Appointments vs. Availabilities
timum is about bookable times and booked or agreed times. In general, this is often referred to under the umbrella term 'appointment'. To reflect different use cases and needs, a distinction is made between appointments and availabilities.
An Availability is a period during which you are open for appointment bookings, but your calendar is only blocked once a customer selects a time within the availability and requests or books an appointment. Through availabilities, you can offer various appointment types for selection, from which customers can then choose the appointment type they want.
A bookable appointment is a fixed appointment with one or more free bookable participant slots. These are fixed, scheduled appointments that are meant to block your calendar directly. You define the appointment type in advance. Contacts book themselves into these predefined appointments as participants — with a fixed start time that you specify; and the booked appointment, which results from a booking. This page shows how they differ.
Personal appointments are, on the one hand, individual appointments that you enter (book in) for a specific contact. These appointments are not accessible through the usual booking views. However, personal appointments can also be closed events, for which several participants are permitted, who are invited via a special link through which these otherwise invisible appointments are exclusively bookable.
The Difference
| Availability | Bookable Appointment | Booked Appointment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is it? | Time window in which customers choose the start time themselves | Fixed appointment with a start time and duration that you specify | Appointment with at least one participant |
| Who creates it? | You (individually or via a consultation-hours rule) | You (individually or as a series) | Created by a booking or request — or you enter it as a personal appointment |
| Multiple participants? | One booking per selected time slot; multiple with “Group appointments” | Yes, via “Participants per appointment” (group appointment) | Up to the configured number of participants |
| Typical use | Viewings chosen by the customer, consultations | Open House, group viewing, seminar | – |
| Calendar synchronization | No, only booked appointments appear in calendars. | Yes, even the still-open appointments are synchronized directly to the calendar. | Yes, booked appointments are synchronized to linked calendars. |
How are they connected?
- You create availabilities (time windows) or set bookable appointments (fixed times)
- Customers book from these
- A booking becomes a booked appointment with the customer as a participant
- The availability or bookable appointment is reduced according to the number of participants, or disappears from the offering
Important to know
- Appointments can also be created without a prior availability: you enter them as a personal appointment
- Availabilities without bookings do not disappear automatically
- If a cancellation occurs, the slot becomes free again, provided the availability or bookable appointment still exists