Recommendations on Appointment Booking configuration for Vaccine Administration ManagementAppointment Booking configuration is used to create an application level configuration, which includes several service level configurations. Appointment Booking Service Configuration allows administrators to configure appointment durations, availability windows, appointments per slot, daily schedule, break times, holidays, lead time, etc., for a particular location. This configuration is used to identify the available slots as well as a location’s capacity for a given day and allows users to select appointment slots based on parameters you configure. It is important to note that once a configuration is finalized and appointments start getting booked with that configuration, changing some of the configuration values can have undesired side effects on both existing and future appointments. This is discussed in further detail below. This document provides some recommendations on handling appointment booking configurations after appointments start getting scheduled. This is not an exhaustive list of all possible side effects. Appointment Booking configuration : 1. Name : a. You can change the name field. This will not cause side effects. 2. Active : a. Do not deactivate the configuration when there are existing appointments. This invalidates existing appointments. b. You can activate the previously inactive configuration. This will not impact any appointments. 3. Task Table : a. Do not change the value of this field. This task table is the source of truth for all the appointments. b. Modifying the value of this field invalidates existing appointments. c. Instead of changing the existing configuration, you as an administrator can create new configuration. 4. Auto Acceptance : a. You can change this field. This will not impact other configurations or fields. 5. Portal View : a. You can change the value of this field. b. This does not impact the slots or invalidate appointments. This is a UI configuration about how to display the slots (for example, Day view or Week view). 6. Availability Method : a. This field value is used to calculate the number of appointments per slot. Any modification to this will invalidate appointments. b. Availability Method – Number of appointments per slot : i. Do not change the value of this field. c. Availability Method – Scripted : i. Do not change the value of this field. ii. Do not modify the existing script that is used to calculate appointments per available slot. Appointment Booking Service Configuration : 1. Active : a. Do not deactivate the configuration when there are existing appointments. This invalidates existing appointments. b. You can activate the previously inactive configuration. This will not impact any appointments. 2. Name : a. You can change the name field. This will not cause side effects. 3. Availability Table : a. Do not change the value of this field. b. Modifying this invalidates existing appointments. c. Instead of changing the existing configuration, you as an administrator can create a new configuration. 4. Holiday Schedule : a. Do not add a new holiday schedule. This invalidates existing appointments. b. Do not add more holidays to the existing holiday schedule. New holidays might already contain booked appointments. c. You can remove holidays. 5. Catalog Item / Location / Timezone / User contact : a. Do not change any of these fields. b. Doing so impacts the appointments since these fields are referenced from Catalog item, which is the source of truth for tasks that have appointments. 6. Appointment is mandatory : a. You can modify this value. 7. Appointments per window : a. You can increase the number of appointments per window. b. Do not decrease the number of appointments per window for a service configuration when appointments have already been created. c. Impact: Reducing the total number of appointments per window, will result in overbooked appointments per slot for the appointments that were created before this change. d. Example : a. Old configuration: You had 4 Appointments per window. If Total Windows = 2 then your Total capacity is 2*4, or 8. If you had 4 Appointments created per slot, the total capacity used is 4 * 2, or 8. b. New configuration: You have 2 Appointments per window. If you have two Total Windows, then your new Total capacity is 2 * 2, or 4. But if you had 4 Appointments already created per slot (based on a past configuration), then Total capacity is 4* 2, or 8. c. By doing this, Total capacity, 8, now exceeds the new Total capacity of 4, causing overbooked appointments. 8. Lead time : a. You can change this value. This will not impact any existing appointments. 9. Future bookable max days : a. Do not decrease this value since appointments may have been booked on the last day. Decreasing this value will invalidate appointments booked on the last day. b. You can increase this value. It will not impact any existing appointments. 10. Reschedule / Cancel by time : a. You are Conditionally allowed to change this value. b. If there is any workflow that impacts existing appointments or users, it is not safe to change this value. 11. Appointment window / Work duration /Travel duration (round trip) : a. Do not modify the Appointment window when appointments have already been created. b. Impact: Changing the total capacity of a location will result in overlapping slots which results in overbooked appointments. c. Example : i. In your old configuration, the Appointment window was 5 minutes. The daily schedule looked like this: 9 to 9:05, 9:05 to 9:10, 9 :10 to 9:15, 9:15 to 9:20. In this configuration you have appointments booked from 9 to 9:05 and from 9:05 to 9:10 and appointments available from 9:10 to 9:15 and from 9:15 to 9:20. ii. If you create a new configuration with an Appointment window of 10 minutes then your daily schedule would look like this: 9 to 9:10, 9:10 to 9:20 with available slots from 9:10 to 9:20 and actual slots displayed in the same 10 minute increments. iii. This will cause an overbooking in the 9 to 9:10 slot, since it was booked for two appointments in the previous configuration. 12. Bookable days : a. You can add days without impacting existing appointments. b. Do not remove the bookable days when appointments have already been created. c. Impact: This invalidates past appointments. d. Example : i. In your old configuration, Saturday is bookable and appointments are booked on Saturday. ii. If you create a new configuration in which Saturday is not bookable, any appointments previously booked on Saturday are no longer valid. 13. Daily start time / Daily end time / Include daily break: a. Daily start time : i. Do not modify Daily start time when appointments are already present. This creates overbooked slots and invalidates previous appointments. b. Daily End time : i. You can increase the daily end time. (Only when the Appointment Window and Daily start are not changed) ii. Do not make the Daily end time earlier when appointments are already present since this also creates overbooked slots and invalidates previous appointments. c. Include daily break : i. Do not flip the value of Include daily break field. ii. Do not add the daily break time if it was unchecked. iii. Do not change the duration of break. d. Example : i. In your old configuration the Daily start time was 9 AM and the Daily end time was 6 PM. Appointments are created from 9 AM to 6 PM and window duration is 1 hour. ii. If you create a new configuration with a Daily start time of 10 AM and a Daily end time of 5 PM then appointments created between 9 and 10 AM and between 5 and 6 PM will be invalidated. iii. Even if we move the start time forward, to 8:30 AM, for example, then new bookable slots will be created from 8:30 to 9:30 and 9:30 to 10:30 AM. This will result in overbooking for this configuration. System Properties : 1. sn_apptmnt_booking.max_appointments_returned : Can modify this value. 2. sn_apptmnt_booking.user_max_new_appointments_daily : Can modify this value.