Booking a timeslot from a pre-existing list of available slots

[Guillaume]

Hello everyone !

I am sharing with you a « funny » problem that keeps my neurons busy and now depressed. If only I could :

• Create a form where a Roll up could be displayed as a Single Select in a form
• Select existing records through a form & update them

CONTEXT :
My team wants to schedule committees, composed of 8 timeslots (2 committees / month).
We need people to book a timeslots to present their topic (among available ones of course).
We want to open the booking on a quarterly basis.

The Committee Table is configured as follow :
[Date] Field : Date Primary
[Single Select] Field : Timeslot (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H)
[Single Select] Field : State (Blank, Requested, Planned, Confirmed)
[Text] Field : Requester
[Text] Field : Topic

The table view is grouped by Date for the team to easily see the agenda of each committee.

THE PROCESS WE WOULD LIKE (BUT CAN’T) APPLY:
A requester :

• Finds a “date / slot” combo (aka state is blank)
• Blocks an available slot by :
  • Leaving his name
  • Notifying the topic
  • The update of the state from “Blank” to “Requested” would be automated.

I am stuck… anyone with a good idea?

[ScottWorld]

My post here describes how to create a system that is similar to what you are looking for. It’s not identical to your needs, but it gives you the general idea of what needs to be done:

How to create a single-date Calendly-like reservation form? Base design

Hi @chrismessina, Because Airtable’s built-in forms have limited functionality, I can only think of one way to do this with Airtable… but it’s a pretty cool way, because it works perfectly! :wink: It involves linking your records between 2 different tables. These are the steps you’ll take: Create another table in your base which is your “Dates” table. In this Dates table, change the primary field to a “Date” field. Now start adding records to this table. Each record will represent a s…

Less similar is this post, but it is along the same line of thinking:

Formula to Create Waitlist for Registrations Formulas

@Patrick_Miles When a participant signs up for a group through your form, are they considered “registered” in the group at that moment? (Assuming that there are still spaces available in that group.) If so, you could actually have your form automatically reflect which groups are still available to be registered for, and which groups have a waitlist — and then have the participant self-select which groups they want to register for or be on the waitlist for. This would require adding one more fi…

[Guillaume]

Thank you very much for your answer @ScottWorld !
I indeed went through your first path, my issue is that with timeslots, it adds a number of fields in the possibilities to pick from. But hey! I’ll just deal with it (I added a formula which returned ’ Date&" - "&Timeslot).

So, your second idea is very much the thing that I am taking away. I will just set a limit of 8 available slot per date (when State is blank) and the team will appoint people to the slots. That’s a little bit admin work for the team yet it also keeps the flexibility that only a Human being can handle (with the current configuration).

I won’t mark your answer as a solution yet - just to see if someone ends up on that thread and could come up with a better solution… but that’s definitely a workaround that I will be satisfied with

[Guillaume · Accepted solution]

With the help of Scottworld, I have taken the following path :slightly_smiling_face:
Hello @Someone !

I have eventually gone the way described below.
I am only sharing the backbone of my tables, I added many other extra fields & automations to ease the management but that’s off topic) :

Table 1 : Dates
** Where we manually input the dates when available **
PRIMARY - [Date] Dates
[Linked filed] Comittees (linked to Table 2)
[Formula] Timeslots to create (8-{Timeslots created})
[Roll up] Timeslots created

Table 2 : Committees
** Where we list the Committee dates & timeslot **
PRIMARY - [Formula] Committee ({Linked Date}&"- Slot "&{Timeslot})
[Link] Linked Date (linked to Table 1)
[Single Select] Timeslot
[Single Line of Text] Requester
[Formula] Available? (IF(OR({Request #},REGEX_MATCH(Status,“Planned”)),“no”,“yes”))
[Look up]Request # (linked to Table 3 - Request #)
[Single Select] Status (Requested, Planned, Validated)

Table 3 : Managing Timselots
** Where we handle people’s booking requests **
PRIMARY - [Autonumber] Request #
[Link] Timeslot (link to table 2)
[Single Line of Text] Requester
[Formula] Request Date (CREATED_TIME())