Assign Service to Day of the Week

[Alastair Greenstreet]

Hi There,

Is there any way to assign a service to be available just on certain days of the week and ideally only at certain times?

We have two services one that is offered on a Monday and one that is offered on a Wednesday but there is no way to restrict which days show up as available as we have made both Monday & Wednesday time slots available and a customer can pick either day of the week regardless of the service they choose.

What we want is once the customer has clicked the service can the days of the week be restricted to just show the appropriate availability for that service?  Or if they first click day of the week first can only the service offered on that day be selected, either removing the other service item or graying it out?

Thanks for the consideration of this improvement suggestion.

Alastair

[#2]

Hi Alastair,

Thanks for your question!

There is a way to do what you want but it requires a workaround.

1. Create 2 staff members (I.e. Staff 1: Provides Monday service), this can be done with a free Outlook.com account

2. Assign each service only to one staff member

3. Set the availability of each staff to mimic the service day

4. In the "Services" tab, assign the respective staff member to the service

By doing this, you make sure that only one of the staff members can perform the service and since that staff member will only be available on Mon or Wed, the service can only be performed on those days.

Also, it seems you have already done this, but make sure that your "Business hours" in "Business information" are set to only Mon and Wed.

Let me know if this helps!

Gabriel.

[#3]

Hi Gabriel,

Thank you so much for taking the time to research an answer to our need.  It definitely will work but has the limitation of only applying one staff member to a service.  In our situation there are up to three staff members for the service on Wednesday that need to be assigned.

Actually after posting I experimented and found an alternative way of making this work that might help others as well as your technique.

Logged into Bookings

• Business Information menu selected
• Modify your business hours time slots
• Monday has 1hr 30min allocated
• Wednesday has 2hrs allocated
• Both services themselves (Monday & Wednesday) actually run for just 1hr

• Services menu selected
• Default duration options
• Buffer Time > For Monday's service set the buffer time after the service to 30min

• Buffer Time > For Wednesday's service set the buffer time after the service to 1hr

So with the service times (Monday & Wednesday) running for 1hr and combining the buffer times,

Monday:  1hr + 30min

Wednesday:  1hr + 1hr

Start Times Limited

The start times still only show the desired one time slot available starting at 7pm and the customer can't pick a different start time due to the after buffer time being added.

Now when you select a service only the days that can offer the service plus needed buffer time actually show up on the bookings calendar page.  You click on Monday's service and just Monday dates show and you click on Wednesday's service and just Wednesday dates show.

 

Its a bit clunky but it does allow you to still allocated more than one staff member to a service and not have to create a fake staff member so has these advantages.  Again I so appreciate your taking the time to help me out and I hope both our solutions help others in the same need.

Still it would be nice to have a neater way to do this and I respectfully submit to the Bookings Team an enhancement request for this feature to be built-in without the workarounds.

Alastair

[#4]

Actually thinking about this some more, I clearly see that Wedneday's 2hr service need won't fit into Monday's time slot so would hide Monday's from the calendar schedule but in theory Monday's 1hr 30min service need SHOULD fit into Wednesday's time slot so both days should be shown.

Not sure why its working but it is! Played around and found this solution by chance.

[#5]

Hi Alastair - Thanks for sharing your solution! I am glad you were able to make it work.

The best way to recommend/ask for features is to post them directly into the Bookings Uservoice channel - https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings

The team prefers to hear directly from customers and this way, they are able to prioritize their work if other customers upvote your idea.

Thanks!