Conditional time slots

Hello, we have a scenario where we want to open 2 bookings per slot at certain times. Our slots are in 30 minute increments and by default allow only 1 booking per slot.

This Saturday we have 2 staff members available for bookings from 09:00 - 11:00 so wanted to allow 2 bookings for each 30 minute slot, then go back to the default of 1 booking per slot after that time.

So 2 unique users could book at lets say 09:30 or 10:00 but at 11:00 go back to the default so only 1 unique user could book 11.

In the past I have tried to do this manually by logging in and moving the 09:30 so it freed up for another booking but its not possible to move without cancel or reschedule.

Any thoughts appreciated.

I’ll answer my own post :slight_smile:

Just came across YCBM-UNITS-1 which Id never known about before, seems with a little messing about it could work but in reverse of what I needed.

As I understand, this works with group bookings, so if I enable that and set limit to 2 all my slots become available to allow 2 bookings.

This gets tricky and is open to mistakes for me, I can only allow 2 slots for certain hours at the weekend, it seems a lot of manual work to add YCBM-UNITS-1 to the remainder of my slots forever.

Does anyone know if there is a reverse option for this? If we could disable group bookings but add YCBM-UNITS-2 only on timeslots where we can allow 2 bookings? Would be so much easier to manage and avoids the mistakes I know we will make by not closing slots down in Outlook :slight_smile:

@GaryBrett, yes I saw your post and was going to suggest the same thing. It is a huge workaround and would allow you to have the setup you need with alternating capacity. The other option (very manual) would be to mark any booking as FREE if it comes in during a time you needed 2 slots, but I would need to test it to make sure the logic is the same as it was in the past.

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Thanks Ben, it would work really well I think, but understand it’s not the way YCBM perhaps intended ( YCBM-UNITS-1).

When you say hug workaround, do you mean it would take a lot of work for your dev team?

The second option you kindly suggested, adding FREE to an already existing appointment doesn’t work unfortunately. I just tried on a booking we have for tomorrow. If that had worked it would be great and easily manageable for us.

Actually, anything that allowed us to do this without enabling the group option would be brilliant :smiling_face:

Thank you

I mean using the YCBM-UNITS-1 allows the calendar to soak up one of the units leaving only 1 when you want it, but to set this up you need to have events all over your calendar when you only wanted one, so it isn’t very user friendly. We are exploring different availability rules to allow this dynamic setup.

Agreed, it would be a big job to manage it manually with the prospect of missing slots and getting to many bookings.

Good to hear you are looking at the reverse options, I’ll keep my eye out for that.

Should the FREE option you mentioned work? Is there a setting in YCBM I need to enable? We use the option of setting times in YCBM rather than calendar managed.