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The custom sessions feature allows you to restrict HotDoc appointment types to be booked only at a specific time or date. This feature can solve for cases such as:
- When a Practitioner only performs a specific appointment type on a given time or date (e.g. only Telehealth appointments in the mornings)
- When a practitioner wants to limit the types of appointment types that are available for booking (e.g. only Immunisations, Cervical Screening Test and New Patients in the afternoons)
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In this article : |
How to create a new custom session
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Custom sessions can be setup within the Practitioner Setup in your Dashboard. Once created, you can copy the schedule from one practitioner to another or setup a different schedule. |
- Login to your HotDoc Dashboard and select Bookings > Practitioner Setup and Edit next to the practitioner you would like to add a custom session for:
- Scroll down to the Appointment Types section and select Edit next to the appointment type you would like to customise:
- Within the Appointment Type Sessions, select limit availability with a custom session.
- Enter the details for your custom session then select Confirm. Here you can set the:
- Day of the week
- Hours it will start and finish
- First date that you want these sessions to show online.
- How frequently this will repeat (never, daily, weekly, fortnightly). Note, if you select daily this will change the day to everyday.
- End date (optional)
- If you would like to add another session for this appointment type that occurs on a different date or time click add session and repeat the steps, or click Save & Close.
- The next section allows you to copy your custom session to other appointment types that this practitioner has available online for bookings. Select the checkboxes next to all those applicable and click Save.
- You can then see a visual display of the custom sessions and the practitioners availabilities by going to Bookings > Availability in the Dashboard. ( For more information on how to use this please see: How to use the Availability Calendar)
- On your HotDoc Bookings page, you will then see the custom session is active and that appointment type will be restricted to the set times and days.
Some important things to note:
- By adding this custom session for a specific appointment type, you are restricting that appointment type to appear only on that day/time. If you want this appointment type to appear on another time or date, you must create another custom session.
- Patients can still book in for other appointment types at the same time as this custom session. If you want patients to only book in for one specific appointment type at a given time, see How to make only one appointment type bookable online.
- To see a visual display of all custom sessions that you've created for practitioners, you can view this in Bookings > Availability. Please see How to use the Availability Calendar for more information.
How to make only one appointment type bookable online
| If you only want only one appointment type to be bookable at a specific time or the day, you will need to limit the availability of every other appointment type that is enabled for online bookings using custom sessions. |
- Firstly, add a custom session for only the appointment type you want available online for a specific time. Follow the steps in the section above to do this.
- Once you have done this, within the practitioner setup click Edit on any other appointment type available for online bookings.
- Within the Appointment Type Sessions, select Limit availability with a custom session.
- When entering the details, ensure the start and end time exclude the times of the custom session set earlier and select Confirm:
- If you would like to add another custom session time, select Add Session and repeat the steps above, or select Save & Close:
- Check the box to copy your custom sessions to the other appointment types this practitioner has available online for bookings, then press Save:
- Press Save again to return to the practitioners settings and in the Availability column you will see "Limited Availability" next to each of the appointment types:
Genie
The custom sessions feature allows you to restrict HotDoc appointment types to be booked into specific schedule types in Genie. This feature can solve for cases such as:
- When a Practitioner only performs a specific appointment type on a given time or date (e.g. consultations in the morning and procedures in the afternoons)
Please see the steps below to learn how to customise a practitioner's sessions to better reflect how and when they want to see their patients.
- Login to your HotDoc Dashboard and select Bookings > Appointment Type and Edit next to the appointment type that you would like to limit to a certain schedule type:
- Scroll down to the Custom Schedules section and select the Limit available times to Genie Appointment Schedules check box:
- Next select all available schedule types that you would that appointment type to be bookable in and hit Save:
| Note: You can also customise this at a practitioner level via Bookings > Practitioner Setup > Edit Practitioner > Edit Appointment type |