Placeholders are used to block certain times in your schedule or restrict your schedules start and end times. There are two different placeholders that you can use on your schedule, Available and Unavailable placeholders.

The difference between Available and Unavailable placeholders, is that available placeholders will effect your entire day's availability and unavailable placeholders will only block off specific times on your schedule.

Continue reading to learn more about the difference between these placeholders and when to use them.

Available placeholders are used to specify when you are available on your schedule. The time frame indicated in the placeholder will reflect what is open for appointments on your schedule. Available placeholders are very helpful if you wish to have days in your schedule that are different from the clinic set start and end times.

For example, if you create an Available placeholder that has a start time of 8:30am and an end time of 10:15am, your schedule for that day will reflect accordingly. When booking in patients, it will only allow you to book appointments during the specified timeframe. As seen below, your schedule is only open between 8:30am-10:15am as per your placeholder.

If you want to create a schedule on a weekly basis that is different from your clinic settings, you can do so with an Available placeholder. You can edit the end date to extend your placeholder for a given number of days which will reflect in your schedule.

For instance, if you want to open your clinic from 8:00am to 4:30pm from the 11th to the 22nd, you will add an available placeholder for this timeframe. This allows patients to be booked in during this timeframe. Therefore, in this case, you will have the same times each day for the indicated time.

Unavailable placeholders will create a placeholder where you are unavailable for the timeframe indicated. This will not effect your start and end times for your schedule. Unavailable placeholders are a great way to block off times in your schedule that you do not want booked, for example, your lunch breaks.

When adding unavailable placeholders, it will block of specific times that you or your clinic are not available during your day. For example, if you wanted to have a break between 10:30am and 12:15pm, you can use an unavailable placeholder to block off that timeframe. That way, no appointments can be booked during this time frame. Please see image below.

If you want to block off a time in your schedule for an extended period of time, you can do so with an unavailable placeholder. You can edit the end date to extend your placeholder for a given number of days which will reflect in your schedule.

For instance, if you want to always have your lunch between 12:00pm and 1:00pm between the dates August 13 and August 18, you will add an unavailable placeholder for this timeframe. This will block off that time between those dates. Please see image below.

If you want to have your clinic open only for a certain amount of time, but still create breaks in the middle, you can use both kinds of placeholders to do this. First, you can create an available placeholder to specify when you are available to take appointments. Then, you can use the unavailable placeholders to book off the times that you do not want open on your schedule.

For example, in the images shown below, the first shows a view of what it would look like for a full clinic day with breaks. The second shows a day view of the same schedule where you can book patients in during the available times.

📖 NOTE: All placeholders can be seen in the Month view on your schedule if you need to see the details of the placeholders being used.

To learn how to create and use placeholders, click on the button below!