A team member is a person. A resource is a thing: a grooming lane, a play yard, a van, a boarding run. Both have hours and both have capacity, and the booking engine checks whichever ones the service says it needs.
How many pets can overlap
- Open Resources and select Manage on the resource.
- On Capacity, set Pets at a Time.
- For pets from one family sharing a place, switch on Allow more siblings side-by-side and set the Same-family limit.
- Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.
The Same-family limit is the other half. 2 dogs from one family can share a place where 2 dogs from different owners could not, because the constraint you are modelling is the room.
Dog grooming: a table takes one dog, so Pets at a Time is how many tables you have running rather than how many fit a room, and the same-family limit is a rule a grooming floor rarely needs.
Link the service to the resource
Capacity on a resource does nothing on its own. The service has to say it needs one.
- Open Services, then Manage on the service and Manage Service.
- On Team & Resources, under How should resources work for this service?, choose Required, Optional or Not used.
- If you chose Required, pick the resources under Eligible Resources.
- Select Publish Changes, tick the box in Before You Publish, then select Publish Changes.
Switch the mode and read the blue line. That sentence is the product telling you, before you save, what the booking engine will do.
| Mode | What the engine does |
|---|---|
| Required | Refuses a time when no eligible resource is free |
| Optional | Staff can attach one; the engine never refuses for want of one |
| Not used | The resource is out of the calculation entirely |
Trap
A daycare that set 3 dogs on an eleven o'clock drop-off resource and still saw a fourth slot had the room configured and the service on something other than Required.
What the check honours
Every constraint above is checked when Magic Availability Check is on.
- Open Appointments, select New, then Appointment.
- Check that Magic Availability Check is switched on. On a phone it reads Magic check.
- Choose the pet, the service and one of the times it offers, then select Create Appointment.
Turn it off and you set the start and end time yourself, and the form still asks the engine in the background. It warns instead of stopping you: an amber line names the cause, such as Fully booked at this time, or says This slot isn't normally available, with See availability reasons beside it. A new appointment remembers whichever way you last left the switch.
Check
Whatever the switch says, the server still refuses the same service twice for the same pet on the same day, and still enforces any attendance cap on the pet's attributes unless you confirm an override. Team member and resource capacity are only honoured through the times the switch offers, which is how you end up with 3 dogs in a room set to 2.