In Cliniko, we are only set up for weekly availabilities. This means that any changes made to the availability section in your user profile will affect every week. However, with a bit of tweaking, you can set up a fortnightly schedule!
There are two ways this can be done:
If you're setting up a fortnightly schedule for another practitioner, the process is just a tiny bit different. That's covered at the bottom of this guide, here.
Option one: set up a fortnightly schedule using unavailable blocks
In this example, we'll be working 9-5 every other Saturday, but the same principles will apply for any days or times you wish to set up a fortnightly schedule!
This is going to be pretty much the same as scheduling time off, but the function of unavailable blocks will be used for a different end result!
First, set up your days and hours.
Head to your practitioner information and scroll down to the Practitioner availability section:
Edit your availabilities so that you are working on Saturdays (tick the box next to Saturday, and set your hours accordingly):
Press the Update practitioner button!
Now, "cover up" the days and hours you won't be working on the calendar.
Head to the Appointments page, and find the first instance of the day/hours you will not be working (i.e. the first day off). Click on Unavailable block:
You'll notice that a yellow message appears across the top of the screen, prompting you to select a time to add it:
Click on the first day you will not be working, you will see a new unavailable block pop up. There are a few things to do, now!
Select the type of unavailable block you want to use.
Be sure you set the hours so that it will "cover up" the entire time you're available.
Set it to repeat—this is very important! To ensure that it "covers up" every other Saturday (in this example), it has to be repeating weekly, every 2 weeks, and ending after a certain number of occurrences. (The highest you can go is 51 occurrences.)
Add a note if applicable (this will show up as the "title" of the unavailable block).
Here's an example of what one might look like:
Click Save unavailable block, and you will see that it now "covers up" the appropriate days on your calendar:
Every other Saturday was the example here, but this can be done for any day!
Option two: set up a fortnightly schedule using one-off availabilities
In this example, we'll be working 9-5 every other Saturday, but the same principles will apply for any days or times you wish to set up a fortnightly schedule!
If you'd rather keep things a little more "locked down" and not need to close time off, you can use one-off availabilities to do so.
🚨 Just a heads up that once you've added a one-off availability, you won't be able to change or delete it. No worries though, you can always use repeating Unavailable Blocks to cover it up, or just hit up our support team and they'll help you remove the blocks. Easy peasy!
First, set up your days and hours.
Head to your practitioner information and scroll down to the Practitioner availability section:
Edit your availabilities so that you are not working on Saturdays (untick the box next to Saturday):
Press the Update practitioner button!
Now, "open up" the days and hours you will be working on the calendar.
Head to the Appointments page, and find the first instance of the day/hours you will be working. Click on One-off availability:
You'll notice that a yellow message appears across the top of the screen, prompting you to select a time to add it:
Click on the first day you will be working, you will see a new availability block pop up. There are a few things to do, now!
Be sure you set the hours so that it will "open up" the entire time you're available.
Set it to repeat—this is very important! To ensure that it "opens up" every other Saturday (in this example), it has to be repeating weekly, every 2 weeks, and ending after a certain number of occurrences. (The highest you can go is 51 occurrences.)
Here's an example of what one might look like:
Click Save availability, and you will see that it now "opens up" the appropriate days on your calendar:
Appointments can now be booked into that open space!
Setting up a fortnightly schedule for another practitioner
Note that you have to be set up with the administrator role to do this—if you're not an administrator, you will not be able to modify anyone else's information, including practitioner schedules.
In some cases, you might be setting up someone else's availability. Rather than going to the My info section (as that will only let you make changes to your own information), you'll want to head to Settings, and then Users & practitioners:
Select the practitioner's name from the list:
Scroll down to the "Edit their practitioner settings" button:
At the bottom of the page, you'll see the Availability section, and you can set up or modify that practitioner's schedule accordingly:
Be sure to hit the Save practitioner button!
Since that will be the "main" schedule, you'll then want to make sure to modify their calendar on the appointments page itself. You'll be able to do this by either:
Both of these processes are identical to the way you'd set up your own fortnightly schedule.
If you're an administrator and need to set this up for your practitioners, the same process will apply—you'll just need to edit each practitioner's availability first!