I bought Amelia to replace the intermittently unreliable and inadequately supported Easy Appointments plugin and Amelia so far has been reliable. However it seems very much oriented to commercial services and usability for me is really not great. I am single handed, pro bono (so no charges) and only offer 30 or 60 minute slots on Thursdays and I use zimbra for my main diary and Email.
With the old plugin I got an Email with an ics attached that I could configure so the appointment when I imported the ics into my diary showed me the client and the reason for the booking. Now the ics I get just show me the type of service which really only shows me how much of my Thursday is booked and in what slots. I want to be able to glance at it and see immediately who made which booking and what they put in the notes so I know what I'm dealing with. I thought maybe I should just abandon the clumsy synch to my general diary and just keep the Amelia calendar view open in a browser tab so I could scan each upcoming Thursday but I can't seem to configure that to show the reason for the booking either. I am not about to go over to Gurgle or M$oft for anything unless I can possibly avoid it and certainly not for this so _PLEASE_ can you add:
* better configuration of the calendar view to allow us to put any fields into it
At the moment, you can modify the ICS file's description through the database only.
To do that, you need to access the wp_options table in your database, and in there search for "amelia_settings" in the "option_name" column. It will return one row, so you need to edit it. Search (CTRL+F) for “ics” and you'll see this:
And that's it. With these fields, you'll see the customer's name, their email address, the service they booked, and 3 custom fields they filled (you'll, of course, modify the IDs of custom fields so they match the IDs of your custom fields - you can find that by clicking on the "</>Show Email Placeholders" button in the top right above the email template in Amelia/Notifications). You can include any email placeholder you find there in the ICS file's description.
We'll work on a better solution in the future.
As for this: "better configuration of the calendar view to allow us to put any fields into it" - can you please explain in a bit more detail what you're referring to?
Actually, looking at that, I don't want to go editing the active data tables in WP so I won't do that. That does leave Amelia in a very uninformative state for me so I will continue to think about moving to some other alternative. What I meant by "better configuration of the calendar view to allow us to put any fields into it" was really exactly that. What I see at the moment for a booking in the calendar view in the Amelia control panel is:
Client name Start time - finish time Booking type
I don't need the booking type (though I recognise that others will need it), what I really want is the comment from the client about why we are meeting to show there. I can't see any easy way to get that.
I bought Amelia to replace the intermittently unreliable and inadequately supported Easy Appointments plugin and Amelia so far has been reliable. However it seems very much oriented to commercial services and usability for me is really not great. I am single handed, pro bono (so no charges) and only offer 30 or 60 minute slots on Thursdays and I use zimbra for my main diary and Email.
With the old plugin I got an Email with an ics attached that I could configure so the appointment when I imported the ics into my diary showed me the client and the reason for the booking. Now the ics I get just show me the type of service which really only shows me how much of my Thursday is booked and in what slots. I want to be able to glance at it and see immediately who made which booking and what they put in the notes so I know what I'm dealing with. I thought maybe I should just abandon the clumsy synch to my general diary and just keep the Amelia calendar view open in a browser tab so I could scan each upcoming Thursday but I can't seem to configure that to show the reason for the booking either. I am not about to go over to Gurgle or M$oft for anything unless I can possibly avoid it and certainly not for this so _PLEASE_ can you add:
* better configuration of the calendar view to allow us to put any fields into it
* ditto for the ics to employees?
TIA!
Chris
Hello Chris,
We have forwarded your ticket to our level 2 agents and as soon as we get some feedback from them we will contact you immediately.
Kind Regards,
Marko Davidovic [email protected]
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Hello Chris,
We got feedback from our colleagues.
At the moment, you can modify the ICS file's description through the database only.
To do that, you need to access the wp_options table in your database, and in there search for "amelia_settings" in the "option_name" column. It will return one row, so you need to edit it. Search (CTRL+F) for “ics” and you'll see this:
"ics":{"description":{"appointment":"","event":"","translations":{"appointment":null,"event":null}}}Modify the "appointment", so it looks like this, for example:
And that's it. With these fields, you'll see the customer's name, their email address, the service they booked, and 3 custom fields they filled (you'll, of course, modify the IDs of custom fields so they match the IDs of your custom fields - you can find that by clicking on the "</>Show Email Placeholders" button in the top right above the email template in Amelia/Notifications). You can include any email placeholder you find there in the ICS file's description.
We'll work on a better solution in the future.
As for this: "better configuration of the calendar view to allow us to put any fields into it" - can you please explain in a bit more detail what you're referring to?
Kind Regards,
Marko Davidovic [email protected]
Rate my support
Try our FREE mapping plugin! MapSVG - easy Google maps, interactive SVG maps, floor plans, choropleth maps, and much more - https://wordpress.org/plugins/mapsvg-lite-interactive-vector-maps/
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
Actually, looking at that, I don't want to go editing the active data tables in WP so I won't do that. That does leave Amelia in a very uninformative state for me so I will continue to think about moving to some other alternative. What I meant by "better configuration of the calendar view to allow us to put any fields into it" was really exactly that. What I see at the moment for a booking in the calendar view in the Amelia control panel is:
Client name
Start time - finish time
Booking type
I don't need the booking type (though I recognise that others will need it), what I really want is the comment from the client about why we are meeting to show there. I can't see any easy way to get that.
Hello Chris,
Thank you for your suggestion, we will pass it on to our developers. In the meantime, if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.
We wish you all the best.
Kind Regards,
Marko Davidovic [email protected]
Rate my support
Try our FREE mapping plugin! MapSVG - easy Google maps, interactive SVG maps, floor plans, choropleth maps, and much more - https://wordpress.org/plugins/mapsvg-lite-interactive-vector-maps/
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