Turn on online booking

Online booking is set up in two places. A schedule is made public one at a time, and the rules that apply to every online booking are set once for the practice. ## Make a schedule public Open **Calendar → Availability**, choose the schedule, and go to **Sharing & permissions**. That entry belongs to a practitioner profile, so a schedule is made public by the practitioner who owns it. [Set your availability](/help/scheduling/set-your-availability) has the rest of that screen. The **Public booking** card turns it on. Its description is the whole of what it does: allow anyone with the link to book appointments. There's no sign-in and no invitation, so the link is the access.  The same card shows the link and copies it for you. It ends in the schedule's id, and opening it forwards to the practitioner's booking page: to `/book/` and their directory address if they have one, or to `/book/` and the schedule id if they don't. So the address a patient ends up on can look different from the one you copied. A schedule that isn't public has no bookable link. Practor resolves a booking link only for a schedule that is both active and public, and answers 404 otherwise. Each schedule is separate. Making one public leaves every other schedule closed. Make two of your schedules public and a patient opening your directory address is asked which one they want first. A link that names a schedule goes straight there. ## Choose whether a request is confirmed straight away **Settings → Online booking**, under **New bookings**: | Option | What happens | | --- | --- | | Ask us first: we approve each request | The booking waits in your pending appointments queue until someone accepts or declines it | | Confirm straight away | The patient has a confirmed appointment when they finish booking | A practice starts on **Ask us first**.  A request nobody answers expires once its time has passed. It doesn't become a booking, and Practor emails the patient to say it expired. ## Set how late a patient can change a visit Two settings on the same screen, both offering the same five choices: any time before the appointment, or 2, 12, 24 or 48 hours before. Both start at 24 hours before. **Patients may reschedule until** is the one that stops a patient. Past it, the move button is replaced by a line telling them to phone you, and a **Call** button with your number on it. A late move would spend the same slot twice, so it comes to you. **Patients may cancel until** doesn't stop anything. A patient can always cancel, whatever you set here, because the alternative isn't that they keep the appointment: it's that they phone, or don't arrive, and you find out at the door. Past the deadline they see **This is short notice**, they cancel anyway, the slot is freed, and the cancellation reaches you marked late. For three minutes after a booking is made, both deadlines are off: a patient can cancel or move it whatever you've set. ## Ask for a reason, and cap the bookings a day - **Ask for a reason for the visit** puts an optional box on the last step of booking, for what the appointment is about. It starts on. - **Maximum bookings per patient per day** caps how many times one patient can book themselves in on a single day. It accepts 1 to 50 and starts at 10. ## Where the link goes The booking link is public and needs no login. It can be shared directly, put on your website, or reached from your directory listing on practor.app. ## Related - [Set up your practice](/help/getting-started/set-up-your-practice) - [Fill cancellations with a waitlist](/help/scheduling/manage-a-waitlist) - [What happens after you book an appointment](/help/scheduling/what-happens-when-you-book) - [Publish your practice to the directory](/help/getting-started/publish-your-practice-to-the-directory)