Schedule Templates and Appointment Visibility — Appointment Filters and Visit Frequency Rules

Learn how to control the visibility of (Schedule Template-generated) appointment slots for online portal customers.

Intro to Appointment Visibility in the Online Portal - "Two Extra Controls"

PantrySoft actually offers two extra controls for limiting Appointment Visibility that are specific to the Online Portal Scheduling Calendar:

• Appointment (Visibility) Filters. These are Schedule-Template-specific controls over when an online portal visitor can see a given appointment slot. This is particularly important for pantries that need a "lead time" or preparation time between when a Client creates an Order and when the staff prepares and packs the Order
  (This article contains a full description of these template-specific controls)
• Visit Frequency Rules. These are global frequency rules tied to Visits of a particular Type that ensure Clients may only Visit a pantry for a specific program at a prescribed interval. Changing these rules affects how soon after a prior Visit a client can schedule another Visit.

Setting Up Appointment Filters (Setup->Schedule Templates: Specific Template) 

Admins of pantries with an Online Portal setup may wish to control the "window" in which their Online Portal customers can see upcoming appointments. These controls are known as an Appointment Filters, and are specific to each Schedule Template.

Editing Schedule Template Settings

Perform the following steps to edit the settings panel of a specific Schedule Template:

1. Edit a Template
   Go to Setup-Schedule Templates. Edit a specific template (edit pencil).
   
   
2. Open Settings
   Click the Settings button inside the Edit Schedule Template Screen.

Setting up Schedule Template's Appointment Filters (Online Portal Visibility)

Inside the Schedule Template Settings panel, review the following fields to control Appointment visibility in your Online Portal:

1. Minimum Lead Time To Make Appointment
   Expressed as "X Days" or "X Hours", Online Portal customers cannot see future appointments that fall sooner than this time interval. The default is "1 day", which would guarantee that a pantry had at least one day between the time Orders are created online and the actual pickup-appointment's day and time.
   
   
2. Maximum Lead Time To Make Appointment
   Expressed as "X Days" or "X Hours", Online Portal customers will begin to see future appointments at this time interval. The default is 30 days, which would guarantee that an Online Portal customer could begin to see appointment slots 30 days (roughly a month) from the present time.
   
   

If necessary, change the following additional rules to modify the Rolling Appointment Window:

• End of Day Appointment Cutoff (does not pertain to Same Day Appointments).
  This is the number of hours in the day that can pass before your customers' appointment request will be treated as if they were making their request on the following day.
  
  (If the number you set is 12 (which is noon), and the pantry allows a Min Lead Time of "1 day", a customer visiting the Online Portal on Monday at 1pm (the 13th hour) won't see any Tuesday (next-day) appointments on the Scheduling page. They've crossed over the cutoff, and the most proximate appointment they could see would be Wednesday's.)
  
  
• Same Day Appointment Cutoff (only pertains to a Same Day Appointments).
  This setting will prevent Online Portal customers from making an appointment after a certain time of day— but it only pertains to those pantries that give themselves less than a day in preparation (Minimum Lead Time to Make an Appointment set to X Hours rather than X Days).

Previewing/ Verifying Appointment Visibility

Admins who've just altered an Schedule Template's Appointment (visibility) Filters may wish to quickly verify the "window" of visibility they've created conforms to their expectations.

From any of the Edit Schedule Template screens, perform the following steps to "preview" a Schedule Template's Appointment Filters:

1. Save and Preview
   Click the Save and Preview button atop the screen.
   (You will instantly see a Preview screen for this template, currently showing the view your Online Portal customers would see if they chose this Template right now.)
   
   
2. Choose a "Now"
   Click the calendar icon next to the Preview As Of This Date/Time field and choose a date and time. This will dictate what day and time the preview will simulate.
   
   
3. Verify Visibility
   Verify you can see the appointment slots you expect to see based on the template's Appointment (Visibility) Filters.

Visit Frequency and the Online Portal

Visit Frequency Rules affect certain Online Portal setups (see next section ). Read the Visit Frequency Rules article to learn more. 

Why Visit Frequency Rules for Appointment Visibility?

Orders are Visits and Appointments Combined. In PantrySoft, an Appointment record is a promise to appear, whereas a Visit record is an actual proof of service (i.e. most reports in PantrySoft count Visits and not Appointments). But in most Online Portal setups, customers create an Order online, which is a combination of an Appointment record (intention to appear) and a future Visit record (often including a "basket" of distributed inventory items), both linked and set for the exact same time.

Visit Frequency Rules Restrict Orders. Because an Order is (often) a Visit and an Appointment, Clients logging into the optional Online Portal may encounter Visit Frequency restrictions to their available appointments. Even outside an online portal setup, Admins can build Visit Frequency Rules that restrict the frequency a Client can take advantage of a particular program (log a Visit of a particular Visit Type). Therefore online portal customers cannot make an Order (Appointment combined with a Visit of a particular Visit Type) that would violate a Visit Frequency rule. (For example, the default Visit Frequency Rule enforces a once-per-week rule for the default "Standard" Visit Type. This means an online portal customer wouldn't be able to choose multiple appointment slots for the same availability program in the same week on a Schedule Template tied to the "Standard" Visit Type)