Resource Availability Scheduling — Overview

CalendarAnything’s Availability Scheduling feature enables users to schedule or book organizational resources, such as personnel, locations, meeting rooms, and equipment, directly from a CalendarAnything interface that presents the resources in time slots of availability. The feature also supports booking resource combinations, such as people and the locations at which they are available.

This article provides an overview of the Availability Scheduling feature and its setup. If you are looking for step-by-step instructions on using the Availability calendar setup wizard, refer to Creating an Availability Calendar for Booking Resources.

In this article:

• What is the purpose of Availability Scheduling?
• What is provided with Availability Scheduling
• How do you set up Availability Scheduling?
• How do you book resources from an Availability calendar?
• What options can be enabled for this feature?
• Demos
  • Availability calendar on the CalendarAnything sidebar
  • Availability calendar on a dental practice website.

What is the purpose of Availability Scheduling?

CalendarAnything’s Availability Scheduling feature manages the availability of an organization’s resources and provides tools to create a calendar interface for booking resources or resource combinations such as personnel at specific locations.

What is provided with Availability Scheduling

Availability Scheduling provides:

• Setup assistance by CA support team— not required for simple use cases but recommended for complex use cases
• An Availability Calendar setup wizard to create a calendar that presents resource availability and can be accessed internally from the CalendarAnything sidebar as well as externally by online audiences for self-scheduling of appointments
• Automatically generated templates for entering resource availability
• Synchronization with Salesforce based on requirements
• Automated removal of availability when resource time slots are booked
• Automated replacement of availability when a scheduled booking is deleted in Salesforce
• Automatic notifications if enabled
• Customization and functionality options that can be enabled with settings

How do you set up Availability Scheduling?

CalendarAnything’s Availability Scheduling feature comes with a certain number of hours of setup assistance from the CalendarAnything Support Team. This support is recommended for setup of complex availability consisting of more than one type of resource and custom objects.

This list summarizes the setup steps.

1. Identify standard data objects and create any required custom objects.
   For complex availability setup, this phase is best performed by the CalendarAnything Support Team. At the very least, this step requires an admin. Tasks include:
   • Identify standard Salesforce objects that will be used.
   • Determine whether custom objects are required; and, if so, create them.
   • Add a custom field (sometimes referred to as Availability Rules) to the primary availability object.
     Note: The custom availability field must be of type Text Area (Long) and must be added to the primary availability object—the Object Name specified in the Availability Template Objects setup step of the Availability Calendar Setup wizard.
2. Create Availability calendar.
   To create a complex Availability calendar, engage the CalendarAnything Support Team or an admin. For simple availability, an advanced user may suffice. After saving the calendar, the application automatically creates a corresponding template for entering availability.
3. Enter Availability data into the template.
   The Availability template must be populated for each resource or resource combination. If resources are organizational personnel, they can input their own availability, or someone designated can enter it for them.
4. Configure access to the calendar.
   An Availability calendar can be accessed from the CalendarAnything sidebar, or online from a public website if embedded into a site page.

For detailed setup information:

• Resource Availability Scheduling – Admin Guide
• Resource Availability Scheduling – Admin Quick Start Guide

How do you book resources from an Availability calendar?

An organization’s internal users can bring up the Availability calendar from the CalendarAnything sidebar. External users can access the calendar online to self-schedule appointments if the calendar has been embedded into a public website page.

When using an Availability calendar, the user selects a preferred resource and time slot and books the selection. The application updates Salesforce (based on configuration) and removes the resource and time slot from the Availability calendar. If the booking is subsequently cancelled or deleted, the resource and time slot combination is reinstated to the calendar.

What options can be enabled for this feature?

Here is a list of some easily enabled options included with Availability Scheduling:

• Adding availability exceptions, such as vacations, sick days, and so on.
  Read More
• Joint Mode for use with combined resource availability
  Read More
• Booking Multiple Resources per appointment.
  Read More.
• Booking Multiple timeslots to create a longer appointment.
  Read More.
• Availability Intersection: Filtering timeslot display based on a selected minimum number of resources that must be available for a time slot before the time slot will be showed. Think of a manager who only wants to schedule a meeting when at least 10 team members are able to attend.
  Read More.
• Integrating Your Public Calendars: Exclude timeslots that are booked on your public calendars.
  Read More.

Demos

Note: Demos are examples. Calendars and popups vary.

Availability calendar on the CalendarAnything sidebar

Availability calendar on a dental practice website.