Planning a trip or stepping away from your practice for a while? Set up an Out-of-Office Notification to block new booking requests and let clients know you're away, right from your Client Portal.
In this article:
- Before You Begin
- Setting Up an Out-of-Office Notification
- Editing or Deleting an Out-of-Office Period
- Managing Multiple Out-of-Office Periods
- What Clients See During Your Out-of-Office Period
- Silencing Notifications While You're Away
Before You Begin
- On a Team plan, enabling this only affects your own Bookings Page and Client Portal banner, not your teammates'. An Out-of-Office Notification is set per practitioner.
- This only blocks new booking requests for the dates you set. It does not cancel or flag sessions that are already booked within that window. Cancel those manually if needed.
- An Out-of-Office Notification doesn't pause your notifications or chat. See Silencing Notifications While You're Away below to also go quiet on those while you're out.
If you only need to block a shorter stretch of time, like a lunch break or a single meeting, rather than announce an absence to clients, use a Personal Event instead. See Blocking Off Unavailable Time in Your Calendar → for a full comparison of all four ways to block your calendar.
Setting Up an Out-of-Office Notification
- Go to My Schedule > Out-of-Office Notification.
- Check the Enable out-of-office notification checkbox. A pop-up opens for you to set the details of your out-of-office period.
- Enter a start date and end date. These use your practitioner account's time zone, not your client's.
- Optionally, add a message. This is a good spot for a courtesy note or emergency contact information.
- Click Done to save the period.
- Click Save Changes in the top right corner to apply your changes.
Editing or Deleting an Out-of-Office Period
Need to change your dates or shorten your trip? You can update a period anytime from the same page.
- Go to My Schedule > Out-of-Office Notification.
- Find the period you want to change.
- Click Edit to update its dates or message
- Or click the trash icon to delete it entirely.
- Click Save Changes at the top-right to apply your updates.
Managing Multiple Out-of-Office Periods
You can schedule up to five out-of-office periods at once, handy if you already have a few trips planned for the year.
- Click Add Another to create a new period.
- Repeat the setup steps for each additional period.
- Click Save Changes at the top-right to apply your updates.
Once you've added five periods, the Add Another button greys out. Delete an existing period to make room for a new one.
What Clients See During Your Out-of-Office Period
Once your out-of-office period is active, clients see a banner at the top of their Client Portal for the duration of the period, and dates within the period are disabled on your Bookings Page, so they cannot request new sessions during that time.
Silencing Notifications While You're Away
An out-of-office notification handles bookings and the portal banner, but it doesn't touch your notifications or chat. Pair it with these if you want a fully quiet break:
- To stop receiving Instant Alerts while you're away, turn on Snooze under Settings > Notification Preferences. See Receiving Instant Alerts During Snooze Periods → if you still want urgent messages to reach you during a snooze period.
- To send clients an automatic reply when they message you, set up a Chat Autoresponder. See Setting Up a Chat Autoresponder →