key phrase, click Copy above the phrase, and open your linked calendar in a new browser window.

Create specific booking slots in your linked calendar

Now that you've set the key phrase in YouCanBookMe you're ready to define your availability and specific booking slots on your calendar. 

Click Copy above the key phrase you've set in YouCanBookMe, and open your linked calendar in a new browser window.

Create a new event on your linked calendar, and paste the key phrase in as your event title.

Select the times of the slot you want to show for booking, taking care to make sure they align with your selected grid display. 

Adjust the event on your linked calendar from busy to free.

Continue to add in events on your calendar to represent all of your available booking slots. 

To see your availability update in YouCanBookMe, click Refresh the preview, or open your live booking page.