How to create a round-robin booking type

A round-robin booking type automatically distributes meetings among a group of team members. It's perfect for sales teams, support staff, or any situation where you want to assign a new meeting to the next available person.

Benefits of Round Robin Scheduling

• Priority-based distribution — Bookings are assigned to the available team member with the highest Priority setting. When multiple members share the same priority, one is selected at random.
• You control distribution — Raise a host's priority to send them more bookings, or lower it to send fewer. There is no automatic workload balancing in the code — Round Robin picks the highest-priority free host and breaks ties randomly.
• Team efficiency — Maximizes team availability and utilization
• Automatic assignment — No manual intervention required for booking distribution
• Client simplicity — Clients do not need to choose between team members

How TidyCal picks the host for a slot

When a client selects a time, TidyCal:

1. Builds the list of hosts who are free for that slot (based on their Default Availability, connected calendar, existing TidyCal bookings, and the booking type's restrictions).
2. Shuffles the free hosts randomly.
3. Sorts them by priority (Highest first).
4. Picks the first host in the sorted list.

This means the Highest-priority free host is always chosen when available. When multiple free hosts share the same priority, one is picked randomly (because of the shuffle step). Round Robin does not rotate sequentially (A-B-C-A-B-C); assignment is slot-by-slot based on who is free plus priority.

Priority dropdown (5 levels)

In the booking type editor's Team tab, each host has a priority dropdown with five options:

• Highest priority — picked first whenever free (default for newly added hosts).
• High priority
• Medium priority
• Low priority
• Lowest priority — picked only when higher-priority hosts are unavailable.

Set different priorities to favor certain hosts (for example, Highest for senior reps, Medium for juniors).

Important nuances

• Plan owner: if the plan owner is a host on the Round Robin booking type, their Default Availability is not re-applied separately — the booking type's own schedule already represents their availability. Non-owner hosts' Default Availability is applied as a second filter.
• Ignore external calendar conflicts toggle (in the booking type editor's Restrictions tab): applies to the whole booking type, not per host. When enabled, TidyCal skips calendar Busy events and cross-booking-type conflicts — only existing bookings on this exact booking type block slots for the free-host check.
• Hosts need TidyCal accounts: each team member needs their own TidyCal account to be selectable as a host.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Round Robin Booking

1. Click Teams in the sidebar and select your team
2. Click + New booking type at the top of the team's booking types page
3. In the booking type editor, go to the Team tab and choose Round Robin
4. Select the team members to include in the rotation and set their Priority
5. Set the duration, buffers, and any other settings as needed
6. Click Save

How Availability and Distribution Works

It's important to understand the logic TidyCal uses:

• Pooled Availability: The booking page shows clients the union of slots from every team member in the pool. If Person A is free at 10 AM and Person B is free at 11 AM, the client will see both 10 AM and 11 AM as options.
• Per-host signals: For each team member in the rotation, TidyCal checks four signals when computing available slots:
  1. Their Default Availability schedule (their own hours in their own timezone)
  2. Their connected calendar's Busy events — events marked Busy in Google, Microsoft, or Apple calendars block that time
  3. Their existing TidyCal bookings from other booking types (personal or team)
  4. The booking type's own restrictions — minimum notice, padding, how far in advance, and booking limits (applied once, uniformly for all hosts)
  A slot is only offered when a host is actually free across all of these. Hosts in different timezones see correctly filtered slots.
• Priority-based assignment: When a client books a time, TidyCal picks the available team member with the highest Priority setting. When multiple members share the same highest priority for that slot, one is selected at random.

Round Robin vs Other Team Features

Understanding how Round Robin differs from other TidyCal features helps you choose the right scheduling method.

Round Robin vs Collective Meetings

Round Robin vs Group Bookings

These are completely different features:

• Round Robin: Distributes meetings among different HOSTS (your team members)
• Group Bookings: Allows multiple ATTENDEES (your clients) to book the same time slot

Example: A sales team using Round Robin can also enable Group Bookings on each host's calendar to allow demo webinars with multiple attendees per session.

When to Use Round Robin

Perfect for:

• Sales teams rotating demo calls
• Support teams distributing consultations
• Customer success managers sharing client onboarding
• Any scenario where only one team member needs to attend each meeting

Not ideal for:

• Meetings where everyone must attend (use Collective instead)
• Single-person booking types (no need for Round Robin)

Frequently Asked Questions

Which plan do I need for Teams?

Teams require the Pro plan ($12/month or $99/year) or Agency Plan ($79, one-time lifetime payment).

How many team members can I add?

There is no limit on team members with the Pro plan or Agency Plan.

Need help with Teams?

Contact support@tidycal.com for assistance.