Best Practices For Client Time Display
Clients always select from Schedule Blocks when making service requests regardless of whether you have exact times hidden or not. (You can configure your settings for Schedule Blocks, hiding exact times from clients, and Auto Client Time Display in Client Settings > Schedule Blocks.) When you approve those requests, and you don't have exact times hidden, clients will then be able to see the exact time the visits are scheduled for on their confirmation, schedule, and invoice. For example, if the client selects the "Midday" schedule Block for their request, and you approve their request and put it on the schedule at 12 pm, the client will see 12 pm as the time of the visit on their confirmation, schedule, and invoice.
If you do have exact times hidden, this adds an additional field to the Edit Event screen labeled "Client Time Display". Whatever is in this field is what the client will see for the time of the event on their confirmation, schedule, and invoice. You can always manually edit this field, but by default, when you approve a service request from a client, this field will be the schedule block they requested.
When you schedule services for a client directly on the Scheduler rather than by approving a client request, you don't choose a Schedule Block, you just add the services at exact times, so the "Client Time Display" field would be blank unless you manually entered something in that field. To save you from having to always manually enter the Client Time Display when scheduling services for a client, you can set up "Auto Client Time Display" time frames which will automatically populate the "Client Time Display" field based on the time you schedule a visit. So if you had an Auto Client Time Display time frame called "Midday" from 11 am - 1 pm, and you schedule a visit at 12 pm, the "Client Time Display" would automatically be "Midday" for that event.
Auto Client Time Display also automatically updates the Client Time Display anytime you move an event to another time. For example, if you had an "Afternoon" time frame from 1 pm - 3 pm, and you moved that 12 pm event to 2:30 pm, the Client Time Display would automatically be changed from "Midday" to "Afternoon".
If your Schedule Blocks do not overlap, you can simply set up your Auto Client Time Display time frames to be identical to your Schedule Blocks. But if your Schedule Blocks overlap, you'll need to consider how best to set up Auto Client Time Display for your company or whether to use it at all.
Auto Client Time Display For Companies With Overlapping Schedule Blocks
Since Auto Client Time Display automatically populates the "Client Time Display" field, the Auto Client Time Display time frames you set up can't overlap because if, for example, you had a "Morning" time frame from 7 am - 10 am and a "Late Morning" time frame from 9 am - 12 pm, and you schedule a visit at 9:30 am, the system has no way of knowing whether to set the Client Time Display as "Morning" or "Late Morning" for that visit.
This can make Auto Client Time Display problematic for companies with overlapping Schedule Blocks since they can't set up Auto Client Time Display to match their Schedule Blocks. When they schedule services directly on the Scheduler at a time when their schedule blocks overlap, they will have to manually change the Client Time Display if the Auto Client Time Display is not the time frame they want showing to the client. And they cannot move these events or events that were approved from a client request without Auto Client Time Display overriding the existing entry in the Client Time Display field.
It is not a requirement to use Auto Client Time Display when Hide Exact Times From Clients is enabled. For companies that have overlapping Schedule Blocks, it can sometimes make more sense to not use Auto Client Time Display, especially if they frequently move events within their Schedule Blocks.
Disabling Auto Client Time Display
If you are currently using Auto Client Time Display and want to disable it, you can do that by clicking "Remove" next to each of your time frames and then clicking "Save Changes".
