How to prevent double bookings for your sessions and meetings

Available starting November 11, 2025

In order to maximize turnouts at your sessions and meetings, and ensure that your attendees do not accept invitations when they are already booked for that particular timeslot, you can enable the “Prevent double bookings” functionality on your workspace.

When an attendee receives a meeting invitation or attempts to register for a session via the app, the “Prevent double bookings” functionality will automatically check their schedule and detect whether they have already booked for another conflicting session or meeting.

This feature can be used for in-person events only, for attendees who are using the mobile app or the web app, and is particularly effective when multiple meetings and sessions have overlapping times.

In this article we’ll explain how the "Prevent double bookings” functionality can be enabled, and what it is able to check.

Requirements and recommendations

• For the "Prevent double bookings” functionality to work properly, it can be used only for events where all the sessions and meetings are created in advance, with dates and times that cannot be modified.
• The “Prevent double bookings” functionality will only work in the app (web and mobile). It will not work for meeting invitations and session registrations that take place outside the app, such as registering to sessions via an event registration page, or accepting meeting invitations via email.
• The “Prevent double bookings” functionality will only work for meetings that are set-up using the Appointments module.
• For meetings, to ensure that the organizer can extend the invitation to the participants without having the permissions to change any other details of the meeting, we recommend that you apply the read-only functionality on the relevant fields.

How does the "Prevent double bookings” functionality work

When enabled, the "Prevent double bookings” functionality will automatically check whether attendees are available to register to a session or accept a meeting invitation, based on the sessions and meetings that they have already registered for or accepted.

If the app user already has a session or a meeting scheduled for the proposed date/time slot of the new meeting or session, the below message will appear:

In this case, if the user sees this message, they will not be able to accept the new meeting request unless they go to the existing booking in order to unregister for the conflicting session or decline the conflicting meeting.

Once that timeslot has become available, the user can then accept the new meeting invitation.
The same logic applies for users registering to sessions.

Important:
- It is important to keep in mind that, the “Prevent double bookings” functionality will only perform the check when an attendee registers for sessions via app, accepts meetings invitations via app, or is added to a meeting (via the app or via Backstage). Therefore, if a change is made to a meeting after it has been accepted by the participants, this will not re-trigger the “Prevent double booking” verification.
- Remember that the “Prevent double bookings” functionality will only work in the app (web and mobile). It will not work for meeting invitations and session registrations that take place outside the app, such as registering to sessions via an event registration page, or accepting meeting invitations via email. More information on where this is applied

How to enable the "Prevent double bookings” functionality

To enable the "Prevent double bookings” functionality in the workspace, go to the Settings > General > Double bookings tab:

Here you can enable the Prevent double bookings option.

Additionally, you can choose to enable or disable the following options:

Include meetings
Enable this option to prevent app users from registering to sessions or accepting a meeting that uses the exact same time slot as another meeting they have already scheduled.

Include targeted sessions
Enable this option to prevent app users from registering to sessions or accepting a meeting that uses the exact same time slot as another session they are targeted to.

Include registered sessions
Enable this option to prevent app users from registering to sessions or accepting a meeting that uses the exact same time slot as another session they have already registered for.

Where does the "Prevent double bookings" functionality apply

The “Prevent double bookings” functionality will only work in the app (web and mobile).

It will not work for meeting invitations and session registrations that take place outside the app, such as registering to sessions via an event registration page, or accepting meeting invitations via email. 

How can I prevent organizers from making changes to the dates and times in meetings

As mentioned previously, for the "Prevent double bookings” functionality to work properly, it can be used only for events where all the sessions and meetings are created in advance, with dates and times that cannot be modified.

For meetings (that have to be created via the Appointments module), an organizer must be assigned to extend the invitation to the participants via the app, without having the permission to change any other details of the meeting, and in particular the date and time of the meeting.

To make the date and time field non-editable for a meeting via the app, go to the Metadata manager, access the Meetings metadata type, and select the Prevent in app modification check box for the “start_ts” (start date and time) and the “duration” (Duration) fields:

Enabling the "Prevent in-app modifications" on these two fields will result in the fields being read-only (and non-editable) for app users, and in particular the meeting organizer:

In this case, the app user (organizer) can however still modify the meeting details such as the name of the meeting and the invited participants. The “Prevent in app modification” check box can be enabled on any of these Meetings metadata, based on your needs.