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What Is Buffer Time?

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Assantewa Heubi
Assantewa Heubi

What Is Buffer Time?

What exactly is buffer time? It's a term that's used frequently. However, the context in which it is used sometimes leads to more confusion rather than increased clarity.

Many people, when they think of buffer time, remember visiting a website or clicking on a video link and getting a notice that it's buffering. So it can be a little perplexing for them to see a setting labeled buffer time when creating a bookable scheduling event.

What does buffer time do? How is this setting going to interact with the bookable appointment type? Should it be left alone, or is it better to adjust and customize it? Is changing the buffer time going to impact how long it takes for the event to load? All of these questions and concerns will be answered in this article, so read on!

buffer time example

Buffer time, at least regarding calendar scheduling, has nothing to do with how long it takes for the bookable event page to load. It's about how much time you need to reload and reboot between appointments. Basically, buffer time is a new word for a classic concept. The simple idea is that when we're scheduling meetings or events, we need to ensure that we also schedule enough time between them to set ourselves up for success. When we're talking about buffer time, in the context of education-related scheduling, we think about how much time is needed for students to reasonably make their way from point A to point B on campus or quickly refuel so they can be present and concentrate.

Buffer time refers to how much time is needed between meetings. It's understood that before an appointment starts or ends, there might be a few policies and due diligence tasks. Buffer time helps ensure team members can schedule that time automatically when different appointments are booked. This helps to improve efficacy and reduce burnout.

So to answer the question, what is buffer time? Buffer time is a bit of time automatically set between meetings to make sure everything runs smoothly.

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