An appointment type describes the service being scheduled, such as Pregnancy Test, Ultrasound, Counseling, or Class Intake.
Where to find it
Open Scheduler > Scheduler Settings > Types, or go to Settings > Schedule > Appointment Types.
Selecting an appointment type opens its settings page with five tabs, each answering one question:
Basics: what the service is called, how it looks, how long it lasts, and whether it is active.
When: which locations offer it, the hours at each one, and how often appointments can start.
How many at once: everything that limits how many of these appointments can overlap.
Online: settings that only apply when clients book themselves.
After booking: what happens once a booking exists, in four parts: Forms & consents, Reminders, When it becomes a visit, and Assessments.
Fields on the appointment type itself save when you select Save at the top of the page. Locations, hours, per-location limits, rooms and equipment, and staff save as soon as you change them. Each tab tells you which applies.
Basics
On the Basics tab, review:
Name: the internal service name.
Client-facing name: the label clients see; when blank, CoolFocus uses the regular name.
Description and Color. The color you set here is the same color used on the scheduler calendar, and it now shows as a small colored dot next to the appointment type's name everywhere the type appears in a dropdown or picker: booking forms, the appointment edit sheet, the visit board's walk-in picker, availability blocks, and chart template pickers. Staff can match an appointment type to its calendar color at a glance without opening the calendar. Description has a 1,000 character limit; a counter under the field shows how much room is left, and typing stops at the limit instead of failing when you save.
Length (minutes): how long each appointment lasts.
Show clients a different length: turn this on to enter a Length shown to clients (minutes) that differs from the time actually reserved.
Leave the length out of the confirmation email: hides the length from the booking confirmation email clients receive. The attached calendar invite keeps its end time.
Status: choose Active or Archived. Archived services can't be booked: archiving a type removes it from the public booking flow and from appointment-type pickers for new bookings. It does not remove appointments already booked under that type: those keep showing on the List tab and on every Calendar view (Day, Week, Month, Group), exactly as before.
Hide on new scheduler (under Legacy): hides the type from the CF5 scheduler calendar and appointment-type pickers even while it stays Active. This is meant for legacy CoolFocus 3 appointment types that a center still needs active for the old system, but does not want cluttering the new scheduler. When it is on, the type is excluded from the scheduler's Types filter, from appointment-type pickers, and appointments already booked under that type no longer render on the CF5 calendar, even on the List tab or when no type filter is applied. Unlike archiving, Hide on new scheduler always hides existing appointments, not just new bookings.
Length also drives the immediate booking confirmation. The confirmation email a client gets right after booking online shows this appointment type's length automatically, and that message has no separate wording editor. To leave the length out of that email, turn on Leave the length out of the confirmation email on this tab. To change the length itself, change Length (minutes); keep in mind that changes the appointment's actual length, not just the confirmation. See Appointment Reminders — Settings & Sending for how immediate confirmations work.
The order appointment types appear in for clients is set under Settings > Client Portal > Online Booking, not on this page. See Online Booking Configuration.
Scheduler card display
The Scheduler card display card at the bottom of the Basics tab controls what appears on the calendar card for appointments of this type:
Client name — choose how much of the client's identity appears on the card: full name, first name, first name and last initial, initials, last name, client number, or hidden. A shortened format is the usual choice when the calendar is visible from a waiting area or a shared desk. The panel previews a sample card as you choose, so you can see the disclosure level before saving.
Show appointment type — display the service name on the card
Show time — display the appointment time on the card
Main field — choose what appears on the primary line: client name, appointment type, or the first optional field
Up to five optional fields can also appear on the card, in the order you select them. Empty values hide automatically. You can choose from appointment fields (Status, Location, Resource, Booked from, Referral source, Reschedule reason, Cancellation reason), client fields (Date of birth, Age, Gender, Primary language, Preferred contact, Phone, Email), and any booking question attached to this appointment type. Adding Phone lets staff see how to reach someone without opening the record. Every card field is structured data drawn from a real record; there is no freeform text to type onto a card.
Shortening or hiding the client name is useful when staff or volunteers can see the calendar but should not see who is scheduled — for example, in shared workspaces or when the calendar is visible on a screen in a waiting area. Every one of these settings is per appointment type, so adjust each type separately: a center can show full names on one service and initials on another. Staff with access to the full client record can still open the appointment or visit to see who is scheduled.
For a dedicated walkthrough, see Client Name Display Options on Scheduler Cards.
When
Use the When tab to control where this appointment type is offered and the times it can start.
Under Locations offered, select Add location for every location where the appointment type is offered. A type must be assigned to at least one active location. Without a location assignment, clients cannot book it.
Assigning a location that is already assigned to this appointment type returns a "Location assignment already exists" message instead of creating a duplicate. If you don't see the location you expect to add, check whether it's already assigned.
For each location, choose Same as location hours when the service follows the site's normal hours.
Choose Its own hours when the service is offered during a smaller window. A service's own hours can only narrow the location's hours.
Start times every (minutes): how often a new appointment may begin. Leave it blank to use the length. For example, set 30 to offer 9:00, 9:30, 10:00 while each appointment still lasts its full length.
Prep before (minutes) and Cleanup after (minutes): protected time around each appointment, for staff and online booking.
Locations and hours save as soon as you change them. Start times, prep, and cleanup save with the Save button.
If you try to assign a location that is already linked to the appointment type, CoolFocus now blocks the duplicate and shows an error instead of silently creating a second link. This closes a race that could leave two active assignments for the same location, which previously could make the location picker below behave inconsistently.
Using only part of a location's hours
To offer this appointment type during a smaller window than the location's normal hours, give it its own hours instead of using the location's:
Open the appointment type's When tab.
Under Locations offered, change the location from Same as location hours to Its own hours.
Pick existing hours under Use these hours, or choose New hours…, enter a name, and select Create and edit hours.
On the Weekly template tab, set the hours this appointment type is offered each day.
Select Add another time on a day's row to split it into more than one window, for example a morning session and a separate evening session.
Add any one-time changes on the Exceptions & holidays tab.
Save the schedule.
CoolFocus checks every rule that applies to a booking, including location hours, the appointment type's own schedule, staffing, and resources, and only offers a time that is open on all of them. The narrowest rule wins: even when the location is open, this appointment type is not bookable outside the hours set on its own schedule.
Its own hours replace the location's hours for this appointment type at that location, so they need every day it is offered. To add Saturday times, add them to its weekly hours and keep its other days. Hours with only Saturday on them make it bookable on Saturdays only. Online, the location also has to be open then. For one date only, add a date exception on the Exceptions & holidays tab instead.
A schedule can be assigned to more than one location or appointment type. Before changing its weekly hours, open the schedule and check its list of assigned locations and types, since a change there applies everywhere the schedule is used. See Locations and Location Hours for more on shared schedules.
Availability preview
Beside the When and How many at once tabs (below them on narrower screens), the Availability preview shows what can be booked, with a Needs attention list and a Preview location picker, so you can test availability for a specific location before publishing the appointment type. Choosing a location or day in the preview changes nothing.
CoolFocus now remembers the location you last previewed for each appointment type. Reopening the appointment type, or navigating away and back, restores your previous Preview location instead of resetting to the first location in the list.
If the saved preview location is no longer assigned to the appointment type, the picker falls back to an assigned location automatically.
The preview location only affects what you see while testing. It does not change which locations clients can book at; that is controlled by the location list above.
How many at once
The How many at once tab is the one place that sets how many appointments of this type can overlap. Use Showing settings for to pick the location you are looking at. Each line can only lower the number, and the lowest one wins; a result line at the top tells you which line is the limit right now.
Hours: when the location uses Its own hours, the number those hours allow at once. Location hours never limit how many at once. To change it, select Edit hours on that line, open Advanced schedule limits, and set How many at once. A number set on a single time window on the Weekly template overrides it for that window. These hours are often shared: the line lists every service that uses them, and bookings of all of them count toward the same number.
This service: an optional limit for this appointment type alone at this location (This service alone: up to). Leave it blank for no limit of its own.
Room: link rooms and equipment when appointment types share a room, an equipment item, or a capacity limit. A staff position answers who is qualified; a shared room or piece of equipment prevents overlapping use across linked appointment types. Each linked room shows how many it allows at once, for example Counseling Room — 3 at once. That means there are 3 counseling rooms and each appointment uses one, not that each appointment needs 3. The number is set on the room itself under Resources, not on this tab. See Resources and Shared Capacity.
Staff: under Who has to be on duty?, choose Nobody, A staff position, or Specific people. This sets what staffing, if anything, limits which times can be booked. It doesn't choose who works the appointment.
Per day / week: No more than a set number a day and a week for this type. Blank means no limit.
Spread out starts: two appointments of this type can't start within the minutes you enter of each other. Overlap is still allowed; with 15, a 9:00 booking keeps 9:15 open but not another 9:00.
With A staff position, mark a position Must have only when the appointment cannot happen without it: bookable times are then limited to that position's coverage hours. Nice to have is a note for staff and never limits booking. With Specific people, bookable times are limited by those people's own working hours.
A position's coverage hours say how many of that position are covering each stretch of time, for example Thu 12pm–5pm, 2 at once on a day with two nurses. Select Set coverage hours under the position to change them. The team schedule (who is actually working) does not limit online booking; coverage hours do. Enter each stretch of time once with the full count: two overlapping entries of 1 do not add up to 2.
These changes save as you make them, except Per day / week and Spread out starts, which save with the Save button.
Online
The Online tab holds everything that only applies when clients book this service themselves.
Review:
Online booking: clients can book this service online.
Clients can reschedule: lets a client move an existing appointment of this type to a new time themselves, online or from the links in reminder texts, instead of calling your office.
Partner integrations: offers this service to partner scheduling integrations (Olive, LifeLead, and others).
Minimum notice (hours): how soon before a time clients can book it.
How far ahead (days): how far into the future clients can book, up to 3650 days (10 years) ahead. The day-by-day picker clients and staff use to pick a date follows this setting, loading more dates as needed rather than stopping after the first couple of weeks.
Link name, Booking Instructions, Preparation Instructions, and their translations. These appear once online booking or partner integrations are turned on.
Minimum notice and How far ahead apply to online booking only. Staff can always book.
Hosted booking links for this appointment type, including an unlisted link for a partner scheduler, a referral source, or a small group you invite directly, are now configured under Settings > Embed Widgets instead of on this page. Open Embed Widgets, select or create a scheduler widget, and scope it to the appointment types and locations you want that link to cover.
A widget link still runs through the same availability rules as public booking. If it shows no open times, work through the same checks you would for public booking: the location's hours, whether this appointment type is active and assigned to that location, minimum notice and how far ahead, required staff or resources, and any closures or date exceptions for that day. See Troubleshooting Scheduler Availability for the order to check these in.
Clients can reschedule
This setting is off by default for new appointment types, so a center has to turn it on deliberately for each type where self-service rescheduling makes sense. Turn it on for a type like a pregnancy test, where clients can safely pick a new slot on their own. Leave it off for a type like an ultrasound, where staff want to talk with the client before the time changes.
If your organization already had Online booking turned on for a type before this setting existed, self-rescheduling stayed on for that type so client-facing behavior didn't change.
When a client texts a reschedule-style reply to a reminder, CoolFocus checks this setting to decide whether to send a self-service link or ask the client to call your office. See Appointment Reminders — Settings & Sending for how those replies work.
Booking question forms
Under Booking Questions on the Online tab, attach short forms clients answer during online booking. Use Create new booking question form to start a brand-new form without leaving this page. This opens the same form creator used in Care module settings, pre-configured for a booking question form, so you can build and assign a form in one step instead of navigating to Scheduler > Settings > Forms first.
Booking questions are client forms. They are the same kind of form used for intake, not a setting that lives only inside this appointment type. Once a form is attached here, this tab only lets you attach it, remove it, or move it to Intake Forms for this appointment type. To add, remove, or reword the actual questions, open Settings > Care Settings > Client Forms and edit the form there. A change you make to the form applies everywhere that form is used, not only on this appointment type.
After booking
The After booking tab covers everything that happens once a booking exists. It has four parts.
Forms & consents
Under Intake Forms, link the forms clients complete after booking, not during it. Nothing is sent when an appointment is booked: online bookings show these as pending in the client portal, staff send them from the appointment with Send Forms & Consents, and Incomplete intake nudges under Reminders can send them on a schedule.
Under Consent Documents, link the client consent forms that should be sent automatically for appointments of this type. For each linked document you can mark it Required and set a renewal rule (once, each visit, yearly, or every N days).
Every consent document has a target audience: Client or Volunteer. This keeps the two sets of documents separate:
The picker only lists active, client-facing consent documents. Inactive (archived) documents and documents created for volunteers do not appear.
Volunteer consent documents are managed separately, under the volunteer consents list, and only appear when assigning consents for volunteer records.
A client's intake before an appointment (see Viewing submitted intake forms from an appointment) only includes active, client-audience consent documents. Retiring a consent document (marking it inactive) removes it from future client intakes without deleting past submissions.
Reminders
Under Reminders:
Automatic Reminder Schedule: turn on Its own reminder schedule to give this service a reminder schedule different from your organization's. Custom reminder schedules per appointment type are included in the Premium plan.
Incomplete intake nudges: use your organization's intake nudge schedule (Use organization incomplete intake nudge settings), or turn nudges off for this appointment type.
Confirmation Auto-Reply: the text clients receive after they reply YES to a reminder for this appointment type, if it should differ from your organization's default.
When it becomes a visit
Under When it becomes a visit, the Visit defaults card suggests values for a visit started from this appointment. Staff can still change them on the visit.
Primary visit reason and Additional visit reasons.
Default case type (Care organizations): pre-selected as the Case Type when Intake starts a new case.
Default visit type (Care organizations): the Visit Type supplies the visit's default charts and their order.
Appointment types no longer have a Charts tab. Set default charts, and their order, on the visit type, then choose that visit type as the Default visit type here. See Visit types.
A chart template can also be linked to appointment types from the template's own Appointment Types section under Settings > Care Settings > Charts. For those links:
Built-in chart templates (Ultrasound, Pregnancy Test, and other templates that render from the visit record itself) just need to be linked to appear on the visit, no separate chart entry is created for them.
Custom chart templates require the Premium plan. When a custom template is linked and your organization has that entitlement, starting a visit for this appointment type automatically creates a draft chart entry for each linked custom template, ready to fill in on the visit's Charts tab.
If your organization does not have the Premium custom-templates entitlement, custom template links are saved but stay inert. No chart entry is auto-created until you upgrade.
Auto-creation happens once per visit and template. Reopening or restarting a visit will not create duplicate chart entries for the same template.
Chart auto-creation runs in the background when the visit starts. If it fails for any reason, the visit itself still starts normally so front-desk staff are never blocked by a charting issue.
If completing an appointment shows "a required visit item is unavailable," a custom chart template linked to this appointment type as required has since been deactivated or deleted. Reactivate it under Settings > Care Settings > Charts, or remove this appointment type from the template's Appointment Types section, to clear the block. See Managing Chart Templates.
See Custom Chart Templates and Managing Chart Templates for more on building and configuring the templates themselves.
Assessments
Organizations with Assessments see an Assessments part. Link the assessments offered on visits of this type, and mark each one Required or optional. With none linked, visits of this type offer every assessment.
Answer types for custom questions
When you add a custom question to a form, choose an Answer Type to control how the client responds:
Short Text, Long Text, Email, Phone, Date, Number: standard single-value inputs. Email, Phone, Date, and Number show the matching keyboard and format on mobile devices.
Dropdown: the client picks one option from a list you define.
Yes / No: a ready-made dropdown preset that automatically fills in Yes and No as the two options, so you don't have to type them yourself. Under the hood this is a Dropdown question, just pre-filled.
Checkbox: a single on/off toggle (for example, "I agree"), separate from Yes / No. Checkbox is its own true/false field, not a two-option choice.
Multi-select: the client can check as many options as apply from a list you define. Multi-select questions render as a group of checkboxes, one per option, not a text box, and the client's answer is validated against the options you configured.
When editing an existing question, CoolFocus recognizes a Dropdown question whose two options are exactly "Yes" and "No" and shows it selected as the Yes / No preset, so switching between Dropdown and Yes / No doesn't create duplicate or conflicting answer types.
CoolFocus suggests a standard field before you create a custom one
When you name a custom question, CoolFocus checks it against the standard fields already available for mapping (client, case, visit, and request fields). If your wording is close to one of those, for example "LMP," "Last Menstrual Period," "Initial Assessment," "Ethnicity," "Race," "Source," or "Due Date," a box appears above the answer type offering "Use existing field" with the matching standard.
This matters because a custom question and a standard field are not interchangeable:
A custom question's answer saves only with that form response. It does not appear on standard reports and does not sync to the client, case, or visit record CoolFocus already tracks.
Choosing the suggested standard field instead maps your question directly to that record, so the answer flows into reports and CareNet like any other standard field.
You can still add the question as custom. Selecting Add Question without picking a suggestion keeps it as a plain custom question, separate from the standard field. Use this when the question is genuinely specific to your center and has no standard equivalent.
The suggestion only appears when it is a real match. A qualified version of a name field, such as "Partner First Name" or "Emergency Contact First Name," is treated as its own question and is not nudged toward the client's own First Name field, since saving it there would overwrite the wrong person's name. A standard field already used elsewhere on the same form is not suggested again.
The same suggestion also appears when you edit a question that already exists and has no mapping yet, so a question your center built before this feature existed, or one you added as custom on purpose, can still be mapped to a standard field later. Open the question to edit it; if CoolFocus finds a match, the "Use existing field" suggestion appears there too. Accepting it keeps the question's wording but switches its answer type to match the standard field. If CoolFocus can't load the standard-field list when you open a question, it says so and lets you retry; saving the question still works while that suggestion is unavailable.
Booking questions and contact preference
When you build a form used as booking questions, each question can map to a client field. One of the available mappable fields is Contact Preference (Text / Call / Both), which maps to the client's preferred contact method.
If a booking question is mapped to Contact Preference:
The online booking form shows that question with Text, Call, and Call/Text options instead of the standard built-in Contact Preference field, so clients are not asked for their contact preference twice.
The client's answer is saved as their preferred contact method, the same record used elsewhere in CoolFocus.
If no booking question is mapped to Contact Preference, the standard built-in Contact Preference field continues to appear on the booking form as before.
Before launch
Test at least one booking for every active online appointment type and location. Confirm the displayed duration, instructions, questions, confirmation, and resulting appointment match what staff expect. If the type uses a Contact Preference booking question, confirm it appears only once and that the client's answer is reflected on their record. If the type has linked custom chart templates, start a test visit and confirm the expected draft charts appear on the Charts tab. If the form includes Multi-select or Yes / No questions, confirm they render as checkboxes or a Yes/No choice and that submitted answers show up correctly on the client's intake.