So I'm trying to set up a booking system for my families zoo and I'm struggling to determine the difference between an event and a service.
For example, we have animals with set feeding times (certain animals also have multiple feeding times per day.) We offer an "experience" where small groups can book a time slot to join a keeper in feeding and interacting with the animals. So it seems like this would be an event that occurs daily? If so, why are daily recurring events not an option? Alternatively, it could be a service with limited available timeslots, but that doesn't seem to be an option either. In our case, it doesn't matter which employee does what activity so I have been able to work around this by making an individual employee for a specific service with specific work hours and breaks. (See attachments) If I was however to make it as an event, I could make 7 weekly events for each experience, which I can see becoming a nightmare to change and maintain. (See attachment)
Due to covid regulation in our area, we can only book one group per experience, but as restrictions lift, we would like to book multiple groups (up to a limit) for certain experiences. The former would fit the functionality of a service, whilst the latter would fit an event.
Lastly, we also book interaction and cleaning experiences with animals that can happen anytime time of day, but only a certain number of times per day to limit stress on the animals. This does not seem possible with an event or a service!
So whilst there are workarounds to all of my problems, I'm wondering if anyone can help guide me in a better direction? Am I missing something or are these not things Amelia is capable of/designed for? I've spent the past couple of days looking through and trying out booking plugins for WordPress and this one looks the best by far, the superbly designed Customer and Employee panels are just icing on the cake! I prefer the Booking views over the Events view, so that makes me want to make services over events where possible. But then again being able to interchange both views would be ideal!
I think I'm going to stick with Amelia regardless, but I would be incredibly grateful if someone could help me. Thank you for your time. :)
Thank you for your purchase, and for your kind words.
Unfortunately, it seems that you explored the plugin quite extensively, and there's not much I can offer to get a better experience with the plugin.
As you said, there's no daily recurring for events (yet, but we plan on releasing it in one of our next updates), so you would need to create 7 events for each day of the week, and have those repeat weekly. Or, you would create dummy employees, and create as many services as there are experiences. So, if you have 50 experiences, you would need to create 50 employees and 50 services in order to provide all of them at the same time for a certain amount of people.
At the moment, there are no other workarounds that I could offer, so until we release the daily recurrence for events, you're going to have to create a not-so-pretty system using events and/or services.
If there's anything in specific that I would be able to help you with, please let me know, and I'll gladly provide more details.
Thank you for your reply! I have decided to go down the route of using experiences and dummy employees but have encountered additional problems. Due to coronavirus restrictions in our area, we are able to offer group experiences from one household at a time but are unable to allow the mixing of different groups. For example, we offer an experience at 12 pm and 2 pm daily, the maximum capacity is 6 people and the price is per person. I've noticed that by default Amelia will try to fill the maximum capacity by mixing individuals and groups. Is there a way to disable this functionality? So that once a time slot is booked it is closed from further appointments? The only workaround I can think of is setting the maximum capacity to 1 (disabling the ability to pay per person) and explaining the rules on group sizes in a description box until coronavirus restrictions change. This obviously isn't ideal.
Also, as we are using dummy employees I would like to hide the employees from the booking form. Is this possible?
I am very happy with Amelia so far, even though I have to use workarounds to achieve the results I want. Assuming my requests are somewhere on the roadmap for the future of Amelia I will be more than happy to become a long-term user and purchase the larger license packages, I look forward to seeing what features future updates bring!
Aleksandar is out of the office so I will try to help out.
You need to disable the option Allow booking below minimum capacity: in Amelia -> Settings -> Appointments settings in order to achieve that with the group appointments - when this option is disabled, customers won't be able to book without filling in the minimum, but once someone books one appointment (one time slot/employee ) that time slot/employee won't be available for booking to other customers anymore. https://wpamelia.com/appointment-settings/
Also, as we are using dummy employees I would like to hide the employees from the booking form. Is this possible?
You can hide the employee selection on the front-end with adding custom CSS. Please try adding this format HTML to the page where you have your Amelia shortcode :
You've solved all my problems, It would be nice to "Allow booking below minimum capacity" on each service, but this is perfect for now. Hopefully, this is a feature I'll see in a future update! ;) Great work regardless!
If you require a refund for the plugin, please let me know. Your 15-day money-back guarantee expired a couple of days ago, but if you're not going to be using the plugin, we can still reimburse you. Just let me know.
Hey!
So I'm trying to set up a booking system for my families zoo and I'm struggling to determine the difference between an event and a service.
For example, we have animals with set feeding times (certain animals also have multiple feeding times per day.) We offer an "experience" where small groups can book a time slot to join a keeper in feeding and interacting with the animals. So it seems like this would be an event that occurs daily? If so, why are daily recurring events not an option?
Alternatively, it could be a service with limited available timeslots, but that doesn't seem to be an option either. In our case, it doesn't matter which employee does what activity so I have been able to work around this by making an individual employee for a specific service with specific work hours and breaks. (See attachments) If I was however to make it as an event, I could make 7 weekly events for each experience, which I can see becoming a nightmare to change and maintain. (See attachment)
Due to covid regulation in our area, we can only book one group per experience, but as restrictions lift, we would like to book multiple groups (up to a limit) for certain experiences. The former would fit the functionality of a service, whilst the latter would fit an event.
Lastly, we also book interaction and cleaning experiences with animals that can happen anytime time of day, but only a certain number of times per day to limit stress on the animals. This does not seem possible with an event or a service!
So whilst there are workarounds to all of my problems, I'm wondering if anyone can help guide me in a better direction? Am I missing something or are these not things Amelia is capable of/designed for?
I've spent the past couple of days looking through and trying out booking plugins for WordPress and this one looks the best by far, the superbly designed Customer and Employee panels are just icing on the cake! I prefer the Booking views over the Events view, so that makes me want to make services over events where possible. But then again being able to interchange both views would be ideal!
I think I'm going to stick with Amelia regardless, but I would be incredibly grateful if someone could help me. Thank you for your time. :)
Hey Dylan
Thank you for your purchase, and for your kind words.
Unfortunately, it seems that you explored the plugin quite extensively, and there's not much I can offer to get a better experience with the plugin.
As you said, there's no daily recurring for events (yet, but we plan on releasing it in one of our next updates), so you would need to create 7 events for each day of the week, and have those repeat weekly. Or, you would create dummy employees, and create as many services as there are experiences. So, if you have 50 experiences, you would need to create 50 employees and 50 services in order to provide all of them at the same time for a certain amount of people.
At the moment, there are no other workarounds that I could offer, so until we release the daily recurrence for events, you're going to have to create a not-so-pretty system using events and/or services.
If there's anything in specific that I would be able to help you with, please let me know, and I'll gladly provide more details.
Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Vuković
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Hey Aleksandar
Thank you for your reply! I have decided to go down the route of using experiences and dummy employees but have encountered additional problems. Due to coronavirus restrictions in our area, we are able to offer group experiences from one household at a time but are unable to allow the mixing of different groups.
For example, we offer an experience at 12 pm and 2 pm daily, the maximum capacity is 6 people and the price is per person. I've noticed that by default Amelia will try to fill the maximum capacity by mixing individuals and groups. Is there a way to disable this functionality? So that once a time slot is booked it is closed from further appointments? The only workaround I can think of is setting the maximum capacity to 1 (disabling the ability to pay per person) and explaining the rules on group sizes in a description box until coronavirus restrictions change. This obviously isn't ideal.
Also, as we are using dummy employees I would like to hide the employees from the booking form. Is this possible?
I am very happy with Amelia so far, even though I have to use workarounds to achieve the results I want. Assuming my requests are somewhere on the roadmap for the future of Amelia I will be more than happy to become a long-term user and purchase the larger license packages, I look forward to seeing what features future updates bring!
Thanks for your time,
Dylan
Hi Dylan Tweedy,
Aleksandar is out of the office so I will try to help out.
You need to disable the option Allow booking below minimum capacity: in Amelia -> Settings -> Appointments settings in order to achieve that with the group appointments - when this option is disabled, customers won't be able to book without filling in the minimum, but once someone books one appointment (one time slot/employee ) that time slot/employee won't be available for booking to other customers anymore. https://wpamelia.com/appointment-settings/
Also, as we are using dummy employees I would like to hide the employees from the booking form. Is this possible?
You can hide the employee selection on the front-end with adding custom CSS. Please try adding this format HTML to the page where you have your Amelia shortcode :
<style> .el-form-item.am-select-employee-option {display:none;} </style>and let me know if it helped.
We are glad to see you like Amelia, we hope you will find useful the future improvements and new features of the plugin .
If you have any other questions or concerns feel free to open a new ticket and we will gladly help out.
Thank you, Marija!
You've solved all my problems, It would be nice to "Allow booking below minimum capacity" on each service, but this is perfect for now. Hopefully, this is a feature I'll see in a future update! ;) Great work regardless!
Thanks again.
Dylan
Oh actually, the employee still shows up on the confirmation menu, is there another piece of code I could inject? And is there documentation on this?
Hello Dylan
Can you please send me the page where I can see the form, so I can find the correct CSS to hide this?
Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Vuković
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
https://borthzoo.co.uk/booking/
Thank you Dylan.
You can add this CSS on the page:
.am-confirm-booking-data.el-row > div:nth-child(1) > div > div:nth-child(1) { display: none !important; }And the employee will be hidden from the last step of the booking form.
Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Vuković
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables
Yep! That worked perfectly.
Unfortunately, our local council isn't allowing us to take bookings any longer, so this may have all been in vain!
But thanks! I do appreciate all the help.
I'm sorry to hear that, Dylan.
If you require a refund for the plugin, please let me know. Your 15-day money-back guarantee expired a couple of days ago, but if you're not going to be using the plugin, we can still reimburse you. Just let me know.
Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Vuković
[email protected]
Rate my support
wpDataTables: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Front-end and back-end demo | Docs
Amelia: FAQ | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amelia demo sites | Docs | Discord Community
You can try wpDataTables add-ons before purchasing on these sandbox sites:
Powerful Filters | Gravity Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Formidable Forms Integration for wpDataTables | Master-Detail Tables