Setting the appointment duration to 3 hours each

Is there a way to configure the appointment field to show appointment start time availability every 30 minutes and default duration to 3 hours while avoiding overlapping appointments?

I asked the AI chat box this and according to it, it is! Please show me how.

HEre is what the AI said

"To create an appointment scheduling method in Jotform where clients can pick a time that defaults to 3 hours long and prevents overlapping bookings during that period, you can use the Appointment field with these considerations:

• Set the appointment duration to 3 hours in the Appointment field settings.
• Jotform's Appointment field automatically blocks overlapping appointments, so new bookings cannot be made during an existing appointment's 3-hour block.

This setup ensures clients can only book available 3-hour slots without conflicts. If you need detailed steps on how to configure the Appointment field, just let me know!"

Hi Steven,

Thanks for reaching out to Jotform Support. I saw that you've set the Appointment Slot Duration to 270 minutes. If you want to make each appointment slot duration 3 hours, you need to set the Appointment Slot Duration to 180 minutes instead. As for the 30-minute start time, can you tell us more about it for us to look for a better solution or workaround for your issue?

Once we hear back from you, we can help you sort this out.

I set it to 270 minutes to account for travel time. What I want to do is pretty normal..... I want to give the client/user the choice of start time every 30 minutes through the day. When they select a time, no other appoints should be available for the following 3 (or 4) hours.

9:00

9:30 <client picks 9:30 (duration set to 3 hours by default)

10:00 <

10:30 <

11:00 <

11:30 <

12:00 <

12:30 <

13:00 < next available time slot is 13:00

Hi Steven,

In that case, you can add an interval on your Appointment widget to ensure there's a gap of 30 minutes for each 3-hour appointment slot. Let me show you how to do it:

1. In Form Builder, click on the Gear icon of your Appointment widget.
2. Click on Availability tab on the upper right side of the page.
3. In Appointment Slot Duration, enter 180 minutes.
4. In Intervals, enter your appointment slots and make sure that there's a 30 minutes gap on each slot.

If that’s not quite what you’re looking for, can you share a bit more info so I can help you better?

As soon as we hear back from you, we can work on getting you a solution for this.

Thanks however if you had setup what I was looking for there would be available times every 30 minutes. You only show 3.

I want only 2 appts available in a day. Each appt should be 3 hours. The times if these two appointments though can be anytime between 9am and 4pm every 30 mins. When an appt is made for example at 10am…. then all times before 10am and u til 3hours after 10am should become unavailable.

Hi Steven,

The Appointment field can block overlapping appointments based on the set appointment slot duration, but it cannot automatically disable all time slots before a booked appointment or extend the unavailability window beyond the set slot duration.

If you set the appointment slot duration to 3 hours, the system will prevent new bookings during that 3-hour block starting from the selected appointment time, but it will not block times before the appointment or dynamically adjust availability beyond that.

Unfortunately, this means the exact behavior you described where all times before a booked appointment and for 3 hours after become unavailable is not achievable with the Appointment widget alone.

Reach out again if you need any more help.

I’m honestly not sure I’m being clear because this functionality to me seem normal and expected. Forget the block before statement. A client should be able to book whatever time is available. Time become unavailable when someone else has already booked it. So if they book 9am for 3 hours, the slots that WERE available between 9am and noon should BECOMe available. However the way the tool appears to work is that if I want the duration to be 3hours and the first available time is 9am then there is never the option to choose any other time after 9am. This makes no sense. Is this really how it is intended to work??

Hi Steven,

The Appointment Widget works as how it is booked. That means, if you set an Appointment for a 30-mins duration, the next availability will be after that duration. If you are trying to create an Appointment where in the duration is 3 hours but every 30-mins after that there should be available slot, we suggest using a different widget. As a workaround for that, you can look into our Weekly Appointment Planner. This widget can help you organize an availability as well a more customized duration indicated on the details. 

Give it a try and reach out again if you have any other questions.

Thanks for the idea, but thats not even close to what I need. All I want is for a client to book a single time slot at anytime of day between 9am and 4pm for 3 hours with no worry about me being double booked. This seems like a standard, normal request to me no?

Hi Steven,

In that case, instead of using an Appointment widget, you can use a Time field instead and use conditional logic to automatically indicate the end time, which is 3 hours after the start time selected. Let me show you how to do it:

1. In Form Builder, click on Add Element on the upper left side of the page.

2. Drag and drop a Time element from the left side of the page to your form.

3. Click on Settings in the orange navigation bar at the top of the screen.
4. Click on Conditions on the left side of the page.
5. Click on Update/Calculate Field on the options.

6. Copy the condition settings below.
7. Click on Save on the lower part of the page.

If that’s not quite what you’re looking for, can you share a bit more info so I can help you better?

Once we hear back from you, we can help you sort this out.

Thank you. I will try that when I am back on my computer. However, what I see missing from this is the date selection. How does the client select the date that the time will be associated to?

Hi Steven,

Users will be able to select a time using the condition my colleague showed you, but it won’t be linked to any date. Also, it won’t prevent others from selecting the same hours.

While the feature you're looking for isn't available at Jotform right now, we've gone ahead and escalated your request to our developers. Exactly when or if it's developed depends on their workload, how viable it is, and how many other users also request it. If there are any updates, we’ll circle back to this thread and let you know.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, we appreciate it.