Adding Blocked/Unavailable Time

Why blocked time exists as its own concept

Not every hour on a practitioner's calendar is available for booking, and pretending otherwise creates real problems: a patient booked over a practitioner's lunch break, or a training day that quietly gets filled with appointments because nothing on the calendar signaled it was off-limits. Blocked time solves this by giving unavailability a real place on the grid — the same grid appointments live on — rather than relying on staff to simply remember which hours are off-limits.

A block isn't a patient visit and never becomes one. It's a marker that a period of a practitioner's day (or a whole day, for something like a public holiday) is reserved for something other than seeing patients — lunch, a public holiday, an internal training session, or anything else your clinic wants to track this way.

What you'll learn

How to switch the calendar into block-entry mode and what changes while you're in it
How to create a one-time or recurring block
How existing blocks appear on the grid, and how they differ visually from appointments
How to edit or delete a block, including just one occurrence of a recurring one

Real-world scenarios for blocking time

The most common use is the everyday one: a recurring lunch block for each practitioner, so the scheduler itself refuses to look free during that hour instead of relying on staff discipline to leave it empty. Beyond that, clinics typically reach for blocked time in a handful of recurring situations.

Holiday closures — a one-time, full-day block across the whole clinic (or a specific practitioner) for a public holiday or clinic closure, so no one can accidentally book into a day you're shut.
Staff training days — a one-time or occasional block when a practitioner is out for a workshop, certification renewal, or internal training, keeping their calendar honest for anyone else checking availability.
Lunch and break coverage — a recurring daily block per practitioner, so lunch doesn't need to be re-entered every single day.
Administrative or catch-up time — some clinics block a recurring slot each week for a practitioner to catch up on notes or paperwork, protecting it from being booked over just like a patient visit would be.

Because blocks live on the same grid as appointments and use the same drag-resistant, color-coded visual language described in Using the Appointment Scheduler, staff don't need to learn a second mental model to work around them — they simply see the hatched area and know not to book there.

Creating a block

Creating a block is a genuine step-by-step process, since the calendar has to be switched into a distinct entry mode first so that clicking a slot doesn't accidentally open the appointment drawer instead.

Turn on Add Block

Click the Add Block toggle in the scheduler header. A banner appears confirming the calendar is now in block-entry mode.

Click a slot

Click a slot on the calendar. Instead of the appointment drawer, a block drawer opens.

Choose the block type

Select the unavailable block type, such as Lunch, Holiday, or Training.

Set recurrence, if needed

By default the Recurrence dropdown is set to One-time. Choosing any other option reveals an End Date field.

Save

Save the block. It appears on the grid as a diagonal-hatched overlay.

The scheduler in block-entry mode, showing the Add Block banner at the top and the block drawer open with block type, recurrence, and date fields.

Remember to turn Add Block off again While block-entry mode is on, clicking a slot creates a block instead of opening the appointment drawer. If you're bouncing between blocking a practitioner's lunch and booking a patient, toggle Add Block off once you're done blocking so a click doesn't unintentionally open a block drawer instead of a booking.

Recurring blocks and how they render

The End Date field is conditional The End Date field only appears once you pick a recurrence option other than One-time. Its label switches between "Date" and "Start Date" depending on whether the block is one-time or recurring. Switching the Recurrence dropdown back to One-time clears any end date you'd set.

Existing blocks render on the grid as diagonal-hatched overlays with a small pencil-icon edit handle, so you can distinguish them from real appointments at a glance — the hatching pattern is deliberately unlike any appointment type's solid color block, so there's no ambiguity about whether you're looking at a patient visit or a period of unavailability.

A recurring block behaves like a recurring appointment in one important respect: it generates individual occurrences across the date range you set, and each occurrence can later be edited or deleted independently of the series, which is what the next section covers.

Editing and deleting a block

Open the block

Click the pencil-icon edit handle on the hatched block to reopen the block drawer.

Make changes or delete

Update the fields and save, or use the delete button to remove the block.

Delete options depend on recurrence "Delete this" (removing just a single occurrence) only appears when you're editing an existing occurrence of a recurring block. Otherwise the button is simply labeled "Delete," or "Delete all" when the block has recurrence set.

This distinction matters most in the training-day and one-off scenario: if a practitioner's recurring Monday lunch block needs to move for a single week because of a special event, you'd use "Delete this" on that one occurrence rather than removing the whole recurring series and having to recreate it afterward.