We are again considering making the switch from Bookly to your Amelia booking plugin, but the only reason stopping us from doing so, is being unable to show the timezone at the calendar of the booking form.
We had BookingWP plugin before, and switched to Bookly because we have international clients, and many were not sure the time zone used for hours, and selected wrong dates, or asked us to book the service manually.
I'm aware you detect this automatically, but is there a way to at least show the time zone being used? Being able to change it would be great, but at least showing it, would help things and it might be an easy change.
We are really interested in being an active client.
Since Amelia doesn't have any time zone settings, it inherits the time zone from WordPress. If your time zone is in UTC+/- format, please change it by selecting the city near you. Also, please check if you enabled "Show bookings in customer's time zone" in Amelia's General settings.
If you are in a different time zone than your WordPress site is, and you've enabled this option, the times on front-end will show available time slots in your time zone, which will be the time you set in back-end +/- the time difference (depending on where you are in regards to the time zone set in WordPress' General settings).
If you want to test this, there are two ways:
1. Change WordPress time zone, in WP Settings, to a time zone which you are not in. Then, take a look at the front end. For example, if you are in CET, and you set WP time zone to New York, available time slot for 10am in backend will be shown as 4pm on frontend.
2. Change your computer's time zone, to a time zone different than WordPress time zone.
This will show you how the feature works. You can always add a text field above the form (Custom Text Field not included in Amelia), saying: "Available times are shown in your time zone", so that your clients know which time zone is shown.
If there is no message about the time zone selected at the calendar, the client is not aware if the calendar is shown at their timezone, and there is no way to change it in case it detects it wrong.
We have LiteSpeed cache and CloudFlare, so timezone detection might not work always. I believe it's also an UI enhancement to display the detected timezone at the calendar, and allow the unregistered client to change it if needed.
If it would clash with your Lite Speed and Cloud, that could cause an inconvenience in the future.
At the moment, Amelia does not have other ways to display the time zone than in the way that I previously suggested, however, if you're interested, you can forward it as a suggestion to us via feature requests, so that we can take it into consideration for the future updates.
We added an option to select Time Zone on the Customers and Employees panels – customers and employees can now change the time zone on the panel and according to the time zone see and manage appointments and events.
Please note that Tome Zone selection is not available right on the booking form for non-logged-in users at the moment.
> Please note that Tome Zone selection is not available right on the booking form for non-logged-in users at the moment.
Would it be possible to add this, maybe manually for the time being?
I'd really really want to replace Bookly with your plugin, but this is a must since many people confuse themselves before, when we had another booking plugin with no timezone selector at the form.
I'm afraid, this feature is not on our roadmap yet.
It probably can be done with some custom work, but our developers are very busy at the moment, so they won't be having the time for custom work in the near future.
But we can recommend these services for customization:
Hello TMS Plugins team,
We are again considering making the switch from Bookly to your Amelia booking plugin, but the only reason stopping us from doing so, is being unable to show the timezone at the calendar of the booking form.
We had BookingWP plugin before, and switched to Bookly because we have international clients, and many were not sure the time zone used for hours, and selected wrong dates, or asked us to book the service manually.
I'm aware you detect this automatically, but is there a way to at least show the time zone being used? Being able to change it would be great, but at least showing it, would help things and it might be an easy change.
We are really interested in being an active client.
Hi Juan Manuel,
Since Amelia doesn't have any time zone settings, it inherits the time zone from WordPress. If your time zone is in UTC+/- format, please change it by selecting the city near you. Also, please check if you enabled "Show bookings in customer's time zone" in Amelia's General settings.
If you are in a different time zone than your WordPress site is, and you've enabled this option, the times on front-end will show available time slots in your time zone, which will be the time you set in back-end +/- the time difference (depending on where you are in regards to the time zone set in WordPress' General settings).
If you want to test this, there are two ways:
1. Change WordPress time zone, in WP Settings, to a time zone which you are not in. Then, take a look at the front end. For example, if you are in CET, and you set WP time zone to New York, available time slot for 10am in backend will be shown as 4pm on frontend.
2. Change your computer's time zone, to a time zone different than WordPress time zone.
This will show you how the feature works. You can always add a text field above the form (Custom Text Field not included in Amelia), saying: "Available times are shown in your time zone", so that your clients know which time zone is shown.
Thanks for your reply Ivana.
If there is no message about the time zone selected at the calendar, the client is not aware if the calendar is shown at their timezone, and there is no way to change it in case it detects it wrong.
We have LiteSpeed cache and CloudFlare, so timezone detection might not work always.
I believe it's also an UI enhancement to display the detected timezone at the calendar, and allow the unregistered client to change it if needed.
Thank you for the kind reply.
If it would clash with your Lite Speed and Cloud, that could cause an inconvenience in the future.
At the moment, Amelia does not have other ways to display the time zone than in the way that I previously suggested, however, if you're interested, you can forward it as a suggestion to us via feature requests, so that we can take it into consideration for the future updates.
Hello Ivana,
Sorry to bump this old ticket, but I noticed you had a new version launched recently.
Are we able to show timezone at the calendar now at the schedule widget?
This is a must for international clients, to confirm they are viewing their timezone, and change it if needed.
Hi, Juan,
Thank you for choosing Amelia.
We added an option to select Time Zone on the Customers and Employees panels – customers and employees can now change the time zone on the panel and according to the time zone see and manage appointments and events.
Please note that Tome Zone selection is not available right on the booking form for non-logged-in users at the moment.
Best Regards.
Thanks for the update Liza!
> Please note that Tome Zone selection is not available right on the booking form for non-logged-in users at the moment.
Would it be possible to add this, maybe manually for the time being?
I'd really really want to replace Bookly with your plugin, but this is a must since many people confuse themselves before, when we had another booking plugin with no timezone selector at the form.
Juan,
I'm afraid, this feature is not on our roadmap yet.
It probably can be done with some custom work, but our developers are very busy at the moment, so they won't be having the time for custom work in the near future.
But we can recommend these services for customization:
https://codeable.io/?ref=l1TW1
https://wpkraken.io/?tms-plugins
They do develop such solutions, so you can send your inquiry to them and check if that can be achieved and how much it will cost.
There's nothing else we can do about it at the moment, unfortunately.
Best Regards.