A shared resource is something several booking types need: a treatment room, a projector, a vehicle. Declare it once, link it to the booking types that use it, and HappenBoard stops offering a time as soon as the resource is taken, whichever service took it.
Shared resources need HappenBoard Pro. See what Pro adds.
Why you need it
Say you offer a one-hour consultation and a two-hour workshop in the same room. Each booking type has its own hours and knows nothing about the other. So once someone books the consultation at 10:00, the workshop is still offered at 10:00.
Create a resource for the room and link it to both booking types. As soon as the room is taken at 10:00, that time disappears from both.
Create a resource
- Go to HappenBoard → Bookings → Resources. The screen is titled Shared resources.
- Click New resource.
- Type a Name, such as Room 1. Customers see it when they pick a resource themselves.
- Set Quantity (pool size): how many identical units you have. One room is 1, four identical projectors are 4.
- Leave Status on Active.
- Under Used by booking types, tick each booking type that uses it. Only published booking types are listed.
- Click Save. The button stays greyed out until the resource has a name.
HappenBoard counts how many units are free, not which one. For items that are not interchangeable, such as two rooms of different sizes, create one resource each.
The list shows each resource with its units, its availability rules and its booking types. A resource marked not linked to any booking type blocks nothing.
Choose how a booking type uses its resources
Each booking type linked to a resource appears under How each service uses them. Pick its Resources setting, then click the Save button on that line.
- Each booking uses every resource (default): a booking holds every resource linked to the booking type, as a massage needs both the room and the table.
- The customer picks one: a booking holds one of the linked resources. In What the choice is called, name the choice for the booking page, such as Room or Kayak. Left empty, it reads Resource.
When the customer picks and at least two active resources are linked, the booking page shows a choice. It lists Any available and the resources free at the chosen time. If the chosen one is taken in the meantime, the customer is asked to pick again. The resource held appears in the booking emails and in a Resource column on the Bookings screen.
How a time gets blocked
HappenBoard works out the times from your availability as usual. It then removes a time when a linked resource is fully used, or closed by its own availability rules. It counts the bookings of every booking type that shares the resource.
- A booking type that uses every resource keeps a time only when all of them are free.
- A booking type where the customer picks keeps a time while at least one is free.
A booking holds its resource while it is confirmed, completed, waiting for payment or waiting for your approval. So two customers cannot take the last room while one of them is still paying.
Each booking takes one unit. A pool of four means four bookings at the same time, across all the booking types that share it.
Close a resource at certain times
By default, a resource can be booked whenever its booking types can. To close it at given times, click Availability next to it. In the When … is available window, add Exceptions with the same rule editor as your hosts’ availability: a room closed for works, a van at the garage.
To offer a resource only in season, add a rule that closes it all year, then one that opens the season with a higher priority.
Ignore a resource bookings no longer need
Click Edit, set Status to Ignored (bookings no longer need it), then click Save. The list then marks the resource Ignored: not offered or counted.
An ignored resource no longer counts at all. It blocks no times, and customers cannot pick it: its booking types are booked as if it were not linked. Its links and availability rules are kept, so you only have to set it back to Active if you need it again.
Ignoring a resource does not stop its booking types from being booked. To close it for a while, for works or a holiday, keep it Active and add an availability exception instead. And on a booking type where the customer picks, if every linked resource is ignored, no times are offered at all.
Edit or delete a resource
Edit reopens the same form. Lowering the pool size does not cancel existing bookings: it only limits what is offered from then on.
Delete asks you to confirm, then removes the resource, its links and its availability rules. Existing bookings are kept. A booking that held the deleted resource then counts against every resource its booking type still links.
Who can manage resources
Managing resources takes its own permission, which administrators and editors have by default. The Resources menu entry only shows to people who have it. See Pro roles and permissions.
Next steps
- Appointment booking: overview: how booking types, availability and bookings fit together.
- Setting your availability: the hours that decide the times before resources filter them.
- Booking payments, deposits and pricing rules: take payment while the resource is held.
- Publishing the booking page: put the booking type, and its resource choice, on your site.