Easily block specific times in staff calendars to manage availability and prevent double bookings

The Busy Slots add-on lets you easily block specific times in your staff calendar without creating an appointment.

Whether your staff needs a lunch break, time for cleaning, a private meeting, or simply a gap between two clients, Busy Slots ensures those periods are reserved — preventing any new bookings from being made during those times.

Busy Slots is fully integrated with the Booknetic calendar system, appearing in both front-end and back-end schedules.

It’s a simple yet powerful tool for managing availability and keeping your schedule realistic, organized, and conflict-free.

Why It’s Useful

Without Busy Slots, staff members often had to create “dummy” appointments just to block certain times, which cluttered reports and analytics.

Now, you can visually block any time range directly in the calendar — no fake bookings, no confusion.

It’s perfect for:

• Lunch breaks and daily pauses

• Meetings or private sessions

• Equipment or room maintenance

• Staff unavailable periods (vacations, errands, etc.)

• Flexible service scenarios that require buffer times

Key Features

Manual Time Blocking

Create a busy slot for any staff member in just a few clicks.

Choose the date, time, duration, and add an optional note (e.g., “Lunch break” or “Team meeting”).

These blocked times appear instantly in the calendar as gray events, and they are automatically respected by all booking rules.

Fully Integrated With Booking Logic

Busy slots act exactly like unavailable time — Booknetic will prevent any new appointments from being scheduled during those periods.

This works seamlessly on both the front-end booking panel and the back-end admin panel.

Dedicated Busy Slots Page

A brand-new menu appears under Appointments → Busy Slots, where you can:

• View all existing busy slots in a simple table

• Filter by staff or date

• Search by notes or keywords

• Edit or delete slots with one click

• Use bulk delete to clean up old entries

Smart Calendar Integration

Busy slots are displayed directly in the staff calendar view with:

• A gray background color (#9e9d9d)

• Start and end time shown clearly

• A short note (up to 30 characters)

• The staff’s profile photo and name

This ensures that every team member instantly knows when someone is unavailable — without opening extra pages.

Automate Busy Slots With Workflows

Take scheduling to the next level by automating your busy slots.

Using Booknetic Workflows, you can automatically create busy periods after or before certain events — for example, after a booking is made.

This feature is especially useful for complex scheduling cases like salons, clinics, or workshops where there are gaps or preparation times between service stages.

Example Scenario

Imagine a hair salon where each booking includes different stages:

The stylist only works directly with the client during the first and last parts of the appointment.

During the 30-minute drying period (09:30–10:00), they are available to serve another customer.

However, to make sure the stylist can return to finish styling at 10:00, the system must block that time in advance — otherwise, it could be booked by someone else.

Here’s where the Busy Slots module shines:

1. A Workflow is created with the trigger “New booking.”

2. The Action is set to “Create Busy Slot.”

3. The configuration adds a 30-minute slot starting 30 minutes after the appointment ends.

Now, when a booking is made for 09:00–09:30, Booknetic automatically creates a busy slot from 10:00–10:30 for that same staff member.

This ensures:

• The stylist can use 09:30–10:00 for another booking.

• 10:00–10:30 stays reserved for the original client.

• The calendar remains fully optimized and conflict-free.

This same logic works for dentists, trainers, therapists, or any business that needs smart control over staff availability between service steps.