Build a Group
First create the equipment items and set each one to Part of Group. Then open Equipment → Groups, select New, and choose the member items. Their order is used as allocation priority for sequential allocation.
A group and its location-specific members must have compatible locations. After saving, link the group to the classes or appointment services that use it.
Automatic and Customer Choice
- Automatic means OB assigns an available unit for the customer during booking — the customer never picks.
- Customer Choice lets the customer choose the specific unit from the group, where the booking flow supports it. With Customer Choice the system does not auto-assign the unit, but the group's available capacity still decides whether the booking fits.
Required means bookings for the linked classes require equipment from this group. Optional means that, with Customer Choice allocation, customers can choose to add equipment from this group — it never blocks the main booking.
A group set to Customer Choice does not use the allocation mode or the Same Equipment Item rule, so the Groups list leaves those cells blank for it.
Allocation Modes and Same Equipment Item
The Keep Groups Together setting is now called Same Equipment Item, and the allocation mode Optimized is now shown as Sequential (preferred). Only the labels and descriptions changed — nothing you had already saved behaves differently.
Allocation mode
- Sequential fills the available units in order, taking the Same Equipment Item setting into account.
- Balanced distributes the units needed for one booking across different equipment items, unless the same item is required. It does not balance usage across past bookings.
- Sequential (preferred) uses sequential assignment with a preference for the same equipment item, and fixes Same Equipment Item to Preferred. There is no later automatic reassignment.
Same Equipment Item
- Required means all attendees in one booking must use the same equipment item, potentially across several of that item's units. If that item cannot fit everyone, the booking is rejected.
- Preferred allows different equipment items. The sequential modes first try to keep everyone on the same item, across multiple units if needed; Balanced distributes them across items.
