Understand Private Session Availability

Private session availability determines which time slots your customers can see and request or book. This article is a deep dive into how availability is calculated. It explains how your settings - such as availability, session duration, booking rules, and assigned trainers or rooms - interact to create the final time slots shown to customers.

Understanding this logic helps you to:

• Identify why certain time slots are not shown
• Adjust your setup more precisely
• Avoid unexpected booking behavior

If you’re looking to configure private sessions, check the related setup articles below.

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🔗 Related Setup Articles

To get the most out of this article, it helps to be familiar with how private sessions are set up:

• How to create and manage private sessions in your Eversports Manager
  → Learn how to create private sessions and define their basic setup
• Make your private session offer available for online booking
  → Understand how availability is used for booking requests and customer booking

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🧠 How Availability Is Calculated

The system calculates availability step by step.
At each step, invalid time slots are removed until only valid options remain.

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1. Start with Your Booking Availability

The system first determines when sessions are generally allowed.

It uses:

• Default availability (defined in your Private Sessions extension settings), or
• Custom availability (set directly on the private session offer)

You define:

• Days of the week
• One or more time ranges per day (e.g. 09:00–12:00, 14:00–18:00)

👉 If a day or time is missing completely, check your booking availability settings first.

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2. Apply Date-Specific Availability

You can override your booking availability for specific dates using date-specific availability (defined in your Private Sessions extension settings)

💡 Examples:

• Weekly: Monday 09:00–17:00
  → Specific date: 09:00–12:00
  ✅ Only 09:00–12:00 is available
• Weekly: Wednesday 10:00–18:00
  → Specific date: Closed
  ❌ No availability
• Weekly: Sunday unavailable
  → Specific date: 10:00–14:00
  ❌ Still unavailable

👉 If availability looks different on a specific date, check your date-specific availability settings.

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3. Generate Possible Start Times

Within each time range, the system generates possible start times.

This depends on your appointment start time setting:

• Every hour → 09:00, 10:00
• Every 30 minutes → 09:00, 09:30
• Every 15 minutes → 09:00, 09:15, 09:30

👉 Start times always align with fixed intervals (e.g. :00, :15, :30, :45), regardless of when your availability starts.
For example, if your availability starts at 09:10, the first possible start time (every 30 minutes) will still be 09:30, not 09:10.

👉 If a specific start time (e.g. 09:15) is missing, check your start time interval settings.

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4. Check Session Duration

Each session must fully fit into the availability window.

💡 Example:

Availability: 09:00–12:00
Duration: 60 minutes

✅ 10:00 → ends at 11:00
❌ 11:30 → ends at 12:30 (outside availability)

👉 If later time slots are missing, your session duration might not fit into the remaining time.

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5. Apply Booking Rules

The system checks if a time slot can be booked based on your online registration period.

This defines a time window:

• How far in advance a session can be booked
• How close to the start time a booking is still allowed

💡 Example:

If you set:

• From 7 days before
• Until 24 hours before

A session:

• ✅ Can be booked up to 7 days in advance
• ❌ Cannot be booked less than 24 hours before it starts

👉 If a time slot is not visible:

• It may be too soon (too close to the start time), or
• Too far in the future (outside your booking window)

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6. Check Teachers/Trainers and Rooms (If Assigned)

If your private session has assigned:

• Teachers/Trainers
• Rooms

The system checks for conflicts.

A time slot is only available if:

• At least one teacher/trainer is free
• At least one room is free
• No overlapping bookings exist

💡 Examples:

• Teacher/trainer already booked → ❌ not available
• Two teachesr/trainers assigned, one free → ✅ available
• No teacher/trainer assigned → ✅ no restriction

👉 If a time slot is missing despite availability, a teacher/trainer or room might already be occupied.

👉 If no teachers/trainers or rooms are assigned to the private session, availability is not restricted by them.
This means all time slots that pass the previous steps will remain available.

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7. Consider Buffer Time

Buffer time adds a gap after each session.

This blocks an assigned teachers/trainers and/or room for additional time after the session.

Use this to:

• Avoid back-to-back bookings
• Allow time for preparation, cleanup, or breaks

💡 Example:
A 60-minute session with a 15-minute buffer means the teacher/trainer and/or room is occupied for 75 minutes.

👉 Note:
Buffer time only affects spacing between bookings — not availability itself.

💡 Example:
A 60-minute session can still start at 11:00 within a 09:00–12:00 window, even with buffer time, as long as the session ends by 12:00.

👉 If time slots near existing bookings are missing, buffer time may be blocking them.

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8. Final Available Time Slots

Only time slots that pass all checks are shown.

Customers will see:

• Available dates
• Valid start times
• Grouped by morning, afternoon, evening

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👀 What This Means for Your Customers

Customers will only see:

• Time slots that fit your availability
• Valid session durations
• No conflicts with teachers/trainers or rooms
• Only bookable times (based on your rules)

👉 This ensures customers can only request or book realistic time slots.

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🔍 Troubleshooting Missing Time Slots

If expected time slots are not visible, check the following in order:

1. Booking availability (day and time range)
2. Start time interval
3. Session duration
4. Booking rules (booking window)
5. Trainer or room conflicts
6. Buffer time between sessions

Going through these steps usually helps identify the cause quickly.