I am using Amelia's "step-by-step wizard" to allow patients to book appointments for a clinic. So far the plugin works great but two issues came up recently. One of these issues is more urgent since I can't find a workaround, the other one is more of a suggestion.
1. I created a custom field that requires patients/customers to enter date of birth. As of now, they have to type it manually in text form since there is no custom field for that purpose. This can create issues since people can choose different date formats (dd.mm.yyyy, mm.dd.yyyy etc.). A custom field that allows customers to pick a certain date from a calendar will be great.
2. This one is more urgent. Appointments are always paid on site but patients must choose 1 of 3 methods of payment (cash, health fund,insurance) before booking. As of now, I am using a custom field to request this information before patients can complete their booking on page 3 of the step-by-step wizard.
The problem is that some employees have certain limits on the types of payment they can accept each day. For example, employee X can only accept 5 appointments paid with cash, others have to come from insurances or health funds. As of now, we have to cancel all appointments booked after certain limit is reached and ask the patients to reschedule. Needless to say some of them aren't very happy about that...
I thought of duplicating all services and renaming them to something like this - example1, example1 with insurance, example1 with health fund, so once a certain employee reaches his/her limit I can remove him/her from that particular service. This is not really an solution though, since there are 12 different services already. This will mean a total of 36 different services for the patients to choose from. Also we have to repeat this every day for each employee.
So I need a way to call the custom field on page one of the step-by-step wizard to achieve this order Service -> Payment method (Custom Field) -> Employee. That way patients can only pick employees that are available for the chosen method of payment. I understand this is not possible at the moment so I am asking if you have some workaround that I can use for now.
Thanks in advance,
Stay safe and I hope you have a great day!
P.S I am sorry for the long post but the issue needed long explanation.
1. Unfortunately, there isn't a date formatted custom field. We have this feature request in our list and I will add your vote to it, so it will be considered for implementation in the future, but for now it isn't planned and I can't say if and when it will be implemented.
2. Unfortunately, there isn't a possibility to move the custom field to the first step of the booking process and the booking can't depend on the option chosen in some custom field.
As of now, we have to cancel all appointments booked after certain limit is reached and ask the patients to reschedule. Needless to say some of them aren't very happy about that...
There is the Default appointment status option for each service, so you can maybe set it to Pending for some services, and then approve the appointments until the limit is reached, and reject the others. If that could make some difference.
I thought of duplicating all services and renaming them to something...
This would be the only solution I think.
I don't think there is any work-around for this in Amelia, unfortunately. One more thing that can be chosen on the first booking step in Amelia is Locations, if that could somehow help.
If you have any further questions feel free to ask.
As of now, all appointments are set to "pending" by default to avoid overbooking. Something that can really help is to make the first page of the step-by-step wizard to follow this logic - Category -> Service -> Employee. There are 12 different services on this website and if I duplicate them twice there will be 36 different services so users will be really confused about what service to pick. Is this something that can be achieved in the future? I believe it can help others as well.
You can achieve that behavior if you use the Catalog view of Amelia, shortcode [ameliacatalog], so customers will need to choose a category first and then service. You can read more about this view by following this link and check out how does it look like on our demo sites for example here.
If you have any further questions feel free to ask.
Hello Amelia team,
I am using Amelia's "step-by-step wizard" to allow patients to book appointments for a clinic. So far the plugin works great but two issues came up recently. One of these issues is more urgent since I can't find a workaround, the other one is more of a suggestion.
1. I created a custom field that requires patients/customers to enter date of birth. As of now, they have to type it manually in text form since there is no custom field for that purpose. This can create issues since people can choose different date formats (dd.mm.yyyy, mm.dd.yyyy etc.). A custom field that allows customers to pick a certain date from a calendar will be great.
2. This one is more urgent. Appointments are always paid on site but patients must choose 1 of 3 methods of payment (cash, health fund,insurance) before booking. As of now, I am using a custom field to request this information before patients can complete their booking on page 3 of the step-by-step wizard.
The problem is that some employees have certain limits on the types of payment they can accept each day. For example, employee X can only accept 5 appointments paid with cash, others have to come from insurances or health funds. As of now, we have to cancel all appointments booked after certain limit is reached and ask the patients to reschedule. Needless to say some of them aren't very happy about that...
I thought of duplicating all services and renaming them to something like this - example1, example1 with insurance, example1 with health fund, so once a certain employee reaches his/her limit I can remove him/her from that particular service. This is not really an solution though, since there are 12 different services already. This will mean a total of 36 different services for the patients to choose from. Also we have to repeat this every day for each employee.
So I need a way to call the custom field on page one of the step-by-step wizard to achieve this order Service -> Payment method (Custom Field) -> Employee. That way patients can only pick employees that are available for the chosen method of payment. I understand this is not possible at the moment so I am asking if you have some workaround that I can use for now.
Thanks in advance,
Stay safe and I hope you have a great day!
P.S I am sorry for the long post but the issue needed long explanation.
Hello Pavel,
1. Unfortunately, there isn't a date formatted custom field. We have this feature request in our list and I will add your vote to it, so it will be considered for implementation in the future, but for now it isn't planned and I can't say if and when it will be implemented.
2. Unfortunately, there isn't a possibility to move the custom field to the first step of the booking process and the booking can't depend on the option chosen in some custom field.
As of now, we have to cancel all appointments booked after certain limit is reached and ask the patients to reschedule. Needless to say some of them aren't very happy about that...
There is the Default appointment status option for each service, so you can maybe set it to Pending for some services, and then approve the appointments until the limit is reached, and reject the others. If that could make some difference.
I thought of duplicating all services and renaming them to something...
This would be the only solution I think.
I don't think there is any work-around for this in Amelia, unfortunately. One more thing that can be chosen on the first booking step in Amelia is Locations, if that could somehow help.
If you have any further questions feel free to ask.
Hello Marija,
As of now, all appointments are set to "pending" by default to avoid overbooking. Something that can really help is to make the first page of the step-by-step wizard to follow this logic - Category -> Service -> Employee. There are 12 different services on this website and if I duplicate them twice there will be 36 different services so users will be really confused about what service to pick. Is this something that can be achieved in the future? I believe it can help others as well.
Hello Pavel,
You can achieve that behavior if you use the Catalog view of Amelia, shortcode [ameliacatalog], so customers will need to choose a category first and then service. You can read more about this view by following this link and check out how does it look like on our demo sites for example here.
If you have any further questions feel free to ask.
This will require some additional work but it will solve our problem. I just need to consult with my client first.
Thank you for your suggestion!
You are welcome, Pavel.
If you have any other questions or issues feel free to open a new ticket and we will gladly help.