Block bookings for specific dates (heat waves, holidays, time off)
In this article
In this article group
- How Capacity Autopilot works
- Closing Days and Hours Your Agents Shouldn't Book
- Scheduling and Bookings
- Job Limits — How Full a Day Gets Before Agents Stop Offering It
- Job Summary — What Jenny Writes on the Jobs She Books
- Holidays — Keeping Closed Days Off the Schedule
- Lead Time — How Much Notice Your Agents Leave
- Office Hours — What They Change (and What They Don't)
Sometimes you need your agents to stop booking a certain kind of work for a few days — a heat wave where you want techs free for no-cool calls, a holiday week, a stretch when your maintenance crew is out. You do that with a 0% cap on a date window in Capacity Autopilot. It takes about two minutes.
Check first: this walkthrough is for percentage caps. On the Overview tab, look at the Cap mode box — Percentage should be selected. If your account uses Count caps, there's no arrival-window grid; set Max per tech / day to 0 for that job type group instead.
Two things to know first
This only blocks bookings your UpSmith agents make. Anything your team books by hand in ServiceTitan still goes through as normal.
A cap only blocks what it covers. Every arrival window and every day you want blocked needs its own 0%. Any space you leave empty runs at 100% and stays bookable — that's the one people miss.
Block a date range — step by step
Open Autopilot from the UpSmith navigation and stay on the Overview tab.
If you don't have a date window for those dates yet, click Add date window. Name it something you'll recognize ("Heat wave – Aug 17-20"), set the start and end month/day under Date range (recurs annually), and click Add date window. Date windows repeat every year, so see When the dates pass below.
In the Annual calendar, click the row for your date window to select it. The calendar shows whole months, so a window for August 17–20 lights up all of August — the exact dates are the ones you set on the window. Make sure that window is the one selected and not Default; anything you enter under Default applies all year. When you're on the right window, its row is outlined in blue, the bar below shows its name and dates, and the caps column header reads Caps · {window name} instead of Caps · Default.
Click the business unit group you want to change to open its caps. Arrival windows run down the side; job type groups run across the top.
In the column header for the job type group you want to block — e.g. Maintenance — click the ⋯. (Use the column header, not the ⋯ next to an arrival window — that one sets every job type in a single time slot.)
In the box that opens, type 0 and click Apply. Every arrival window in that column is set to 0%.
Check that it took. There's no Save button — changes save as you make them. Each blocked cell shows a red 0% with Blocked — agents will not see any availability, and once every arrival window in the column is 0%, a banner above the grid confirms that nothing in that group can be booked. No banner? A cell is still blank — find it and set it to 0.
Within a minute or two your agents stop offering those slots. Your customers never see them — they're simply not on the list of times the agent can offer.
Block some job types but not others
Say you want to stop maintenance during a heat wave but keep taking plumbing work. In that same section, your job types run across the top as columns. Click the box at the top of a column to select it — for example Heating and Cooling — and leave Plumbing unselected. A bar appears at the bottom of the screen showing how many cells you've selected. Type 0, click Set cap, then Done. Only the columns you selected get the 0%; the rest keep taking work.
Doing this for another location or a different setup
Same steps, different groups. Pick the Business Unit Group for that location, then the Job Type Group column that holds its maintenance job types. Groups are often named differently from one location to the next, so if you're not sure which group holds which job types, email support@upsmith.com and we'll look at it with you.
When the dates pass
Select the date window and click Revert to Default, then confirm with Revert to Default. That puts the window's caps back to your Default caps. Or delete the date window and confirm with Delete override — your Default caps take over for those dates. Date windows repeat every year — a window you created for one heat wave will come back next August unless you remove or revert it.
Common questions
Does this cancel appointments already on the books? No. A cap only affects new bookings from the moment the change saves. Anything already scheduled stays scheduled — move or cancel those in ServiceTitan.
Can my team still book those dates by hand? Yes. Caps govern what your UpSmith agents book. They don't touch what your dispatchers do directly in ServiceTitan.
I set 0% and something still got booked. Nine times out of ten it's a space that didn't get filled in. Go back and confirm every arrival window and every day in the range shows 0% — if the whole column is blocked, you'll see the banner above the grid — and that you were on the right date window rather than Default. If it still looks wrong, email support@upsmith.com.
How fast does it take effect? A minute or two after the change saves.
Do I have to block the whole business unit? No — that's what the column boxes are for. Select just the job types you want blocked.
Where to go next
How Capacity Autopilot works — the concepts behind caps, and first-time setup
Scheduling & Bookings — how agents book into ServiceTitan