Appointment Booking¶

Several improvements have been made around the appointment booking process.

Non-Blocking Appointment Requests¶

This is a new option available when making appointment requests, where slots that are returned as available are not reserved in the schedule until the point where they are accepted.

This has the advantage that offers relating to previous requests, or to previously considered slots for the current request, do not prevent subsequent offers from being made. This is especially useful when booking longer duration activities, when requesting offers for many slots per day, or when the activity being requested has linked activities associated to it.

The disadvantage with this approach is that since the slot is not reserved, there is a chance that it may no longer be available when it is selected. To allow for this a confirmation step should be performed to verify that the chosen slot is still available when it has been selected.

Non blocking appointments can be requested via the existing API methods available, and in particular the 'RequestAppointments' Gateway or Web Interface methods. The same method can be used to confirm the availability of the selected offer.

The option to use non-blocking appointment requests can be specified via the Appointment_Request attribute, or the Appointment_Template attribute. If Appointment Templates are being set up and used via the Advanced Resource Planner, the attribute can be set on the templates specified here.

Improved Booking of Linked Activities¶

Improvements have been made to the handling of linked activities within the appointment booking process. This is where the activity being booked has one or more co-requisite activities (e.g. a 2-person job), or pre-requisite activities (e.g. an activity to pick up a part or access key) attached to it.

The improvements include general improvements to the code around choosing the best position in the schedule for each linked activity, and the inclusion of a 'multiple attempt' loop when choosing these best positions.

General Performance Improvements¶

There have also been general improvements made to the performance of Appointment Booking Engine, and to the full appointment booking process. Tests have shown that offers are returned on the 6.2 version in around half the time it was taking on the 6.1 version.

Documentation and Support¶

See the Scheduling Concepts - Appointment Booking Guide for full details of this functionality.