Joint Calendars A Andrew Kelly

What are Joint Calendars?

Joint calendars are calendars that link with two or more other calendars, allowing you to offer appointments that involve multiple staff members.

Acuity only displays times as available on the joint calendar when none of the linked calendars have an appointment. And when appointments are booked on the joint calendar, Acuity blocks off time on the linked calendars.

Note: Joint calendars will only work if all of the calendars you are linking are in the same timezone.

Some common alternatives to joint calendars:

• Need to avoid double booking across two or more calendars, but don't need multiple staff members at the same appointment? Use Rooms/Resources.
• Trying to connect your Acuity account to another calendar, such as Google Calendar or Outlook? Read about calendar syncing.
• Need calendars for multiple staff members or locations? This article describes the process.

 

An Example of Joint Calendars

Bob and Linda both offer individual appointments, but also want to offer joint appointments. So they set up a joint calendar. There are three calendars total: "Bob," "Linda," and "Bob and Linda." An appointment on "Bob and Linda" will block off time on both "Bob" and "Linda." Appointments on either "Bob" or "Linda" will block off time on "Bob and Linda."

Joint Calendar Setup

1. Make sure you need to have at least two staff member in the same appointment. If you don't, a joint calendar isn't the right solution.
2. Check that those staff members also offer individual appointments. If they don't, use one calendar, entering each staff member's e-mail address in the calendar settings.
3. Make sure you have at least two staff members with separate calendars set up in Acuity. This will require either the Growing Business or Powerhouse Player plans. If you need to, you can upgrade your plan in the My Account section, then create calendars for each staff member.
4. Contact support and ask to have calendar linking enabled.
5. Once you hear back that the setting is enabled, go to Business Settings > Availability & Calendars.
6. Make sure there is a calendar for each staff member, plus another calendar to serve as the joint calendar.
7. Enter availability separately for each calendar, including the joint calendar.
8. Go to the Settings tab of the joint calendar.
9. At the bottom right of the page, find the Sharing section and check the boxes for all calendars that will be linked to the joint calendar, then click Save Calendar.
10. If you rely on syncing with an external calendar (Google, iCloud, Microsoft, etc.) to block off time, you'll need to have each user set the joint calendar to sync with their own outside calendar.

 

Note: If you have Availability By Appointment Type set up, instead of the Sharing section, you will find a link to the Availability tab, where there will be a Sharing button for each availability group.

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