When no times appear, or too many appointments can overlap, check the configuration in this order:
1. Location: Is it active, and does it have weekly hours for the requested date?
2. Appointment type: Is it active, assigned to the location, and enabled for the booking path being tested?
3. Type rules: Does lead time, booking window, start increment, max per day, or max per week remove the time?
4. Staffing: Does every required position have a qualified active person? Are required or named staff working at that time? A person's weekly hours are set per location, but a date-specific exception for that person applies everywhere. If a named staff member or someone filling a required position only has weekly hours at a different center, check their date-specific exceptions before assuming they have no coverage at the booking center.
5. Resources: Rooms, equipment, and shared capacity limits can hide every open time even when hours and staffing look fine. Check these in order:
• Open Scheduler > Scheduler Settings > Resources. Confirm each resource the appointment type should use is active.
• Confirm the resource is assigned to the same location you are booking. A resource belongs to only one location. Multi-location centers need a separate resource per site (name them clearly, for example Main Center Ultrasound Room).
• On the Appointment Type (Scheduling section), confirm the resource is linked. If the type needs a room or shared limit but nothing is linked, slots can still open when you did not intend them to—or capacity will not protect the bottleneck you care about.
• Check capacity. Capacity 1 means only one linked appointment can use that resource at a time across every appointment type linked to it. If Pregnancy Test and Ultrasound both use the same capacity-1 room, booking one removes the overlapping time for the other.
• Look for an existing booking (including buffer time around it) that already consumes the resource for that slot.
• Remember: resources are rooms, equipment, or shared capacity pools—not people. People and work schedules belong under Staffing. Naming a person as a resource usually creates the wrong kind of limit.
Full setup steps: [Resources and Shared Capacity](https://docs.coolfocus.app/docs/262cdfd9-2336-4bc6-be4b-5d2a803a971d).
6. Closures: Is there a holiday, date exception, scheduler block, or partial-day closure?
7. Buffers: Does time before or after another appointment consume the slot?
8. Public page: Is the appointment type published on an active scheduling page and not unintentionally private?
Full setup steps: [Resources and Shared Capacity](https://docs.coolfocus.app/docs/262cdfd9-2336-4bc6-be4b-5d2a803a971d).
6. Closures: Is there a holiday, date exception, scheduler block, or partial-day closure?
7. Buffers: Does time before or after another appointment consume the slot?
8. Public page: Is the appointment type published on an active scheduling page and not unintentionally private?
Use Scheduler Settings > Overview and availability or coverage preview to identify warnings before changing rules.
The coverage preview's Preview location picker remembers the last location you tested for each appointment type, so reopening the preview keeps you on the same location instead of resetting to the first one assigned. If that saved location is later removed from the appointment type, the preview falls back to a location still assigned to it.
If a location and one of its appointment types both point at the same custom schedule, and the weekly template for that schedule is closed every day (for example, a schedule meant to be open only through date exceptions), confirm the date exceptions were added on the Exceptions & holidays tab of that shared schedule. CoolFocus applies the shared schedule's weekly hours and date exceptions once, so an available override on that schedule opens the day for both the location and the type together. If the day still previews as Closed after adding the exception, check that the override date, start time, and end time match what you expect, then re-run the preview.
• Confirm every affected appointment type links to the same shared resource.
• Confirm the resource is assigned to the correct location.
• Confirm capacity is not higher than intended.
• Check whether staff created the conflicting appointment by overriding a warning.
• Remember that a required position identifies qualified coverage; it may not create a cross-type shared limit by itself. Use a shared resource when two appointment types must not overlap on the same room, equipment, or capacity pool.
Staff scheduling may allow an intentional override while public booking enforces availability and capacity. Also compare the staff-selected location, booking path, lead time, and private/public status.
Check time zones, shared availability templates, appointment-type overrides, optional versus required positions, and whether a resource link is missing.
If an appointment shows correctly on the Scheduler List tab with its date and time, but does not render on Day, Week, Month, or Group calendar views, check these before assuming the appointment itself is broken:
1. Hide on Scheduler: If the appointment's type has Hide on Scheduler checked, the appointment is deliberately excluded from every CoolFocus calendar view. This setting is meant for legacy CoolFocus 3.0 types and is working as intended if checked.
2. Appointment type or resource filter: Confirm the sidebar's type or resource filter is set to show everything, not narrowed to a set that excludes this appointment's type or resource.
3. Staff or location filter: Confirm the staff filter (including My Schedule) and location filter are not narrowed away from this appointment.
An appointment type or resource being marked inactive is not a cause of this on its own: existing appointments booked under an inactive type or resource still show on every calendar view, the same as on the List tab. See Appointment Types and Booking Rules for the difference between Active and Hide on Scheduler.
Some appointment types ask the client extra questions (like "how did you hear about us?") before they can book. If those questions fail to load, on-line booking shows a short message and keeps Schedule Appointment disabled, since the type cannot be booked without its required answers.
The client can select Try again under that message to reload the questions without refreshing the page. If the questions load, the message clears and the client can finish booking normally. If Try again keeps failing, treat it as a real outage: ask the client to try again in a few minutes, and let support know which appointment type and organization were affected.
After each change, preview the same appointment type, location, and date again. This makes it much easier to identify which rule controls the result.
If the preview and the public booking page disagree after these checks, contact support with the organization, appointment type, location, date, expected time, and screenshots of both views.