When Availability Updates After Hours Changes

When you change your business hours — whether it's your weekly operating schedule, a date-specific override, or a holiday closure — the AI's availability needs to update to reflect the change. Here's how and when that happens.

Types of hours changes that affect availability

  1. Weekly operating hours change — e.g. you now close at 5pm instead of 7pm on Fridays.
  2. Date-specific hours override — e.g. you're opening late on a specific date.
  3. Date-specific closure — e.g. a one-off closed day.
  4. Holiday closure toggle — e.g. switching a public holiday to closed.

Each of these affects the outer boundary for what slots are considered available.

When does the availability update?

After saving (automatic): For most hours changes, saving the configuration triggers a background job to regenerate availability for the affected dates. This means:

  • Date-specific closures that are applied directly (toggling a day closed) update availability immediately on save.
  • Weekly hours changes trigger a regeneration for upcoming days covered by the new schedule.

After publishing: Some changes may require publishing the AI to propagate to the live system. After making significant hours changes, publishing is the safest way to ensure the full availability cache is refreshed.

Stale availability risk

There is a brief window between saving hours changes and the availability cache being fully updated. If a caller contacts the AI during this window, they may be offered a slot from the old availability. This window is typically very short (under a minute in most cases).

For time-sensitive closures (e.g. you need to close immediately), it's safest to also check recent bookings for the affected period to ensure no slots were confirmed for the newly-closed window.

After adding new staff or tables

When you add a new staff member with availability, or add new tables/zones, the availability for upcoming days is regenerated to include the new resource. This happens automatically, but publishing the AI after such changes is recommended to ensure consistency.

💡 Tip: Make hours changes well before the affected period. Changing Friday's hours at 4:55 pm on Friday leaves no margin for the cache to update before callers start calling.