Assigning appointments to providers

Each service has its own provider routing strategy, configured on the service — see Provider assignment for the customer-facing summary. This page covers what happens underneath.

When routing applies

Routing only matters when a plan offers the service through more than one provider. With a single provider, or with manual routing, the customer always sees and picks an explicit provider slot.

With any automatic strategy, the customer instead sees one combined "team" slot per time, and TheBooking assigns an eligible provider once the booking is confirmed.

Strategies

• Manual (default): one slot per provider; the customer chooses explicitly.
• First available: assigns the eligible provider with the lowest ID. Deterministic — the same provider wins every time slots tie.
• Least loaded: assigns the eligible provider with the fewest non-cancelled reservations in the last 30 days. Ties fall back to the lowest ID.
• Random: assigns uniformly at random among eligible providers.

"Eligible" means available at that time and not excluded by the provider's own service restrictions or by plan scoping.

Notes

• Admin-created reservations can still specify an explicit provider, bypassing the strategy.
• If every eligible provider becomes unavailable between slot generation and booking confirmation — a race with another customer — the booking fails rather than assigning an ineligible provider.
• Changing the strategy doesn't move existing reservations between providers; it only affects new bookings.