How can the Appointment Cluster be used?

By default, all available appointments on a given day are offered to your customers, which can lead to gaps and standing times between appointments. By using the appointment cluster, you can ensure that only the periods that are adjacent to appointments that have already been booked are suggested.

1. Introduction
2. Anchor Times

Introduction

You activate the appointment cluster for the entire eTermin account under Scheduling Page > Settings > General.

On days without any booked appointments, all free time frames defined in the working hours are suggested at the beginning.

However, if the first appointment is booked, for example at 1 p.m., then only appointment slots that are adjacent to the appointment already booked will be offered. In our example these are the periods at 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.

The appointment cluster function can also only be activated for individual calendars. This is possible under Company > Calendar > Advanced Settings.

Use of Anchor Times

If you do not want all free periods to be offered on days without a booked appointment, you can work with anchor times. You specify which time windows should be suggested first. The appointment cluster then works as usual and only suggests periods that are adjacent to existing appointments.

You set anchor times directly in the appointment cluster option under Scheduling Page > Settings > General. To do this, click on the Edit anchor times button.

You can decide here whether the anchor times should apply weekly or only for certain days. If you create an anchor time for a day, instead of all free appointments on a day, only the appointments that border the created anchor time will be offered.

You also have the option of creating multiple anchor times for one day. Here you can specify whether the anchor times should be ignored as soon as an appointment has been booked. This allows you to specify the time at which you prefer to have appointments on a given day and the other appointments will then be booked before or after.
If the anchor times are not ignored after an appointment has been booked, the corresponding appointment slots will continue to be offered until the entire day is fully booked.

If you have any questions or need help with configuration, please contact us.