--- title: "Run your calendar" summary: "Book from the grid, drag an appointment to a new time, repeat it weekly, and cancel it with a reason the patient sees." source: https://practor.app/en-za/help/scheduling/run-your-calendar published: 2026-09-16T07:37:19.446Z updated: 2026-09-29T07:17:43.669Z category: "Scheduling and calendar" --- Your calendar is **Calendar** in the sidebar. It opens on this week, and the toolbar across the top decides what's drawn and how much of it. ## Choose what the grid draws Press **Events** or **Schedules**. **Events** is your appointments and anything else booked into your day. **Schedules** is the hours you're open, and it's where you block time off, which [Set your availability](/help/scheduling/set-your-availability) covers. **Day**, **Week** and **Month** set how much you see at once, and the arrows step by whatever the view shows. **Today** brings you back. Practor remembers the view you left it on. Open the **Calendars** menu to see everything being drawn. Clearing a tick takes that calendar's appointments off the grid. ![The calendar toolbar](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/calendar/toolbar.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#1128x56 "What is drawn, how much of it, and which calendars, all in one strip.") ## Book an appointment Click an empty slot and a short form opens where you clicked, with the date and time filled in. Dragging down the grid does the same across a range, and **New event** above the mini calendar offers the next half hour for an hour. **Participants** searches patients and practitioners by name and takes up to ten. A patient on the entry is what makes it an appointment rather than a note in your own diary, and it fills the title in for you. **Schedule appointment** saves it. If that time is taken, Practor heads the clash **This time is already taken** and the button becomes **Schedule anyway**. ![The form that opens when you click an empty slot](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/calendar/quick-event.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#448x627 "The rows under Participants open where they are.") The appointment type, the calendar it goes on, a repeat and notes are all on this form too, each behind a row you click to open. **More options** moves the lot into a side sheet with every field open at once, and brings what you've typed with it. ## Repeat an appointment **Recurrence** offers daily, weekly, monthly, annually and every weekday. The weekly, monthly and annual ones name the day or date you started from, so you can read what you're agreeing to. Choosing any of them brings up **Ends**, with **Never**, **On date** and **After occurrences**. Give it a date or a count and Practor checks every occurrence against what you already have booked, then lists the clashes before you save. A repeat that never ends gets no check, because there's no last date to check up to. ## Move an appointment Drag it, holding for a moment before you pull. Dragging the top or bottom edge changes how long it runs instead. Both snap to the nearest quarter hour. To move one without a mouse, Tab onto it, press Space, then use the up and down arrows: each press shifts it a quarter hour. Space again drops it, Esc puts it back. Left and right do nothing, so moving an appointment to another day is a drag. Practor asks you to confirm, with the old time above the new one. A clash doesn't block the move: the dialog lists what's already at that time and **Confirm reschedule** becomes **Reschedule anyway**. An appointment in a repeating series asks first whether you mean **This event only** or **All events in series**. ## Open an appointment Click it. The panel shows the time, the appointment type, everyone on it, and any notes. **Start encounter** is there when the appointment belongs to a patient and hasn't happened yet, and [Record an encounter](/help/patients-and-records/record-an-encounter) takes it from there. Once the start time has passed, **Mark as no-show** appears underneath. Practor won't mark it for you. ![An appointment's panel, with Start encounter on it](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/calendar/appointment.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#400x394 "Edit, cancel and close are the three icons along the top.") ## Cancel an appointment The crossed-out calendar at the top of that panel opens **Cancel this appointment?**. Choose a reason, and add a note if you choose **Other**. The reason isn't optional, because the patient is told what it was. Some are reworded on the way: "Practitioner hospitalised" reaches them as "Your practitioner is unavailable". Cancelling frees the time and tells the patient, and the appointment stays in their history marked cancelled. If the waitlist is on for that schedule, the freed slot starts going down the queue, which [Fill cancellations with a waitlist](/help/scheduling/manage-a-waitlist) covers. An entry with no patient on it asks only for a confirmation. ## Add a second calendar You start with one, badged **Default**. The **+** in the header of the **Calendars** menu adds another, taking a name, an optional description and a colour from six. That **+** sits on a practitioner's own menu, so a practice support profile sees calendars rather than makes them. The gear beside a calendar opens its settings, where the name, the colour and **Delete calendar permanently** are. The default one has no delete. Whatever sits on any of your calendars makes that time busy across your schedules, so nobody books online over the top of it. ## Keyboard shortcuts **?** opens the full list. **D**, **W** and **M** switch the view, **T** goes to today, the arrow keys step back and forward, and **N** starts an appointment. Tab onto an appointment first and **E** edits it, **Delete** starts a cancellation, and **Esc** releases it. None of them fire while you're typing or while a dialog is open. ## Related - [Set your availability](/help/scheduling/set-your-availability) - [Turn on online booking](/help/scheduling/turn-on-online-booking) - [Fill cancellations with a waitlist](/help/scheduling/manage-a-waitlist) - [Send appointment reminders](/help/scheduling/send-appointment-reminders)