The Appointment Manager is Fixably’s built-in scheduling tool for repair shops that want to control when customers can drop off devices, and which time slots are open for which kinds of work. It gives front-of-house staff a single calendar for the whole shop, and gives managers fine-grained control over what’s bookable and when.

This guide covers how to set it up and how to use it day to day.

Appointment Manager is operator-facing. Customers don’t interact with it directly — bookings are created by your shop staff on behalf of customers.

What you get

• One calendar for the whole shop. Day and week views, with every booked appointment coloured by the service type it belongs to.
• Explicit bookable time. You decide which time windows are open for each service type, with capacity limits and minimum lead times.
• Closures. Block specific dates or partial days — public holidays, training days, planned downtime — either manually or by importing a holiday calendar.
• Status tracking. Reserved → Arrived → Receive into the workshop, with Cancel and No-show options that capture a reason.
• Reminders. Operator-triggered email reminders sent on demand.
• Multi-location aware. Availabilities, closures and appointments can be scoped to a single location or shared across all of them.

[Screenshot: Appointment Manager weekly view with several coloured appointments]

Before you start

Three things need to be in place before Appointment Manager is useful:

1. Locations with opening hours. At least one location exists in System Settings → Locations & Stores, and its opening hours are configured. Opening hours drive how “All day” availabilities are drawn on the calendar.
2. Service types with a duration. At least one service type exists in System Settings → TAT → Service Types with a non-zero Duration. The duration controls how slots tile across the day.
3. The feature enabled on your account. Appointment Manager is enabled by Fixably — there’s no self-serve toggle. If the calendar icon isn’t in your left menu, contact Fixably support to have it switched on for your tenant.

[Screenshot: left menu with the calendar icon highlighted]

Once it’s on, the calendar icon appears in the left menu for any user with the Appointment view permission, and a new Availability tab appears under System Settings → Appointments.

The two surfaces

Appointment Manager has two parts. Most shops will configure the first once, then live in the second day-to-day.

Part 1 — Setting up availability (manager / admin)

How service types drive slot timing

Each service type carries two numbers that together define how its slots tile on the calendar.

Worked example. Duration 30 minutes, buffer 5 minutes:

• Slots start every 30 minutes: 10:00, 10:30, 11:00…
• Each booking is rendered as a 25-minute block: 10:00–10:25, 10:30–10:55…
• The 5-minute gap at the end of every slot (10:25–10:30, 10:55–11:00…) is left clear for clean-up, paperwork or a small runover.

Use the buffer when work routinely needs setup or wrap-up time. Set it to 0 if you don’t want any padding.

[Screenshot: Service Type edit form with Duration and Buffer fields visible]

Opening hours and “All day” availabilities

Each location’s opening hours are a set of (day-of-week, start time, end time) shifts. A single day can have multiple shifts (e.g. 09:00–12:00 + 13:00–17:00 if the shop closes for lunch). Days can be marked closed.

When you create an availability with All day ticked, on the calendar it is drawn shaped to that location’s opening hours — one band per shift. So an “All day” availability for a location with split-lunch hours shows as two bands on the calendar.

Configure opening hours first. Without them, an “All day” availability has nothing to render against and looks empty on the calendar.

[Screenshot: Location edit form showing Opening hours configuration]

Creating availability windows

Go to System Settings → Appointments → Availability.

You can create three kinds of windows:

1. One-off — pick a single date and a From/To time, or tick All day.
2. Recurring — choose a weekday pattern (e.g. Mon–Fri 09:00–17:00) with an end date or no end at all.
3. Global — scope it to All locations instead of a specific one. Useful for chains that want a single source of truth.

Each window carries:

• Service type — which kind of work this window opens up.
• Capacity — how many overlapping appointments a slot accepts before it’s shown as full.
• Lead time (minutes) — the minimum gap between “now” and the start of a slot for it to remain bookable. A lead time of 60 means slots inside the next hour are hidden.

[Screenshot: Availability Manager calendar with a weekly recurring band across Mon–Fri]

Edits and deletions take effect on the next page load — there’s no separate “publish” step.

Closures

Closures are grey bands on the calendar that block bookings.

• Manual closure — pick a date (or date range), tick All day or set a partial-day window, give it a name (“Staff training”, “Lunch”, “Public holiday”), and save.
• Imported holiday closure — paste a public ICS calendar URL (e.g. your country’s holidays from Google Calendar, or date.nager.at) and Fixably will pull in every date as its own closure.

Closures can be scoped to a single location or to all locations.

Fixably only accepts public ICS feeds. Internal URLs (http://localhost/…, http://192.168…) are refused for security reasons.

[Screenshot: Closures import form with an ICS URL]

Part 2 — Using the calendar (day-to-day)

Click the calendar icon in the left menu to open the Appointment Manager.

The calendar

• Day view and week view toggle at the top right.
• The mini-calendar on the side lets you jump to a specific date.
• Coloured bands on the calendar are bookable availability windows; the colour matches the service type. Grey bands are closures.
• Booked appointments sit inside the bands as filled blocks. Click any block to open its detail panel.

[Screenshot: Appointment Manager week view with the new-appointment form open on the right]

Booking an appointment

Click + New appointment. The form slides in from the right.

1. Pick a service type.
2. Pick a location (only locations with availability for the chosen service type are selectable).
3. Pick a date.
4. Pick a time — only slots that are still bookable (capacity remaining, lead time satisfied, no closure overlap) appear in the dropdown.
5. Fill in the customer — search for an existing customer or create a new one inline.
6. Optionally attach a device and an issue description.
7. Save.

The new appointment appears on the calendar in the chosen slot, coloured by the service type.

The Suggest button

If you don’t care exactly when, just pick a service type and a location, leave Date and Time empty, and click Suggest. Fixably auto-fills the next bookable slot — the first day with capacity, the first slot of that day.

• Click it again and it skips to the next slot.
• It respects closures and lead time — it won’t suggest a closed day or a slot inside the cutoff.
• It searches up to 14 days ahead. If you have no availability inside that horizon, the button does nothing.

[Screenshot: New appointment form with the Suggest button highlighted]

Status transitions

Each appointment moves through a small set of statuses, all triggered from the detail panel:

[Screenshot: Appointment detail panel with the Mark arrived / Receive / Cancel buttons]

Once an appointment is cancelled, the Edit and Reschedule actions disappear — cancelled appointments are read-only.

The Macros button

If your shop runs dashboard macros (macros that aren’t tied to a queue), they’re available right from the appointment detail panel via the lightning-bolt Macros button next to Receive. The dropdown lists only the dashboard macros the current user is allowed to run — queue-scoped macros and macros restricted by role won’t appear.

Picking a macro runs it against the appointment’s linked order, exactly as it would from the home page.

Sending reminders

Click Send reminder on any reserved appointment. The customer receives an email titled “Reminder: Your upcoming appointment” (or whatever your template subject is). The body includes:

• Customer name
• Appointment date and time (in the shop’s timezone, not the user’s browser timezone)
• Location name
• Order number

Make sure the “Reminder: Your upcoming appointment” template exists under System Settings → Email Settings → Templates before relying on this — the action will fail if the template is missing.

If neither the order’s contact nor the linked user has an email address, Send reminder fails gracefully with a red error toast.

Multi-location visibility

Each user can have a primary location. Visibility on the calendar follows that:

• Users with a primary location can act only on appointments whose linked order belongs to that same location. They’ll still see other locations’ appointments on the calendar, but clicking through bounces with an “appointment not found” message.
• Users with no primary location (global users) can act on appointments at any location.
• Global appointments (orders with no location) are visible and editable by everyone.

Permissions

Appointment Manager respects six permissions:

A view-only user can see the calendar but won’t see the + New appointment button. They can open existing appointments but the action buttons (Cancel, Edit, Mark arrived, Send reminder, Reschedule, Receive) will be hidden or disabled depending on which permissions they have.

[Screenshot: Role edit form with the appointment permissions highlighted]

Tips and gotchas

• “All day” tiles slots from 00:00–23:59 in the time picker. On the calendar the band is shaped to opening hours, but inside the new-appointment form, the Time dropdown still tiles slots across the full 24 hours. Pair “All day” with a sensible service-type duration so you don’t end up with bookable slots in the middle of the night — or use explicit From/To windows if you want strict control.
• The buffer doesn’t reduce the number of slots. A 10:00–18:00 window with duration 30 / buffer 5 still produces 16 slots; each booking just renders as 25 minutes instead of 30.
• Lead time is per availability window. If two windows of the same service type overlap (e.g. a global one and a location one), the more permissive lead time wins for that slot.
• DST is handled in the shop’s timezone. A weekly availability that spans a DST change shows slots at the same wall-clock time on both sides of the change.
• Closures don’t delete bookings. If you close a day that already has bookings, those bookings stay where they are — the closure only prevents new bookings.
• The Macros button only shows dashboard macros. If you want a macro available from an appointment, configure it without a queue.

FAQ

Can customers book their own appointments through this?
No. Appointment Manager is operator-facing — your staff book appointments on behalf of customers. Customer-driven bookings go through the separate Customer Portal flow.

How do I turn Appointment Manager on for my shop?
Contact Fixably support. There’s no self-serve switch — Fixably needs to enable it for your tenant. Once enabled, you’ll see the calendar icon in the left menu the next time you reload.

Does turning it off lose data?
No. Disabling Appointment Manager just hides the calendar icon and the Availability tab. Every appointment, availability window and closure stays in the database, and reappears intact when the feature is turned back on.

Can I have different bookable hours for different service types at the same location?
Yes. Each availability window targets one service type, so you can create separate windows for Diagnostics, Battery replacement, etc., each with its own hours and capacity.

What happens to existing internal appointments from the legacy flow?
Appointment Manager runs alongside the legacy Internal Appointments flow — both can be on at the same time. The legacy flow continues to handle Samsung GSPN sync; the new calendar handles general shop bookings. Legacy appointments do not migrate automatically.

Why does my “All day” availability look empty on the calendar?
The location it’s scoped to doesn’t have opening hours configured. Go to System Settings → Locations & Stores, edit the location, and add at least one day-of-week shift. The “All day” band will appear on the next page load.

Why is the Suggest button doing nothing?
Suggest only searches 14 days ahead. If your next bookable slot is further out than that, or if all upcoming days are closed, the button is silently a no-op. Add availability inside the 14-day horizon and try again.

Can I import multiple holiday calendars?
Yes. Import them one at a time. Each import adds its dates as individual closures, which you can edit or delete after the fact.

Can a public holiday closure be overridden for a single location?
Yes. Scope the closure to a specific location when importing, or edit the imported closure after the fact and change its location. To open a single location on a holiday, delete or edit the closure for that location only.

How are reminders sent — automatically or manually?
Manually, via the Send reminder button on each appointment’s detail panel. There is no automatic reminder schedule in this release.

What timezone do reminder emails use?
The shop’s timezone — not the operator’s browser timezone. Customers see times consistent with the shop they’re visiting.

When to contact support

A few situations aren’t user-fixable and need Fixably’s help:

• The calendar icon isn’t in your left menu after the feature was enabled.
• “Send reminder” always fails even though the reminder template exists.
• Appointments succeed but don’t appear on the calendar even after a reload.
• An “All day” availability is drawn as a single 00:00–23:59 band on the Availability Manager calendar instead of being shaped to opening hours (and you’ve confirmed opening hours are configured on the location).
• The Suggest button lands on a slot inside a closure, or before the lead-time cutoff.
• The Macros button shows queue-scoped macros, or macros the current user shouldn’t be able to run.

Email support@fixably.com with the tenant name, location id, and a screenshot — engineering can take it from there.