Admins have the ability to set up “Availability Schedules” that can then dictate when your users and sub-admins can book events and/or book certain items (Spaces, Resources, Services) on events. For example, you may want to create availability schedules for the following:
- Normal Business Hours of Operation
- School Hours of Operation (if applicable)
- Counseling
- Weekends Only
Admins have the ability to override availability schedules that are added to any space, resource or service!
However, if an availability schedule is added to the organization, a certain location or certain items, then users and sub-admins will only be allowed to request events that fall within those availability schedules. When adding an event, the system looks at the Availability Schedule, based on the following order:
- Item Level
- Location Level
- Organization Level
- If you add and associate a default Availability Schedule for your organization within Settings>Advanced>General, this will trump all other availability schedules that are added for items (Spaces, Resources, Services).
To get started with this feature, an Admin will need to go to Settings > Advanced > Availability > Schedules.
Creating a New Availability Schedule
- Click on “Schedules” then “Create New Availability Schedule”.
- Next, add the schedule name and any notes.
- Continue on by setting up your desired schedule and SAVE!
To add multiple availability schedules to your eSPACE account, just repeat the above steps.
- However, only 1 schedule can be added to each organization, location and item (space, resource, service).
You can edit or delete any schedule. To edit a schedule, click the green ”Edit” button, make your changes and SAVE. To delete a schedule, click on the red “Delete” button and Save.
Adding an Availability Schedule to your Organization
- Now that you’ve added all of your allowable Schedules, go to Settings > Advanced > General where you will see the option to select a default schedule from a drop-down menu for your Organization (all locations, spaces, resources and services).
This is an optional field; however, if a schedule is not selected then the allowable event times will start with your open time with no closing time!
- After selecting an availability schedule for your organization, be sure to click SAVE!
After an availability schedule has been applied at the organization level, users and sub-admins will only be able to schedule events within these time frames. If they try to schedule outside of this time frame, they will see the following and not be able to schedule the item(s). However, any Admin has the right to override this function!
They can then click on the red icon in order to see the conflict and see which occurrences of their event are affected.
- In the example below all the occurrences are affected, because Sunday is not available according to the availability schedule. Therefore the event needs to happen on a different day of the week so the start and end date must be changed on the main Details tab of the event.
- In this second example below, all the occurrences are affected because the availability schedule says that events can only be booked with a start and end time that falls between 7am and 10pm. Therefore the hours of the event need to be adjusted on the main Details tab.
Adding an Availability Schedule to a Specific Location:
- Go to Settings > Basic > Locations and click on the edit button to the right of your desired location.
- Select your desired Schedule and SAVE!
Once the schedule has been added and saved for the location, users and sub-admins will only be able to schedule events within these time frames. If they try to schedule outside of this time frame, they will see the following and not be able to schedule the item(s). However, any Admin has the right to override this function!
Adding an Availability Schedule to an Item(s), being Spaces, Resources, and Services:
- Go to Settings > Basic > Spaces or Resources or Services. Hover over an item, click the 3 dots and choose "Edit" item.
- Add a specific Availability Schedule and SAVE.
If you add and associate a default Availability Schedule for your organization within Settings>Advanced>General, this will trump all other availability schedules that are added for items (Spaces, Resources, Services). This is intentional as we did not want an inferior schedule (item availability schedule) to go outside of the time frame of the main ministry schedule.
Admins can further customize a schedule for any item(s) if the change is within the default organization's schedule time frames. Simply click the blue “Edit” button, as shown in the image above, make your changes, and SAVE.
View Availability Schedules for Spaces, Resources, Services
Once availability schedules are added for any space and/or resource and/or service, admins can will be able to see the names of those schedules when viewing space, resources, or services.
- Here is an example of what it looks like on the Space page under Settings > Basic.
Exporting Spaces with Availability Schedules
The availability schedules is one of the columns of information that can be included if you choose to export the spaces (or resources or services) to Excel!