Scheduling Settings
The Scheduling Settings section controls how self-scheduling behaves across your organization.
These settings determine what patients can see and when they’re allowed to book appointments.
Like other configuration areas, these exist at both the organization and location level. Organization settings act as the default, while individual locations can override them if needed.
Minimum Notice Time
Minimum notice time controls how soon a patient can book an appointment. It gives your team time to verify insurance, send intake paperwork, and contact the patient before the visit.
If your practice has set business hours (under Settings > Scheduling Settings or at the individual location level in Settings > Locations), the minimum notice time skips non-business-hours windows automatically. For example, if a patient calls Friday at 3:00 PM, your minimum notice time is 24 hours, and you have no business hours on the weekend, the first bookable slot would be Monday at 3:00 PM. If you haven't configured business hours, the minimum notice time counts all hours including nights and weekends.
This is typically used to prevent last-minute bookings and give staff time to prepare.
Booking Slot Spacing
Booking slot spacing determines how often appointment start times are offered.
For example, a 15-minute spacing means patients will see start times like 8:00, 8:15, 8:30, and so on—regardless of appointment length.
This helps standardize how availability is presented and keeps scheduling predictable.
Blocked Time Types
Blocked time types allow you to mark specific appointment types as unavailable for booking.
When selected, these appointment types will block time on the schedule without being offered to patients during self-scheduling.
This is useful for things like internal holds, admin time, or visit types that shouldn’t be booked online.
Prompt EMR exception: Second Door reads non-appointment blocks as unavailable by default, so Blocked Time Types do not to be configured for Prompt EMR customers.
How It’s Used
These settings are typically configured during onboarding to align with how your clinic wants to manage access to the schedule.
They run in the background and apply automatically to any patient booking through Second Door.