Setting up availability for the first time

For many clinicians, setting your availability means setting your practice hours. For others, it might mean setting up specific blocks during which clients can request appointments online.

Before you begin setting up your availability, you’ll want to enable online appointment requests at Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Client portal permissions. To learn more, see Enabling online appointment requests.

You can use our guided setup flow to set up your availability for online appointment requests. To do this:

1. Navigate to your calendar

Note: You can also set up your availability from the Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Client portal permissions page and clicking Manage availability.

2. Select the gear icon in the top right corner
3. Choose Set up appointment requests
   • Set up appointment requests will only appear if you have at least one office location listed in Settings > Practice > Practice details

Note: You'll only see the option to Set up appointment requests if you don't have any existing availability blocks. If you previously created availability blocks, skip to the Managing availability blocks guide.

4. Set your Scheduling preferences
5. Click Next

Note: Scheduling preferences can also be customized in Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Client portal permissions. These settings apply to the entire practice and can only be set by the Account Owner, clinicians with entire practice access, and practice managers. To learn more about the different scheduling options, see Enabling online appointment requests for your practice.

6. Adjust the day(s) and times you’d like to make available for online appointment requests
   • Click the + icon to add an availability block
   • Click the copy blocks icon to duplicate an appointment block

Tip: If your practice hours are from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, you can create an availability block with these times that repeats for each day of the week you’re available. To prevent clients from scheduling during specific times, you can create a calendar event or out of office block.

7. Choose when you want the availability block(s) to start and end
   • If this availability is temporary, you can select after or on date from the Ends dropdown to specify your desired end point
   • If this availability is open-ended, you can select never from the Ends dropdown

8. Select the Location(s) associated with this availability
   • For more information on adding or editing an office location, see Adding office locations
9. Review the services you’d like to offer during the availability block(s)
   • Services that are enabled for appointment requests in your practice settings will automatically populate under Services
   • Click Add service to search for or create a new service and add it to the availability block(s)
   • Click the - next to a service to make it unavailable for appointment requests

Note: If you'd like to create or make changes to a service, you can do so at Settings > Services and products > Services.

10. Click Next
11. Confirm your availability details and Save

Note: Any client appointments, out of office blocks, or events you schedule will automatically block off that time so it doesn't appear as available when clients request appointments online.

If you have multiple office locations and would like to offer different services at each location (for example, you only offer initial consultations via Telehealth), you can create separate, overlapping availability blocks for each location.

Note: If you’re enrolled in the Optum referral channel, you’ll see an optional step to enable in-network client referral sources by toggling on Allow referrals and clicking Done.

If you’re offering appointments to new clients, make sure your Accepting new clients status is toggled on. When this toggle is off, new clients won’t see any availability blocks you’ve created.

Note: In a solo practice, if you’ve already enabled Allow requests from new clients from Settings > Scheduling and inquiries > Client Portal permissions, the Accepting new clients status will automatically be enabled.

To update your Accepting new clients status, see How do I manage my Accepting new clients status?