Forum Discussion
How to configure shared bookings page in Bookings App
I've set everything up and it displays correctly on the end user page but it does not work and provides a vague error message "something went wrong". I'm certain it is the way i have configured it, but I don't know how to fix it. I have 5 staff all offering 1 hour appointments whose available time and days vary between people week to week.
I have set up one shared page previously for me and one other member of staff that worked perfectly - as our availability at that time (a 2 weeks period) fit a 'recurring' availability pattern (e.g., we both offered the same times on the same days on both weeks) there were no overlaps or oddities. I used the business hours page to indicate our specific availability e.g., instead of our true hours Mon-Fri 8-6pm, I set it to only the days and times of when we could take appointments - Mondays 1-2 and 3-4pm, and Wednesdays 9-10, 11-12, and 2-4pm. Under service availability, I just had to check the 'default schedule' box, and under 'staff' I went into each of our pages and set our availability appropriate e.g., Mondays at the above times for me, and Wed's at the above times for colleague.
This time, I've been advised this will not work and that I should configure ours by simply 'booking' appointments directly into the bookings shared calendar and then assigning to a staff member (without customers). Using this method, our availability displays perfectly on the user booking page but it fails when someone tries to actually book an appointment. I think it fails because they system thinks the staff member is busy due to the fact the appt. is booked and in both the bookings calendar and their personal calendar. However, this contradicts the fact that it is displaying these times as 'available' to book. Even when the 'events in calendar affect bookings' box is unchecked, it still won't work.
I've been messing with this for 2 weeks and at this point I think we either need to try to provide recurring availability or assign appointments to staff after the customer has chosen them (don't know how to do this), but neither of these are good solutions.
Please help.
1 Reply
The advice to create appointments to represent availability is the part I’d change. An appointment is a booking, not an opening for a customer to claim. Turning off “Events on calendar affect availability” doesn’t convert it into an available slot.
For your setup:
- Set Business hours to the overall hours you operate, such as Monday–Friday, 8–6.
- Set the service duration to one hour, assign the five staff, and make sure each booking requires one available staff member, not all five.
- Use each staff member’s working hours as their normal availability. For weekly differences, block unavailable periods using Time off in Bookings or Outlook events marked Busy, with calendar availability checking enabled.
- For service-wide exceptions, use date-specific availability where offered. Those restrictions apply to the service, not independently to each staff member.
Remove the placeholder appointments you created for testing, keeping genuine bookings intact. Then test with one staff member and one known free hour before expanding to all five.
The generic error doesn’t prove a scheduling conflict. If that simple test still fails, check that the assigned staff member has accepted any required Bookings approval, and capture the exact booking time and error for support. Overlapping staff availability is normal and shouldn’t itself prevent booking.
