Booking Page Settings: Notice, Buffers, Caps and Blackouts

A booking page publishes your availability so that a guest can pick a time without exchanging messages. Every setting on the page is a rule that removes some slots. The art is to remove the slots you do not want without removing so many that the page looks empty.

Slot length and buffers

Choose the slot length by the meeting, not by habit. Thirty minutes suits an introduction, and sixty suits a working session. Add a buffer between slots so that you have time to write notes, move between rooms or breathe. Atlas lets each meeting type on a page carry its own length and buffer, so a short call and a long session can sit on one page with different spacing.

Notice and horizon

Notice is the minimum time before the first bookable slot. A guest booking in ten minutes is fine for some teams and a problem for others. Choose a notice that gives you time to prepare. The horizon is the furthest ahead a guest may book. A long horizon suits planned work, and a short one keeps the calendar flexible. If your availability changes often, a shorter horizon avoids cancelling distant bookings.

Daily, weekly and monthly limits

Caps protect your focus time. A maximum per day stops a busy day becoming a wall of meetings. A maximum per week and per month sets a ceiling across a longer period, so a busy week cannot borrow against the next one. Atlas supports all three. Remember that a cap that is already met removes the remaining slots, so an over-tight cap reads as an empty page and not as an error.

Blackout dates

Blackouts remove whole days from the page for holidays and time away. They are better than blocking your own calendar, because the page then never offers the days, instead of letting someone book and then declining. Add them as soon as you know them.

Time zones

Set the page time zone to where your working hours apply. Your working hours are read in that zone, and a page without one is interpreted as UTC. The settings screen warns about this and offers a control that applies your profile zone. This matters most for a page created through the API, where the field can be left empty. Guests normally see slots in their own zone, so the setting controls your hours rather than theirs.

Questions before booking

Ask the questions you need to prepare, and only those. Atlas supports pre-booking questions in eight types, each optionally required, and holds the slot only once the guest has answered. Each additional required question lowers completion, so ask for what you will read.

Troubleshooting an empty page

• The notice period hides everything sooner than that.
• The maximum days ahead hides everything later.
• A blackout range removes whole days.
• A cap that is already met removes the rest of the day, week or month.
• With the busy-time check on, events on your connected calendar hide overlapping slots.
• Empty working hours, or a paused page, leave nothing to offer.