What Is So Difficult About Scheduling An Appointment?

Since we launched YourAM, I had always wanted to write an article about the technology that was put into our product. Perhaps now is the right time to do it. Most people that use personal calendars do not understand the complexity of automating appointment bookings. To them it is a simple matter of seeing and blocking out available time on a dummy calendar interface. There are many solutions out there that already does this DIY scheduling. However, YourAM doesn't just do that because it is not merely a personal DIY productivity tool. We actually build YourAM to completely replace DIY scheduling systems and we think that we are close to achieving it. Here are some of the differences about YourAM and a dummy personal productivity tool like say Google calendar.

• It manages the appointment of not just one person but a group of people.
• The appointment booking process is completely automated via our algorithms.
• It is not a dummy calendar but a smart constraint resolution engine that accounts for many factors that affect real world appointments.
• It doesn't just manage appointments but also helps you analyze them.

For an overview of what I am talking about, take a look at the diagram below.

The complexity of the algorithms that is used to do the analysis involved in resolving a successful appointment that can be properly booked is nontrivial. Taking into account that performance is important for a system like this, a typical resolution time should be in the milliseconds range. The longer it takes to produce a bookable appointment means that you need more expensive hardware and deployment platform to achieved a reasonable server load.

Here is one example of the sort of complex real world problem that YourAM is capable of solving.

A skin treatment center with 3 doctors and 10 consultants:

• Appointment bookings must be within working hours of both the organization and the individual. Working hours for the individual and organization can be different.
• Each appointment requires a doctor, a room, a laser equipment and two consultants. Each of the staff involved have on going appointments and events that needs to be considered. Each equipment and room can have available alternatives and double booking is not allowed.
• Each different type of treatment is a service. Each service have different time durations and the appointment booked must not over schedule the time needed. Multiple services are allowed in a single appointment booking.
• Appointments must be booked 24 hours in advance and no one should be able to book any appointments that is more than 2 weeks from today.
• Notifications, reminders and alerts for appointments must be automated and spamming of customer and staff are not allowed.
• Customers must be able to book appointments online by themselves at anytime if they want to without your supervision.

The above example showcase only one type of the kind of problem that YourAM has been designed to simplify. That is also why YourAM is more than just a dummy digital appointment book that you can easily find on your PC or mobile phone. It is also for this reason that YourAM is starting to become recognized as one of the best online appointment management solution for businesses.