Headshot Tools Scheduling Help

Headshot Tools includes an internal scheduling module for Team and Event headshot jobs. This scheduling module allows you to create time slots for participants to book their own photo sessions. To learn how to utilize this module, review the guide below. If you prefer to utilize your own scheduling software like 17Hats or Acuity, see our external scheduling software guide here.

How To Enable Headshot Tools Scheduling

To enable scheduling within your job:

1. Navigate to the job detail page for your job.
2. Click the three vertical dots icon in the Job Panel.
3. Click “Scheduling Console”.

The next interface will ask you for the below inputs:

Job Time Zone – This is the time zone of the geographic location where you will be performing this job. For example, if the job you are scheduling participants for is located in New York, you would select the New York / Eastern Time zone. If you don’t see the exact state in the list, choose the closest location with the same time zone.

Slot Duration Minutes – This field defines how long a time slot for a photo shoot or block of photo shoots can be. Think of this field as the amount of time you require your participant to be available for their appointment. For Example:

• Basic Scheduling – In situations where you are only accepting one person at a time and that participant receives 10 minutes with you for their shoot, you would enter “10”. This will make each slot / appointment 10 minutes long.
• Block Scheduling – If you prefer to schedule where a few participants can arrive at the same time and you shoot them all within say a 10-minute time block, then you still enter “10” (later you’ll use the Slot Designer to choose how many people can book the same block of time). The 10 minutes you enter here is defining that these participants should show up at their booked time and be prepared to potentially stay for 10 minutes.
  
  While block scheduling can seem counterintuitive, it’s great for keeping your day on track in situations where participants are either late or early.
  
  Learn more about what block scheduling is here.

Once complete, you can click the green “Enable Job For Scheduling Setup” button at the bottom of the screen. Your job is now ready to start designing days of bookable time slots. See below for the next step!

How To Create A Schedule of Time Slots

To create a schedule of bookable time slots:

1. Navigate to the job detail page for your job.
2. Click the three vertical dots icon in the Job Panel.
3. Click “Scheduling Console”.
4. Enter the date you wish to start creating slots for.
5. Click the “Configure Day” button.

After performing the above steps, you will be brought to the Slot Designer for the date you entered. This tool allows you to design your day’s bookable appointment slots in a visual manner. By default, this tool shows you a blank day with no slots on first load. You’ll now be designing your day’s schedule by adding small grey rectangles (aka slots) that will represent bookable appointments of time:

Adding Slots -

You can add slots to a day in a few different ways:

• Add Single Slots -
  Click the icon to the left of a time block. This will add one single slot.
  
  
  
• Add Bulk Slots – By Number of Slots Needed -
  In the top right of the Slot Designer tool, select the “Slots Needed” tab. This tab allows you to pick a “Starting Point” time and add any number of slots from that starting point time forward.
  
  For example, if your job starts at 9AM and you have 20 people to shoot, you would enter a “Starting Point” of 9:00AM and a ”Number of Slots” of 20. This will create 20 slots, starting at 9AM, moving forward in time by your slot duration, till 20 slots are created.
  Note: The “Starting Point” time must always start on a time that is appropriate per your slot duration. If you have a slot duration of, say 3 minutes, your time blocks are laid out every 3 minutes. 12:00AM, 12:03AM, 12:06AM, etc. You can only create slots on these predefined blocks of time. If your day doesn't contain the exact time you would like to start, please pick the next closest time.
  
  
  
• Add Bulk Slots – By Time Span -
  In the top right of the Slot Designer tool, select the “Time Span” tab. This tab allows you to pick a start and end time for your slot creation.
  
  For example, if you’ll be shooting from 9AM to 5PM, you would enter a “Start Time” of 9:00AM and a “Stop Time” of 5:00PM. You can think of the “Stop Time” as the “quitting time” for the job. This tool always ensures that each slot created gets the full amount of slot duration minutes and will never add slots after the “Stop Time”.
  Note: The “Start Time” must always start on a time that is appropriate per your slot duration. If you have a slot duration of, say 3 minutes, your time blocks are laid out every 3 minutes. 12:00AM, 12:03AM, 12:06AM, etc. You can only create slots on these predefined blocks of time. If your day doesn't contain the exact time you would like to start, please pick the next closest time.
  
  
  
• Adding By Copying -
  You can copy a day’s slots by utilizing the “Copy Slots To New Day” button within the Slot Designer or within the Scheduling Console on a specific day. This will allow you to copy all the slots (occupied or unoccupied) into any other day. You can even copy a day’s slots into itself! Perfect for replicating an intricately designed day’s schedule into a “block schedule”.

Removing Slots -

You can also remove un-booked slots from a day in a few different ways:

• Remove Single Slots -
  Hover your mouse on a slot and click the icon on a slot. This will delete a single slot.
  
  
  
• Remove A Row Of Slots -
  Hover your mouse on a time block with slots and click the icon. This will delete all empty slots for this time block.
  
  
  
• Bulk Clear Slots -
  Click the “Clear All Empty Slots” button to remove all unoccupied slots. You generally only want to utilize this button when you are entirely restarting your slot design process or you want to close booking for this day.
  

Please Note: Only unoccupied slots can be removed. Once a slot is booked, the only way to remove it is to cancel the booking. See how to cancel bookings here.

All slot add and remove operations are saved immediately upon clicking. No submit or save button click needed!

Once you have your day scheduled as you like, you can go back to the Scheduling Console by clicking the “Back To Scheduling” link on the left of the page. You can now either add additional days, customize your scheduling interfaces or start distributing your Booking URL! See the Slot Design Styles section below for tips on how to design your slots! You can also share a link to the Scheduling Viewer so your client can stay up to date on scheduling progress.

How To Edit Slots / A Schedule

To edit the available slots within a day:

1. Navigate to the job detail page for your job.
2. Click the three vertical dots icon in the Job Panel.
3. Click “Scheduling Console”.
4. Click the “Edit Slots” button on the day you wish to edit slots.

Please Note: Only unoccupied slots can be removed. Once a slot is booked, the only way to remove it is to cancel the booking in the shoot detail page or have the participant cancel their booking via their booking confirmation.

Slot Design Styles

With the Headshot Tools Slot Designer being a visual and granular tool, you can perform many styles of slot design that aren’t typically possible with other scheduling software. Here are some examples:

Singular Example – This is a simple straight vertical line of slots where each participant gets X slot duration amount of time (in our example below 5 minutes). This is great for a small team where you know you can rely on participants to be on time. If you’re used to other scheduling software, this should feel similar.

9:00AM -
9:05AM -
9:10AM -


Block Example – This style of design creates a “wider” schedule allowing multiple participants to book the same time. To create a slot design like this, simply click add multiple times and the schedule will become wider with slots. This technique works with all the add slot buttons, bulk or individual. Learn more about block scheduling here or shooting with multiple stations here.

9:00AM -
9:05AM -
9:10AM -


Tapered Example – Perfect for situations where you have breaks midday or hard stops. You can remove slots before or after breaks such that you ease in and out of these points of your day. This allows you to close your station easier and/or not be stressed with a flood of participants after a lunch break. Especially helpful for when participants show up early or late.

11:30AM -
11:40AM -
11:50AM -
12:00PM -
12:10PM -
12:20PM -
12:30PM -
12:40PM -


VIP Example – Imagine you have a VIP executive coming at 3PM and you want to make sure they get your full attention! Remove the slots around this time to buffer as well as add more bandwidth to ensure this VIP gets top-notch service!

2:55PM -
3:00PM -
3:05PM -


Extra Capacity Example – Your organizer might have analytics that suggest 12PM-2PM will be a particularly busy time. You might want to have a second photographer or assistant show up during this time to help. With this extra help, you’ll be able to process more participants and you can add additional slots for specifically these times!

11:50AM -
11:55AM -
12:00PM -
12:05PM -
…
01:50PM -
01:55PM -
02:00PM -
02:05PM -

How To Edit Scheduling Settings

To edit your scheduling settings:

1. Navigate to the job detail page for your job.
2. Click the three vertical dots icon in the Job Panel.
3. Click “Scheduling Console”.
4. Click the three vertical dots icon in the Scheduling Console panel.
5. Click “Edit Scheduling Settings”.

Here you’ll be able to edit the Job Time Zone and Slot Duration minutes. However, these fields are only editable if no slots exist for this job. Changing these fields would modify the foundation of your schedule and potentially change your participant’s bookings.

If you would like to change these settings and you have booked slots, you will first need to cancel these bookings. You will likely want to reach out to your participants in this case to let them know to reschedule a new time.

If you would like to change these settings and you have only unoccupied / un-booked slots, click the ”Edit Slots” button on any days within the Scheduling Console and clear those slots using the ”Clear All Empty Slots” button. Do this until no days with slots exist and you’ll now be able to edit these scheduling settings.

Booking Sign Up Form

Once your job contains bookable slots via the Slot Designer, your participants can book slots / appointments with you via the Booking page.

To access the booking page:

1. Navigate to the job detail page for your job.
2. Click the three vertical dots icon in the Job Panel.
3. Click “Scheduling Console”.

Here you have many options for how you and your participant’s can access your Booking URL:

Booking Link – In the top right corner of the Scheduling Console page, is a teal “Book” button. Clicking this button will open the booking page.

QR Code – In the top right corner of the Scheduling Console page is a QR code that you or participants can scan with their mobile devices to access the booking page.

QR Code Download or Printed Sign – You can download the QR code’s high-resolution file or a printable sign by clicking directly under the QR code within the Scheduling Console. The printable sign is also customizable if you click on the text within the sign. Please Note: This is a different QR Code than the normal sign-up form.

Booking URL – Below the QR code in the Scheduling Console is a “Booking URL” link that you can easily copy for inclusion into mailing campaigns, emails, or other external communications.

The booking form is dynamic and will only allow participants to book when slots are available. When all slots are filled or no slots exists, the booking form will let participants know there are no additional slots available. However, if participants cancel their bookings, the form will automatically re-open allowing for re-booking of those slots.


When a participant books a slot, they are sent a confirmation email regarding their booking. Additionally, a reminder email is sent 24-25 hours ahead of their booking.

Are your participants not seeing the ability to choose time slots? See here for why.

View Bookings

After creating slots and having participants book, you might be curious to see how your bookings are going or inspect them more. There are several options for this depending on your goal.

I want to see how full my day is –
In this case, looking at the Scheduling Console will give you the best idea of how many slots are booked and remain.

I want to see what part of my day will be the busiest –
We recommend looking at the Slot Designer for this. Occupied slots will be teal and unoccupied slots will be gray. The visual nature of this interface will allow you to identify hot spots and potentially allocate additional resources if needed.

I want to see the names of all the people who booked –
Utilizing the “View Bookings” button in the Scheduling Console for a specific day is an excellent way to see this information. You can additionally, export a CSV file as well. The “View Bookings” page is specially formatted and printable for organizers. When you print this page, it will display in a way that is helpful for wranglers of executives or company helpers. You might be interested in sharing a link to the Scheduling Viewer instead.

I want to see when a specific participant booked –
The fastest way to see a specific participant’s booking is to search for their name on the main Job Detail page, click their name and look at their Shoot Detail page. Here you can see when they booked, get their Booking URL or even cancel their booking.

How To Cancel A Booking

To cancel a booking for a participant:

1. Navigate to the job detail page for your job.
2. Click on the participant's name you wish to cancel.
3. Click "Cancel Booking".

Cancelling a booking will remove this participant from the slot they occupied, freeing it up for someone else to book. If you wish to remove this slot all together, please remove the slot after cancelling the booking. Please note that when you cancel a participant's booking for them and the date of their booking is in the future, Headshot Tools will email them a cancellation letting them know their booking has been cancelled.

Participant's can also cancel bookings themselves via their booking confirmation link that was emailed to them at the time of booking or a reminder email. They will not receive a cancellation email when the self-cancel.

You can bulk cancel all bookings within a job using the "Cancel All Bookings" tool.

Common Issues / Questions

• Why can't I change the slot duration or time zone?

  The slot duration and time zone fields for a job are not editable when slots exist. These fields are the foundation of your schedule and changes would invalidate what time participants expect to show up for their booking. To unlock these fields you will need to remove all slots from all days within the Scheduling Console. If slots are occupied, you must cancel those bookings first.

• Can I still use external scheduling software like 17Hats and Acuity?

  Absolutely! See our external scheduling software help page. In some cases these other services may be a better fit for the type of scheduling you need to perform. Headshot Tools scheduling was built for specifically Team and Event Headshot jobs.

• What emails do participants get via Headshot Tools scheduling?

  Participants will receive a booking confirmation email upon successfully booking a slot and a reminder email 24-25 hours ahead of their booking. The only other email participants will receive is a cancellation email if you cancel an appointment on behalf of the participant via the Shoot Detail page when their appointment is still current. You can see previews of these emails here.

• How can I share the schedule with my client / organizer?

  For clients that want regular updates on scheduling, you can share a link to the Scheduling Viewer. Click here to see more.

• The sign-up form isn’t showing time slots!

  The Headshot Tools Sign-Up Form and Booking Form are two different forms, URLs and QR codes. You just need to give your participants the Booking Form URL or QR code and you’ll be all set! See more here.

• Can I still use the normal sign-up form?

  Yes! The Sign-Up Form and Booking Form are two different forms. The normal sign-up form / QR Code will work just like normal but not ask for a slot time. The booking form / QR Code will always ask for a slot time. Participant's who sign up with the normal sign-up form will not be assigned a time slot. The sign-up form in situations like this is typically used for immediate walk up sessions.

• I want more scheduling features!

  Scheduling software is notoriously complex. So much so that entire businesses exist to address the challenge. The main issue? Most solutions try to cover every possible scheduling need, resulting in overwhelming complexity and a steep learning curve. Headshot Tools scheduling is solely focused on scheduling for Team and Event Headshot Jobs. This focus allows us to streamline the process and keep usability as simple as possible.
  
  For scheduling functionality not offered within Headshot Tools, we recommend utilizing 17Hats. However, if you would like to submit a feature request, please see our help page here.