How to automate the availability of a selection based on start date and end date.

[lalakits]

Hi there! I am trying to create a form that will allow someone to book a specific desk for a specific period of time. I would like to be able to automate the form to A) Remove a desk as an option if it's already been booked during a specific time period and B) Add it back as an available option after the specific time period has ended. 

Example:  

We have desk ABC and desk DEF available. Person 1 goes to the form and books desk ABC from May 10-12. Person 2 goes to the form looking to book a desk from May 10-12: desk ABC will not be an option because it's already been booked during that time period so they book the available desk DEF. Person 3 goes to the form to book a desk for May 13 and both desk ABC and desk DEF are once again available for booking.  

I am stuck on how to get this set up via a condition or formula and any help would be appreciated! 

[Lom_Labs]

Heya!

I made a tool that I believe fits your purpose: https://www.lomlabs.io/airtable/scripts/timeslot-creator

It automates the creation of timeslots; and by default each timeslot can only be booked by a single person, so that fulfils criterion A. How I solved B is a little different though, instead of making something available again, how my tool works is that it creates new available options for new time periods (mostly bc this way historical data can be logged).

You can have a look at the example/tutorial on my website: https://www.lomlabs.io/airtable/scripts/timeslot-creator. There's a free trial available and an example base you can duplicate and have a peek at, though for your use case you'd definitely have to make changes to some of the fields and the form.

I hope this helps a lil and I'm happy to help if you have any questions or have any feature requests for the tool. 🙂

- Lom