Panacea makes it easy to define when your staff are availble to work and when they can take appointment bookings.

Staff availabilty is controlled in two places:

At the clinic level, where you define the 'Working Hours' for the clinic.
At the staff level, where you define the 'Working Hours' for each individual staff member.

Panacea lets you set recurring (weekly) and ad-hoc scheduling rules that give you complete control over when and how you accept appointment bookings.
Online appointment slots will only be available to customers at times when one or more users are 'Online Available' (and not otherwise booked for appointments). This prevents customers from booking appointments when you don't want them to. Please refer to the Clinic & Staff Schedules for Online Booking section for more information on this topic.
Although users are provided with visual indicators that staff are not available at certain times, users still can make bookings at these 'unavailable' times. This reflects the fact that vets don't always have complete control over their schedules (emergencies don't care much for our shcedules!)

Understanding the Schedule

The schdedule uses visual indicators to indicate when staff are available to take bookings:

A purple dot next to the users' name indicates that the staff member is available to accept online bookings (users without this dot are note available for online bookings at any time)
The purple line at the left of the users' schedule column indicates that the user is available for online bookings at the specified time.
White spaces indicate that the user is available for appointment bookings.
Light red spaces indicate that the user is not available for appointment bookings.

Heirarchy of Scheduling Rules

Scheduling functionality works on the concept that users can only be available to take bookings when the clinic is open, so clinic availabiltiy limits staff availability. Put simply, if the clinic is closed (i.e. Working Hours set to 'Unavailable' for the clinic) then staff will not be available for appointment bookings.
Otherwise Panacea assesses the precedence of scheduling rules using the following priority order (each rule has priority over those below it)

Rules for specific dates (single date or date range):
'Unavailable' takes precedience over 'Available'
User rules
Clinic rules
Recurring rules defined for specific days of the week (rosters):
'Unavailable' takes precedience over 'Available'
User rules
Clinic rules

The 'Available' and 'Online Available' settings are not mutually exclusive. Clinics and staff members can be available for bookings made in-clinic ('Available') and bookings made online ('Online Available') simultaneously.

Creating and Modifying Clinic Working Hours

Access clinic schedules by clicking 'Settings --> Clinics' from the left navigation menu. Click on the required clinic then click the 'Working Hours' tab.
The Working Hours schedules for the clinic will be displayed as below:

Add or modify schedules by using the 'Plus' ('+') or pencil icons respectively. You will be presented with a screen similar to the one below:

Options configurable on this screen are:

Name: A descriptive name for the schedule
Availability. Possible options are:
- Available (available for appointment bookings)
- Online Available (available for online bookings)
- Unavailable (not available for bookings)
Description: Optional description of the schedule
Schedule Type. Possible options are:
- Single Day - Schedule applies to specified day only
- Date Range - Schedule applies to date range only
- Days of Week - Recurring schedule by weekday
Date range or day selector: Appearance varies based on Schedule Type, allows user to select days of the week or dates that schedule rule will apply.
Start and End Times: Start and end times for the schedule on the days when it will apply. Select 'Full Day' if the schedule is to appy for the whole day (i.e. midnight to midnight).

Creating and Modifying Staff Working Hours

Staff working hour schedules are created and modified identically as for clinic schedules, as described above.

Access the staff Working Hours section by clicking 'Settings --> Staff', then clicking on the required staff member and then on the 'Working Hours' tab.