I think I finally figured out the booking calendar. At least, mostly. We have the ability for you to book your own tour here at the farm. That saves a lot of back and forth trying to coordinate schedules. If we are here, come see us. If we are not, sorry. However several months back I noted that the calendar availability was almost non-existent. Since our normal calendar looks like the pic above, I kinda thought it was just we were too busy.
But then I’d find a day when we were all here, and nobody booked a tour. A look at our calendar showed it blocked. Huh!? I tried poking and prodding at the blasted thing several times and couldn’t figure out what was going on. Today I finally figured out what was happening.
You see, we link our Google calendars to the scheduling app. That way when I book something on a day, it automatically blocks the schedule for the farm. Say I need to deliver a cow to the processor on a Friday. I put that on my normal calendar for the hours it will take me, and automatically, nobody will book a tour that same Friday. Works great.
Except it doesn’t.
When I originally set up the calendar, I had a secretary who managed my calendar for me. I also had everything tied to my individual calendar. Then I added SWMBO, so I’d have her on the same calendar. Then I added Spork, and moved the Saturday bookings/calendar synch to his calendar. Then the two girls got old enough to have their own calendar. Then the Civil Air Patrol calendar for our squadron became my responsibility so that got added. Then I became part of two partnerships, and their calendars got added. And I needed to keep up with who was at my mom’s property. So now my calendar looks like this.
So now I have some weird cross contamination between my calendar, Sporks calendar, the farm calendar, and I don’t know where the conflicts are actually coming from because it doesn’t tell you WHY it is blocked. It just blocks it.
So I went back to the original plan. Weekends are now tied to my calendar. Now I only have one source of trouble.
Then I found another problem. We normally only allow you to book an appointment two months in advance. This way if something happens in our lives we need to attend to, we don’t have farm appointments clogging the schedule 5 months out. But I couldn’t figure out why this current month was now working, but next month was still blocked. Aha! A bit of digging and I realized the setting had reverted to a one month in advance setting. By moving it back to two months, suddenly October is alive and available as it should be.
It has only taken my several months to figure this out. I do apologize to those of you who have had trouble booking an appointment. Assuming I can keep ahold of this tiger’s tail, it should all be fine now.