In this article, you'll learn how to create and configure Bookings using the Bookings module. If you would like to manage existing Bookings and their subscribers, refer to the Manage Bookings article
If your business undertakes events or seminars where bookings are required then the Bookings feature can help significantly streamline administrative tasks whilst helping improve overall customer experience. The booking feature enables your customers to make bookings on your website for specific events. The system will track capacity and will send follow-up emails to customers before, on and after the booking date to maximize customer experience.
Here are some of the key features that will help you outperform your competitors:
When you create a booking event, one of the first considerations is whether the event requires capacity management. Capacity management can be set so that the system tracks the number of reservations and will update the site automatically when a class or seminar is full. You enter the number of available spots and the system will not accept more reservations once the capacity limit is reached.
If you don't require capacity management, leave the capacity field empty. But if you want to enable this feature, enter the number of available seats for your event.
Every event must have a date. This refers to the date when the event takes place. Providing a date is mandatory. Additionally, events can only be scheduled up to (and including) today’s date; events cannot be scheduled in the past.
Follow these steps to create a new event:
Note: The content you enter in these fields is displayed to the visitor on your site when they click to view the event information. You can change how this information is displayed; refer to the article on Customizing the appearance of events for more details.
The booking auto responder is an email that is sent to a customer when they make a booking to an event. Generally, the auto responder contains information about the event, and may also include a thank you note and any other information that is relevant and important to communicate. Auto responder emails are mandatory and are always sent to registered attendees.
You have complete control over the content and design of the auto responder email. You specify the from name, the reply to email address, the format of the email, (HTML or text) and the content. If desired, you can use a template that brands the auto responder email to match your business identity.
In order to collect payments for a booking, you must first edit or create a new web form that collects payments. The next step is to ensure your booking is setup for payment collection. To do this, go to 'Modules > bookings' and click on the booking name. On this screen you will see a 'Requires Payment' check box, enable this option.
If this option is checked, whenever the bookings detailed layout (e.g yoursite.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=XXXX) is retrieved, the customer will automatically be redirected to your sites secure URL ready for payment collection.
Now that you have enabled your booking for payment and created the webform, the next step is to insert this webform into the Bookings detailed layout. This is located under the 'Admin > More customization options > Bookings > Detail Layout' screen.
If you wish to send an invoice once the payment is collected, you will have to append the following to the booking form's action URL
&SendInvoice=true
When taking payments for bookings on your site, the booking payment page will use your sites secure URL. To ensure the customer returns to relevant URL after the payment is completed, you will need to first add the below paramater to the Web Form action URL in your booking details template:
&SITEURL={module_siteurl}
e.g
/FormProcessv2.aspx?WebFormID=10254&OID=4398&OTYPE=61&EID=0&CID=0&SITEURL={module_siteurl}
The next step is to place a link on the confirmation page that links to "http://{module_url,SITEURL}" e.g.:
<a href="http://{module_url,SITEURL}">Continue</a>
Bookings may be assigned to one or more categories. Each event that your business organizes can be classified within a subject. When you classify events in categories you make it easy to publish them on web pages, by allowing you to group related bookings together. Here is how classification works:
Imagine you are a financial advisory business which holds seminars educating individuals on Tax matters as well as Superannuation matters. You have a series of seminars in each topic coming up over the next few months. You can assign the tax related seminars under the "tax" category and the superannuation seminars under the "superannuation" category. Assign a classification under the classifications tab, by moving your desired classifications from left to right.
By classifying bookings you can publish groups of them at once on any web page. For instance by placing the booking module on a web page that displays all superannuation seminars, as you add more seminars related to superannuation they will automatically appear on your website without any further editing of web pages required. When a booking is held and is in the past it is automatically removed from your website.
Note: You can manage your category list and create new categories that are relevant to your business. Go to Admin > Manage Categories to add and manage categories.
By default a booking form reserves one spot for each person. And each person may only ever book one spot to a booking. However it is possible to make changes to your web form so customers can choose the number of spots for a booking.
To do this add the following field to your booking form:
<input class=cat_textbox id=BookingAllocation name=BookingAllocation>
If you wish to set a maximum number of spots a customer can book, then this can easily be achieved using JavaScript, the example below will allow up to 5 spots to be booked by a single customer.
<input type=text name=”BookingAllocation” onChange=”if (this.value > 5) this.value=5;”>
All aspects of a booking can be customized to suit your needs. Bookings are similar to Announcements and FAQs - there are two templates that you can customize to ensure bookings appearance is inline with your expectations. These templates come pre-configured and you should only explore them if you want to further customize the appearance of bookings. All customization of these templates can be done under Admin -> More Customization Options, then Booking Layouts
The List template defines how a group of bookings are displayed on a page. For instance if you are holding a series of 4 seminars in the month of August, then you may want to display all of them on a web page. The list layout controls how these 4 bookings are displayed together on a web page.
You may move each tag to the position you desire, and add new tags via the tag manager or tag list.
Details layout defines how a booking is displayed after it has been selected. In this instance once a customer chooses one of the upcoming seminars in August it is loaded and displayed exactly how you have setup your booking Details template.
If you are already familiar with customizing Announcement or FAQ templates you know that the appearance of these types of content is entirely customizable. Layout, style sheets, colors and the information that is displayed is controlled and positioned as you want it, via the use of tags and the tag list.
All bookings within your system will use the same List and Detail templates.
Generally the Detail template will contain a web form which is used as your booking form. This approach means one form is universal for all bookings, i.e. one booking cannot use a different booking form to another booking.
However, if you require a different booking form for each individual booking you have set up, then you will need to remove the booking web form from the Detail template, and place it instead in the Booking Details section for each individual booking (i.e. in the editor window where you place other information about the booking).
You can easily create booking forms using the web forms feature. After you have created your web form you must insert it into the Booking Detail layout in Admin -> More Customization Options -> Booking Layouts. Ensure you delete the existing web form on this layout. Only one web form can be placed on this layout.
By default a system message is displayed every time a booking is made. You can customize this message by going to Admin > More Customization Options > System Messages.
You can also configure your booking form to go directly to a web page that you designate. This web page can be hosted with Your Online Business or a 3rd party hosting provider.
To do this you need to ammend the web form action URL. For example, find this code:
action=/FormProcessv2.aspx?........
And change it to:
action=/FormProcessv2.aspx?........&PageID=/Results.htm
You can also use JavaScript to conditionally set the confirmation web page of a booking form. For example if a customer is choosing their City, then if the customer choose LA then you can redirect to the LA landing page and for San Francisco you can redirect to the San Francisco landing page. Refer to the Support Forums for examples of this.
The intention is that individuals can book for multiple spaces at the time of booking but they cannot create a second booking under their e-mail. You can modify their booking by looking at the booking under the customers CRM record (under customer bookings) and edit the allocation number.
You'll need to provide the link within your site directly into the SSL url. So you'll need to locate the URL for the existing form e.g. (yourdomain.com/bookingform1.htm) and provide hyperlinks directly to the SSL version instead (https://yourdomain.worldsecuresystems.com/bookingform1.htm).
There are several situations when the system will not accept a booking. These include:
Copyright 2004 - 2011 Business Catalyst