we have purchased your product Amelia plugin for WordPress. we have some queries can you please describe in detail.
Question : 1) if an employee connects Amelia to his private google calendar, the google meet link will be generated by that private account? So the customer will receive an invite and an email from that private account? If yes can this be changed?
2) if instead the employee uses a dedicated gmail account for Amelia connection and so a dedicated google calendar, how can he link this calendar to his private one so that when a time slot is set to occupied in the private calendar this is reflected to Amelia's availability?
3) Is it possible to add a calendar view in the employee panel on the front side. like appointment details will be displayed on the calendar same as Amelia's calendar?
4) Is it possible to sync the employee google account calendar with Amelia's calendar?
5) Is it possible to sync the employee can connect his private google calendar to the Amelia calendar?
6) Is there any functionality through that I can enable registration for the customer? Make registration compulsory to book appointment?
7) How can I set buffer time between two time slots? I checked option in general setting "Include service buffer time in time slots " how it's works can you explain?
1. Yes, the Customer will receive an invite from the Employee's account.
2. You can try to import his private calendar to the dedicated google calendar, it should work theoretically (however, we didn't test such a configuration that much because it's not a default configuration for G Cal integration).
3. The Employee panel cannot be customized with the current built-in features in Amelia, I'm afraid.
You can suggest that as a feature request here, or check if this request was already submitted and vote for it.
4. 5. Sorry but I'm not sure if I understood the question. If you connect the Employee's Google Calendar to his Employee profile, then it will be synchronized with the calendar in Amelia.
The thing is, Google Cal sync works like that:
- Appointments created in Amelia, are being transferred to Google Cal (please note that Google Cal sync doesn't support Amelia Events, only Appointments);
- Busy slots in Google Cal are being blocked for booking in Amelia if you enable the "Remove Google Calendar Busy Slots" option in Amelia -> Settings -> Integrations -> Google Calendar. However, events from Google Cal are not being transferred to Amelia.
So it's not fully 2-way sync but more like 1.5-way sync. Therefore, if you want to transfer Employee's appointments from his Google Calendar to Amelia calendar, then it cannot be achieved at the moment, unfortunately.
6. Amelia has no feature to limit access to the bookings, however, it can be achieved with a third-party plugin or access settings. You can make pages with Amelia available only for logged-in users.
7. "Include service buffer time in time slots " makes Buffer time included in the time slot, so it's not adjusting to other bookings and free time slots, it's sort of fixed. You can test both ways, with this option enabled and without, and see which option fits your schedule better.
1) So first point regarding google calendars. My problem is to allow blocking busy slots from the employee private calendar without using it in Amelia integration.
Let me explain better. I setup an employee dedicated gmail account. Let's call it [email protected] and integrate the associated calendar into Amelia. Customer that books an appointment will receive the google meet invitation from [email protected]. And this is good as I don't want that the customer will receive the invitation from an uncontrolled account (i.e. employee private one). The employee has to access the google meet with "mysite1" credential otherwise he will not be entitled to open the meeting. So my employee has to have the "mysite1" credential. Most probably he will not use this account on his personal calendar (i.e. on his phone. For sure he will already have another one). Le't say he already has his "employee_private" credential for his gmail account on his phone where he has his agenda to setup all the appointments coming from several working sources plus his private life. So my scope is that when the employee has a busy slot on his "employee_private" calendar this should reflect to "mysite1" calendar so blocking the slot also in amelia availability. I've tried to link "employee_private" and "mysite1" accounts using the procedure suggested by google. I see the "employee_private" busy slot in "mysite1" calendar but they are not recognized by amelia. So can you doublecheck this behavior and suggest a way around to solve the problem?
2) User registration. Is there any placeholder that I can include in the notification email for the password setup URL for the customer after the first purchase and for the first registration? Is there a place in which the user can set his personal details as name, address, and other fields that then will be used for further purchases? does the Amelia profile and wordpress profile coincide?
3) Employee panel. In the wordpress backend the employee can have a calendar view of his appointments. So a calendar page for the employee already exist. Can this calendar page be linked to the Employee panel when the employee logs in through the Employee panel?
4) timeslot buffer. I will have appointments that last 50 minutes, but I want the next one to start with a buffer of 10 minutes. So for example the appointment lasts from 1:00pm to 1:50pm. And I want the next one to be bookable starting at 2:00 pm. How do I configure this? I need the customer knows at booking time that the appointment will last 50 minutes only. I need the employee to have 10 minutes between appointments.
please do not consider my previous question n 4) about buffer timeslots as I solved the issue.
Now I have another question regarding appointment cancellation.
First point. If I use the Cancel Appointment placeholder <a href=" %appointment_cancel_url%">Cancel Appointment Link</a> in the notification email, when the user click it, the appointment is cancelled without any login and without any confirmation request. In my opinion this is a bug that should be fixed.
Further point. I'm using Amelia with woocommerce as I need to integrate some invoicing plugins for italian fiscal rules. Now when the order is canceled I do not see any notification in woocommerce. In some cases I need to refund that canceled appointment. I understand that there is no automatic refund process, but is it possible to send a notification in woocommerce for the canceled order?
Final one. If I set up a package of more appointments and an for example only one appointment in that package is canceled I go in a strange situation. I cannot refund a single appointment in a group. Maybe I can refund all the appointment in that package. How do you handle this?
1. The Google account that you used for establishing Google Calendar integration doesn't have to be used for Employees. You can connect them to their personal Google Calendars, and that's how it should work in your case, I believe, because then time slots will be blocked in Amelia properly and they won't be overlapping. And if you want to see Employee's appointments in the [email protected] calendar, you can just import the Employee's calendar to it in Google Calendar settings.
2. Oh, It will be a quite long explanation, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid, there's no option to create the Customer's account before this Customer makes his/her first booking at the moment.
So, the Customer's profiles can be created automatically after the first booking - on the back-end or in the front-end Customer panel.
1). For creating a back-end Customer's account you should enable "Automatically create Amelia Customer user" in Amelia settings -> Roles -> Customer. Then, after the first booking, a Customer will receive an email from WordPress with the access link.
2). If you want your Customers to access their profiles on the front-end Customer panel, you need to create a Customer panel and include %customer_panel_url% placeholder in the Appointment Pending or Appointment Approved email notification (not in the Customer Panel Access notification since this one is made for the password change):
After they receive an email that their appointment is booked, they will see the link to log into the Customer Panel, and the first time they visit that link, they will enter the password which they will later use to log into the panel.
Also, if you test the Customer Panel, you should book a test Appointment with an email address that wasn't used for any Amelia user before. You should access the Panel being logged out from the WP Admin user (it will be even better if you use incognito mode). Only then the link and the Panel itself will work correctly.
3. Nope, I'm afraid the Employee panel has only list views for Appointments and Events, and the Calendar view is available only on the back-end.
4. Ok, I'll skip this one.
5. And how would you prefer Customers to cancel their Appointments?
Basically, you can remove the cancelation link and ask them to cancel Appointments on the Customer panel only.
6. By default cancelled Appointments from packages should not be refunded (that's the logic at the moment). Therefore, if your Customer cannot attend a booked Appointment from a Package, they should reschedule this Appointment instead of cancelling it.
Maybe I was not enough clear on a couple of points.
1. Regarding the calendar. Suppose the employee has his gmail private account: Employee_private. I set up a gmail account for the employee in the platform: Employee_platform. (that is different by the one used to connect the calendar API in the developer console). The employee connects his employee_private and employee_platform calendars through google account procedure. Now when a time slot is busy in employee_private then it is busy also in employee_platform calendar. Why Amelia does not recognize this busy timeslot?
5. Regarding the cancellation. I would like that in the customer panel there is no option to cancel the appointment. Just the option to reschedule it. I will implement the cancellation through backend manual process after an email. Is that possible?
It's hard to say, to be honest. We had cases when this configuration worked and cases when this configuration didn't. It seems like it depends on some Google account settings, but we had no chance to test it properly (it would take too long and probably wouldn't even be possible). That's why we can be sure only about sync with the Google Calendar that is connected to the Employee's profile, not imported Calendars.
5. Could you please clarify what you mean by "backend manual process"?
Regarding the cancellation. The problem is the following. The on line selling regulation (at least in Italy) allows a customer to change his mind and cancel the purchase asking for the refund during 14 days after the purchase. So I need to handle this process. If the customer cancel the appointment thinking that this action give origin to a refund process I could have problems as I do not have any notification in the backend for this. So I prefer that the customer send an email to the support and an administrator from the backend can cancel the appointment and manually start the refund process. So employee and administrators should be able to cancel appointments, while I would prefer to avoid customers to have his option.
This unless you can provide a kind of notification in the backend when an appointment is cancelled by the user.
Then you can simply remove the cancelation link from notifications, and your Customers will have to contact support in order to cancel their bookings.
We have only Appointment cancelled notifications, and it's not possible to mention who cancelled it - an Employee or a Customer. It only notifies about the changed status of the booking.
yes I had already planned to remove the link from the notification email. What I am not able to remove is the cancellation option from the appointments list in the customer panel. So when the customer enters the customer panel he can view the appointment lists and edit the appointment. Then he can choose the reschedule option or the cancellation option. Can the cancellation option in this place be removed?
It cannot be achieved with the settings because the cancelation option is a basic one, I'm afraid, but we can try to do it with custom CSS.
Could you please provide me with temporary access to the Customer panel? Please note that it's a public ticket so you should use private mode to share credentials.
Hii Amelia,
we have purchased your product Amelia plugin for WordPress. we have some queries can you please describe in detail.
Question :
1) if an employee connects Amelia to his private google calendar, the google meet link will be generated by that private account? So the customer will receive an invite and an email from that private account? If yes can this be changed?
2) if instead the employee uses a dedicated gmail account for Amelia connection and so a dedicated google calendar, how can he link this calendar to his private one so that when a time slot is set to occupied in the private calendar this is reflected to Amelia's availability?
3) Is it possible to add a calendar view in the employee panel on the front side. like appointment details will be displayed on the calendar same as Amelia's calendar?
4) Is it possible to sync the employee google account calendar with Amelia's calendar?
5) Is it possible to sync the employee can connect his private google calendar to the Amelia calendar?
6) Is there any functionality through that I can enable registration for the customer? Make registration compulsory to book appointment?
7) How can I set buffer time between two time slots? I checked option in general setting "Include service buffer time in time slots " how it's works can you explain?
waiting for your reply
Regards,
Developer Team
Hii Amelia,
still waiting for your reply. how much time will take to reply?
Regards,
Developer Team
Gianpio,
Thank you for choosing Amelia.
1. Yes, the Customer will receive an invite from the Employee's account.
2. You can try to import his private calendar to the dedicated google calendar, it should work theoretically (however, we didn't test such a configuration that much because it's not a default configuration for G Cal integration).
3. The Employee panel cannot be customized with the current built-in features in Amelia, I'm afraid.
You can suggest that as a feature request here, or check if this request was already submitted and vote for it.
4. 5. Sorry but I'm not sure if I understood the question. If you connect the Employee's Google Calendar to his Employee profile, then it will be synchronized with the calendar in Amelia.
The thing is, Google Cal sync works like that:
- Appointments created in Amelia, are being transferred to Google Cal (please note that Google Cal sync doesn't support Amelia Events, only Appointments);
- Busy slots in Google Cal are being blocked for booking in Amelia if you enable the "Remove Google Calendar Busy Slots" option in Amelia -> Settings -> Integrations -> Google Calendar. However, events from Google Cal are not being transferred to Amelia.
So it's not fully 2-way sync but more like 1.5-way sync. Therefore, if you want to transfer Employee's appointments from his Google Calendar to Amelia calendar, then it cannot be achieved at the moment, unfortunately.
6. Amelia has no feature to limit access to the bookings, however, it can be achieved with a third-party plugin or access settings. You can make pages with Amelia available only for logged-in users.
7. "Include service buffer time in time slots " makes Buffer time included in the time slot, so it's not adjusting to other bookings and free time slots, it's sort of fixed. You can test both ways, with this option enabled and without, and see which option fits your schedule better.
Hope that will help.
Best Regards.
Hi Liza,
thank you for your reply.
1) So first point regarding google calendars. My problem is to allow blocking busy slots from the employee private calendar without using it in Amelia integration.
Let me explain better. I setup an employee dedicated gmail account. Let's call it [email protected] and integrate the associated calendar into Amelia. Customer that books an appointment will receive the google meet invitation from [email protected]. And this is good as I don't want that the customer will receive the invitation from an uncontrolled account (i.e. employee private one). The employee has to access the google meet with "mysite1" credential otherwise he will not be entitled to open the meeting. So my employee has to have the "mysite1" credential. Most probably he will not use this account on his personal calendar (i.e. on his phone. For sure he will already have another one). Le't say he already has his "employee_private" credential for his gmail account on his phone where he has his agenda to setup all the appointments coming from several working sources plus his private life. So my scope is that when the employee has a busy slot on his "employee_private" calendar this should reflect to "mysite1" calendar so blocking the slot also in amelia availability. I've tried to link "employee_private" and "mysite1" accounts using the procedure suggested by google. I see the "employee_private" busy slot in "mysite1" calendar but they are not recognized by amelia. So can you doublecheck this behavior and suggest a way around to solve the problem?
2) User registration. Is there any placeholder that I can include in the notification email for the password setup URL for the customer after the first purchase and for the first registration? Is there a place in which the user can set his personal details as name, address, and other fields that then will be used for further purchases? does the Amelia profile and wordpress profile coincide?
3) Employee panel. In the wordpress backend the employee can have a calendar view of his appointments. So a calendar page for the employee already exist. Can this calendar page be linked to the Employee panel when the employee logs in through the Employee panel?
4) timeslot buffer. I will have appointments that last 50 minutes, but I want the next one to start with a buffer of 10 minutes. So for example the appointment lasts from 1:00pm to 1:50pm. And I want the next one to be bookable starting at 2:00 pm. How do I configure this? I need the customer knows at booking time that the appointment will last 50 minutes only. I need the employee to have 10 minutes between appointments.
Thank you again and best regards
Gianpio
Hi Liza,
please do not consider my previous question n 4) about buffer timeslots as I solved the issue.
Now I have another question regarding appointment cancellation.
First point. If I use the Cancel Appointment placeholder <a href=" %appointment_cancel_url%">Cancel Appointment Link</a> in the notification email, when the user click it, the appointment is cancelled without any login and without any confirmation request. In my opinion this is a bug that should be fixed.
Further point. I'm using Amelia with woocommerce as I need to integrate some invoicing plugins for italian fiscal rules. Now when the order is canceled I do not see any notification in woocommerce. In some cases I need to refund that canceled appointment. I understand that there is no automatic refund process, but is it possible to send a notification in woocommerce for the canceled order?
Final one. If I set up a package of more appointments and an for example only one appointment in that package is canceled I go in a strange situation. I cannot refund a single appointment in a group. Maybe I can refund all the appointment in that package. How do you handle this?
Is there a way to disable cancellation?
Thanks again
Gianpio
Gianpio,
1. The Google account that you used for establishing Google Calendar integration doesn't have to be used for Employees. You can connect them to their personal Google Calendars, and that's how it should work in your case, I believe, because then time slots will be blocked in Amelia properly and they won't be overlapping. And if you want to see Employee's appointments in the [email protected] calendar, you can just import the Employee's calendar to it in Google Calendar settings.
2. Oh, It will be a quite long explanation, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid, there's no option to create the Customer's account before this Customer makes his/her first booking at the moment.
So, the Customer's profiles can be created automatically after the first booking - on the back-end or in the front-end Customer panel.
1). For creating a back-end Customer's account you should enable "Automatically create Amelia Customer user" in Amelia settings -> Roles -> Customer. Then, after the first booking, a Customer will receive an email from WordPress with the access link.
2). If you want your Customers to access their profiles on the front-end Customer panel, you need to create a Customer panel and include %customer_panel_url% placeholder in the Appointment Pending or Appointment Approved email notification (not in the Customer Panel Access notification since this one is made for the password change):
After they receive an email that their appointment is booked, they will see the link to log into the Customer Panel, and the first time they visit that link, they will enter the password which they will later use to log into the panel.
Also, if you test the Customer Panel, you should book a test Appointment with an email address that wasn't used for any Amelia user before. You should access the Panel being logged out from the WP Admin user (it will be even better if you use incognito mode). Only then the link and the Panel itself will work correctly.
To be continued...
...
3. Nope, I'm afraid the Employee panel has only list views for Appointments and Events, and the Calendar view is available only on the back-end.
4. Ok, I'll skip this one.
5. And how would you prefer Customers to cancel their Appointments?
Basically, you can remove the cancelation link and ask them to cancel Appointments on the Customer panel only.
6. By default cancelled Appointments from packages should not be refunded (that's the logic at the moment). Therefore, if your Customer cannot attend a booked Appointment from a Package, they should reschedule this Appointment instead of cancelling it.
Best Regards.
Hi Liza,
thanks a lot for your reply.
Maybe I was not enough clear on a couple of points.
1. Regarding the calendar. Suppose the employee has his gmail private account: Employee_private. I set up a gmail account for the employee in the platform: Employee_platform. (that is different by the one used to connect the calendar API in the developer console). The employee connects his employee_private and employee_platform calendars through google account procedure. Now when a time slot is busy in employee_private then it is busy also in employee_platform calendar. Why Amelia does not recognize this busy timeslot?
5. Regarding the cancellation. I would like that in the customer panel there is no option to cancel the appointment. Just the option to reschedule it. I will implement the cancellation through backend manual process after an email. Is that possible?
Thanks again and best regards
Gianpio
Gianpio,
1. Thank you for the clarification.
It's hard to say, to be honest. We had cases when this configuration worked and cases when this configuration didn't. It seems like it depends on some Google account settings, but we had no chance to test it properly (it would take too long and probably wouldn't even be possible). That's why we can be sure only about sync with the Google Calendar that is connected to the Employee's profile, not imported Calendars.
5. Could you please clarify what you mean by "backend manual process"?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Hi Liza,
thank you for your answers.
Regarding the cancellation. The problem is the following. The on line selling regulation (at least in Italy) allows a customer to change his mind and cancel the purchase asking for the refund during 14 days after the purchase. So I need to handle this process. If the customer cancel the appointment thinking that this action give origin to a refund process I could have problems as I do not have any notification in the backend for this. So I prefer that the customer send an email to the support and an administrator from the backend can cancel the appointment and manually start the refund process. So employee and administrators should be able to cancel appointments, while I would prefer to avoid customers to have his option.
This unless you can provide a kind of notification in the backend when an appointment is cancelled by the user.
Thanks and best regards
Gianpio
Gianpio,
Then you can simply remove the cancelation link from notifications, and your Customers will have to contact support in order to cancel their bookings.
We have only Appointment cancelled notifications, and it's not possible to mention who cancelled it - an Employee or a Customer. It only notifies about the changed status of the booking.
Best Regards.
Hi Liza,
yes I had already planned to remove the link from the notification email. What I am not able to remove is the cancellation option from the appointments list in the customer panel. So when the customer enters the customer panel he can view the appointment lists and edit the appointment. Then he can choose the reschedule option or the cancellation option. Can the cancellation option in this place be removed?
Thanks again and best regards
Gianpio
Gianpio,
It cannot be achieved with the settings because the cancelation option is a basic one, I'm afraid, but we can try to do it with custom CSS.
Could you please provide me with temporary access to the Customer panel? Please note that it's a public ticket so you should use private mode to share credentials.
Best Regards.