How Buffers Work

Need a little time before or after appointments to get organized, change locations, or get a glass of water? That's what buffers are for! With Great AEP, you can set a buffer before and/or after an appointment so your day doesn't get crunched. 

How buffers work

You can think of buffers as padding between appointments. They don't extend the appoint itself, they put blank time in between padding. 

Because of this padding, an appointment requires a window of time on your calendar that includes the appointment itself PLUS the before and after buffers. So for example, if you have a 60 minute appointment with a 30 minute buffer before and a 15 minute buffer after, Great AEP will only make windows of time available from your calendar that include 105 consecutive minutes. 

Let's imagine a two example scenarios where you have a 30 minute appointment scheduled at 9 am. The two examples differ in their buffer settings as follows:

  • Example 1: 30 minute buffer before
  • Example 2: 30 minute buffer before and 30 minute buffer 

Here's a calendar showing availability in Great AEP for the two appointments:

Time: Example 1:
30 minute buffer before
Example 2: 
30 minute buffer before &
30 minute buffer after
8:00 Available Available
8:30 Unavailable (before buffer) Unavailable (before buffer)
9:00 BOOKED FOR APPOINTMENT BOOKED FOR APPOINTMENT
9:30 Available Unavailable (after buffer)
10:00 Available Available
10:30 Available Available

You can edit your buffers on the "Edit Campaign" screen. 

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