Blocked Times have been one of the most-used features in diarybook for years — and one of the most frequently requested improvements. A single start and end date worked well enough for straightforward annual leave, but fell short for anything more complex: recurring meetings, partial-day blocks, patterns that repeat week after week.

Today we’re introducing Schedules, which replaces Blocked Times in version 10 with something considerably more capable.

What’s new

A Schedule record can contain multiple time rules, each with its own date range, time range and day-of-week pattern. You can block every Monday morning, or every day except Wednesday, or a two-week period that excludes a specific afternoon. You can also add free time entries — exceptions within a blocked period that mark a user as available again.

Users affected are managed at the record level, so a single schedule can cover one person, a selection of people, or everyone on the account — and that can be changed without recreating the record from scratch.

What this means for Blocked Times

we recommend using Schedules for all new availability records going forward. Existing blocked time records will continue to be respected and will remain visible, but going forward all availability management should be done through Schedules.

Over time, Blocked Times will be retired as a feature and moved to the diarybook v8 documentation. If you have existing blocked time records that you rely on they will continue to work.

Getting started

Schedules are available now. You’ll find them in the same place as Blocked Times — and the interface should feel familiar, just with more options.

Read the full Schedules guide at diarybook.com/docs/getting-started/schedules/