Load Balancing

Load balancing determines how customers are routed to team members when booking appointments.

Overview

When a customer books through your scheduling group, the system must decide which team member gets the appointment. Your chosen strategy controls this routing.

Available Strategies

Strategy	Behavior	Best For
Least Busy	Routes to the team member with fewest upcoming appointments	Fair distribution across the team
Round Robin	Cycles through team members evenly	Equal opportunity for all
Weighted Priority	Routes to highest-priority available member	Senior staff preference
Show All	Combines all team members' availability into one calendar	Maximum booking options

Least Busy

Default strategy. Routes customers to the team member with the most availability for new customer appointments.

How It Works

1. System checks each team member's calendar
2. Counts upcoming initial consultation appointments (FIRST_APPT) in the booking window
3. Routes to the person with the fewest initial consultations

Only Initial Consultations Count

Load balancing only counts appointments booked through public scheduling (initial consultations). Other activities like follow-up calls, internal meetings, or manually scheduled appointments don't affect the calculation. This ensures fair distribution of new customer appointments specifically.

When to Use

• You want fair distribution of new leads across the team
• Preventing any one person from being overloaded with initial consultations
• Team members have similar skills/experience

Example

Team Member	Initial Consultations	Other Activities	Gets Next Booking?
Alice	8	2	No
Bob	3	15	Yes
Carol	6	5	No

Bob has the fewest initial consultations, so the next customer is routed to him. His 15 other activities (follow-up calls, meetings, etc.) don't affect the calculation.

Round Robin

Cycles through team members in rotation based on their initial consultation counts, ensuring everyone gets equal opportunities.

How It Works

1. System counts each team member's initial consultations over a 30-day window
2. Routes the next booking to the person with the fewest initial consultations
3. Skips unavailable members and continues to the next least busy

Like Least Busy, Round Robin only counts initial consultation appointments (FIRST_APPT) from public scheduling - other activities don't affect the rotation.

When to Use

• Equal opportunity matters more than current workload
• Team members are compensated per appointment
• You want predictable, fair distribution

Example

Rotation order: Alice → Bob → Carol → Alice → ...

Booking #	Assigned To	Notes
1	Alice	First in rotation
2	Bob	Next in rotation
3	Carol	Completes cycle
4	Alice	Rotation restarts
5	Carol	Bob unavailable, skipped

Weighted Priority

Routes customers to the highest-priority available team member.

How It Works

1. Each team member has a priority (1-10, higher = preferred)
2. System checks availability starting with highest priority
3. Routes to first available high-priority member

Setting Priority

1. Open the scheduling group
2. Click Edit on a team member
3. Set Priority (1-10)
4. Save changes

Priority	Meaning
10	Highest - gets customers first
5	Medium - standard priority
1	Lowest - only when others unavailable

When to Use

• Senior salespeople should get priority
• Specialists should handle their project types first
• Ramping new hires gradually (start at low priority)
• Performance-based routing (top performers get more leads)

Example

Team Member	Priority	Available?	Gets Booking?
Alice	10	No	No
Bob	8	Yes	Yes
Carol	5	Yes	No

Alice has highest priority but is unavailable. Bob is next highest and available.

Show All

Combines availability from all team members into a single calendar view, maximizing booking options.

How It Works

1. System collects available time slots from all team members
2. Slots are merged into a single calendar, sorted by time
3. Customer picks a time slot; the system assigns them to whoever owns that slot

When to Use

• You want to maximize available booking times for customers
• It doesn't matter which team member the customer gets
• You want the simplest booking experience with the most options

What Customers See

• A single calendar with all available times combined
• More available slots than any individual team member would have
• No indication of which team member they'll be assigned to

No Team Member Selection

"Show All" does not let customers pick a specific team member. It simply combines everyone's availability to offer more booking options. The team member is assigned based on which slot the customer selects.

Choosing the Right Strategy

Your Situation	Recommended Strategy
Want fair workload distribution	Least Busy
Equal opportunity for all team members	Round Robin
Senior staff should get priority	Weighted Priority
Maximize available booking times	Show All
New hires ramping up	Weighted Priority (low priority for new hires)
Specialists for certain project types	Weighted Priority + Project Type Filters

Combining with Other Features

Project Type Filtering

Load balancing only considers team members who match the customer's selected project type. Configure project type filters on each team member.

Returning Client Routing

When Route Returning Clients is enabled on the group, the system first tries to match returning customers with their previous team member. Load balancing only applies if that person is unavailable.

Schedule Constraints

Team members who have reached their weekly limits are excluded from load balancing for that constraint type.

Changing Strategies

1. Open your scheduling group
2. Find the Load Balancing dropdown
3. Select your desired strategy
4. Save changes

Changes take effect immediately for new bookings.

No Migration

Changing strategies doesn't affect existing bookings or redistribute appointments. It only changes how future bookings are routed.

Related Topics

• Team Members - Configure priority and project type filters
• Schedule Constraints - Limit weekly appointments
• Scheduling Groups - Main group configuration