Allow or block all-day, recurring and cross-day bookings

A booking policy decides whether resources permit all-day, recurring or cross-day bookings. All three switches start on. Use the same policy for resources that need the same rules.

Choose by resource:

• All day suits resources held for the day — desks, parking, equipment. Room policies often turn it off to prevent day-long holds.
• Recurring is how standing meetings book their slot once. On scarce, high-demand rooms, limit the series span below, turn recurrence off, or pair it with the no-show rule that cancels an abandoned series.
• Cross day exists for overnight use — equipment on loan, a war room kept through the night. Rooms rarely need it.

1. Find the switches on the policy

Select the policy those resources use and choose Edit, then open Booking policy — the first page in the editor. The three switches sit together at the top of the page:

• Allow users to create recurrence booking
• Allow users to create all day booking
• Allow users to create cross day booking

Turn off the ones this class of resource should not offer, and save. The change applies to new bookings at once; bookings that already exist keep the shape they were made with.

2. Limit a recurring series

Keep recurrence enabled when standing meetings are useful but should not claim a room indefinitely. These optional settings are available from 4.6.4; both restrictions are off until configured.

Under Allow users to create recurrence booking, open Advanced recurring settings. Turn on Limit series span and enter Maximum series span in whole calendar days. Save the policy after returning from the nested pages.

The span runs from the current series’ start to the end of its final actual occurrence, in the booking’s time zone. The last occurrence must end at or before that boundary, at the same local clock time after the configured number of calendar days. Daylight-saving changes do not turn this into a fixed number of hours. Gaps and excluded dates do not subtract days; an unused recurrence end date is not itself an occurrence. Cancelling the first occurrence does not move the series’ start.

With this restriction enabled, the booker must choose an end date or an occurrence count. Offision refuses an overlong or endless series; it does not silently shorten it. The booking advance window is separate: it measures from today, while this setting measures from the series’ start.

For a shorter meeting on each repeat, open Advanced restrictions, turn on Limit each recurring occurrence, and enter Maximum occurrence duration in minutes.

This checks each occurrence, including one edited separately. It does not add up the hours across the series and does not restrict ordinary nonrecurring bookings. The ordinary maximum duration still applies, so the stricter applicable maximum wins. See the limits reference for the values and messages.

Override rules can inherit either limit, set another positive value, or explicitly disable it for the selected group. A booking using several resources must satisfy every applicable resource policy; a failure rejects the whole request.

Existing bookings stay saved when a limit changes. Later changes to dates, times, recurrence or resources must satisfy the current limits for the complete affected resulting series, even when editing just one occurrence. Title-only changes and cancellations remain allowed under these restrictions, subject to the usual permissions. When an edit splits off a new series, its span starts at that resulting series’ own start.

3. What each shape means exactly

All day removes clock times and holds the whole calendar day, regardless of working hours. All-day bookings can have a separate check-in deadline; see the check-in deadline on a desk floor.

Recurring turns one booking into a repeating series. On the booking form it is the Recurring choice at the top — one booking that repeats on a schedule, with the usual daily, weekly and monthly patterns — and every occurrence is checked against the same rules as a single booking.

Cross day lets one booking end on a later day than it starts. With it allowed, the form’s date picker offers separate start and end dates; without it, one date serves both and the booking must end by midnight. An all-day booking that covers several days is both shapes at once, so it needs both switches on.

Series is a separate booking-form choice, controlled under UI customization › User booking form › Multiple booking. Management calendar has its own pair of settings. These control whether Series appears and how many sessions it holds; see UI customization settings.

4. What people see when a shape is off

The form shows a disallowed shape in two ways:

• The control greys out. In the expanded time section, an All day or Repeat button for a disallowed shape stays visible but disabled, and hovering it explains why — Not allow all day booking, or its recurring twin. A booking that already is all-day can still be switched back to timed; only turning the shape on is blocked.
• The booking is refused by name. Everywhere else — the shape chosen before a resource that forbids it joins the booking, or several resources booked at once — the form refuses with the resource’s name, in the same place other rule violations appear.

A booking that holds several resources must satisfy every one of them: as the policy page itself puts it, when a booking involves different policies, these settings default to off. One desk whose policy forbids all-day is enough to grey the button for the whole booking.

5. Check it worked

Sign in as an ordinary user and open the booking form on one of the resources. The switched-off shapes should show as greyed All day or Repeat buttons, and a timed booking on one day should save as before. If the button is still live, the resource is pointing at a different policy than the one you edited — check which policy the resource carries.

With recurring limits, also try a finite series within them, one beyond the span, and one occurrence longer than permitted. Only the compliant series should save. Reopen the policy to confirm both saved values.