🧠Finding a rink for four of you next week
The most common request a booking secretary gets is not for a particular rink at a particular time — it is “when can the four of us get on?”. This is how a member answers that themselves.
1Open the booking grid and switch to Week
The Day / Week switch is in the toolbar at the top. Day is for “what is free right now”; Week is for “when is there room”.
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2Look down the columns, not across
Each column is a day. A day with plenty of room shows as a column of pale dashed chips. A busy one is a column of solid colour. You are looking for the emptiest column at a time that suits everybody.
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?Is next week far enough ahead?
Bookings only open a set distance in front, and only once that week has opened.
The chips are clickable The week is open and within your booking window — carry on. | The chips are there but nothing is clickable Either the week has not opened for booking yet, or it is beyond the club’s booking window. The note under the grid says how many days ahead members may book. Come back when it opens. |
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4Tap a free rink
Tapping a chip opens the booking form with the date, the rink and the session already filled in. You are not retyping anything.
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5Put the other three names in
Enter everybody who is playing, not just yourself. This is what the Duty Steward reads off the sheet, and it is what lets the others see the booking on their own app.
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6Confirm
The booking appears immediately on the grid for everybody else, so nobody books over you while you are still deciding.
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7If the whole week is full
Join the waiting list for the slot you wanted. If somebody cancels, the members who are waiting are told before the slot goes back on general view.
Common questions
- Everybody now books the same popular evening.
- That is the view doing its job — it makes the quiet slots as visible as the busy ones. If one evening is genuinely oversubscribed, the answer is usually another session rather than a rule: add a second session at a different time and it appears as its own row.
- Can members see who has booked?
- Yes, the chip carries the name of the member who booked it. That is deliberate — it is how somebody spots that friends are already on and asks to join them, and it is what the printed sheet has always shown.