Draft visits and releasing them to the team

While you're arranging the schedule you can keep visits as drafts if Draft Visits is enabled in Settings > Scheduling > Features. A draft visit is tentative and not yet released to the team, so technicians don't see it on their side until you release it, which lets you plan a day or week before committing it.

When there are drafts in the range you're viewing, a banner at the top of the Scheduling page reads "N draft visits need attention" and lists them by day so you can review them together. To commit a draft, open its details and use Release; to pull a committed visit back, use Revert to Draft.

When you ask Essential whether someone is free, it treats a draft as tentative rather than a firm conflict and flags it as not yet released.

If Draft Visits is turned off in Settings, Essential releases all current draft visits to technicians and any configured customer reminders for those visits can be scheduled and sent. That change cannot be undone.

Where to find it: Scheduling page, the draft visits banner at the top, and a visit's details (Release / Revert to Draft)

Related guides

• See and manage your schedule
• Work with the scheduling backlog
• Add work orders (visit types) and contacts with reminders to a visit
• Create a new visit
• Deleting a scheduled visit is permanent
• Turn scheduling and GPS features on or off