Relationship between Categories, Venues, Services, and Resources

In this section, we will clarify the relationship between categories, venues, services, and resources in OS Services Booking. Understanding these relationships is essential when setting up and managing your appointment booking system in both the backend and frontend.

Note: Starting from version 7.0, "Employees" have been replaced with "Resources" to better represent the flexible nature of the booking system.

Key Components

  • Category: A category is a grouping of related services. For example, "Medical Services" can include services such as "General Checkup" and "Dental Cleaning."
  • Venue: A venue is the physical or virtual location where services take place. A service may be assigned to one or more venues, depending on your configuration.
  • Service: A service is a bookable offering in your system, such as a consultation, court booking, class, appointment, or equipment rental.
  • Resource: A resource is an entity required to provide or support a service, such as a staff member, room, facility, court, or piece of equipment. Each resource can be assigned a Resource Type for proper categorization and labeling.

Relationship Diagram

Please take a watch at the video below:

In the diagram, the top blue bar labeled "Category" represents a category that includes multiple services.

If we consider this diagram as an example of a booking system, it consists of:

  • 2 venues: Venue A and Venue B
  • 3 services: Service A, Service B, and Service C
  • 9 resources in total (previously called "employees")

How It Works

Each venue (A and B) offers the same services (Service A, B, and C). However, the key distinction is that resources assigned to Venue A cannot work on the same services in Venue B.

Additionally, a resource can be assigned to multiple services. For example, Resource 6 is working on both Service A and Service C in Venue B.

This structure ensures that bookings are properly managed, preventing resources from being scheduled at different venues simultaneously while still allowing flexibility for resources who work across multiple services.

Resource Types

In version 7.0 and later, each resource can be assigned a Resource Type (such as Staff, Court, Equipment, Vehicle). This allows the system to display appropriate labels throughout the interface, enhancing the user experience by using contextually relevant terminology.