Hello leander,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

Cron is not Amelia's feature cron is a WordPress feature. You can use cron with Amelia, but setting cron is not part of Amelia's support because it is not our feature. 

If your cron is not working and you cannot set it up, you need to contact your hosting provider so that they can set up cron for you.

We will try to help you as best we can in the meantime cron is a Linux utility that schedules a command or script on your server to run automatically at a specified time and date. A cron job is the scheduled task itself. Cron jobs can be very useful to automate repetitive tasks like in our plugin for notifications.

Depending on the server, there are different configurations for it, which you can contact your hosting provider about, or you can check out one of the solutions for it on this link.

Also, you can try this:

*/15 * * * * wget -q -O - "https://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wpamelia_api&call=/notifications/scheduled/send"

Or this:

*/15 * * * * /usr/local/bin/php ~/public_html/wp-cron.php --action='wpamelia_api' --call='/notifications/scheduled/send'

Or this:

GET 'https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wpamelia_api&call=/notifications/scheduled/send' > /dev/null

WP Crontrol plugin is the best option if you're not familiar with cron jobs. You can find more info about it, and detailed instructions on how to set it up in our FAQ section.

So, if you already read that, and still need some clarification here's some further info.

You copy only the URL from below a scheduled notification:

Then, go to Tools/Cron Events, and click on the "Cron Schedules" tab. In it, add a 15-minute interval:

Then go back to the "Cron Events" tab and click on "Add new":

Below it, select the "PHP Cron event" radio button, and add the URL you copied from Amelia/Notifications in this form:

file_get_contents("yourURL");

Below it add the name and set it to run a few minutes in the future, using the provided time format. So, if you're adding the cron event at 12:45 (local, current time), set it to run at 12:50; and then select the schedule you previously selected:

Click on Add Event, and that's it.

The cron runs every 15 minutes and checks if there's an email to be sent. So, in Amelia Notifications, your scheduled notifications are set to run every day at a certain time. If you set that time to be 15:00 (for example), the emails will be sent when the cron runs after that time.

For example, there's an appointment booked for tomorrow, and it's currently 14:44 - the cron runs, but since it's not yet 15:00, it doesn't send anything. It runs again after 15 minutes, so at 14:59, but there are still no emails flagged by Amelia, so it doesn't send anything. Then it runs again at 15:14 and it sees there's an email that should've been sent at 15:00, so it sends the email. It will only send emails when Amelia sees an appointment scheduled for the next day.

I hope that helps in case it doesn't please contact your hosting provider.

If you have any more questions please open another ticket and we will gladly help you there.

Hello Leander,

We booked a test appointment on your website and we did not see that you enable the Show Add To Calendar option for customers when booking an appointment.

The Add To Calendar option is there to allow your customers to enter an appointment they have just scheduled in their calendar. The option is enabled by default, but if you don’t want to give this option to your customers you can simply disable it, and this step will not appear in the booking process.

Please note: If this option is enabled and your customers choose Outlook or iCal as an option, after they click “Add to Calendar” button the cal.ics file will be downloaded, and they will need to click on this file to add the appointment/event to their calendar.

Hope this helps.

Hello Leander,

We tested again and now we see that everything is working for you.

When we click on google in the upper left corner, we can immediately add an appointment to the Google calendar

And when we click on outlook, we immediately get an ICS file that we can manually add to our calendar.

Like we mentioned 

If this option is enabled and your customers choose Outlook or iCal as an option, after they click “Add to Calendar” button the cal.ics file will be downloaded, and they will need to click on this file to add the appointment/event to their calendar.

As far as we can see and you can to on the screenshots, everything works perfectly for you and we don't see any issues.

Hello again,

When you have several questions or issues please open a new ticket, and we will help you there. In that way, issues and questions that are related to different subjects will be in separate tickets so other customers or our support agents can find them easily. 

Our policy is to have one issue or question per ticket because of the reasons that are described already.

Thank you for understanding. 

Amelia triggers notifications for each booking. So it is not possible to send it only for some customers and not for others.

Please note that we can help with notifications only if you are using SMTP ot a third party plugin such as WP mail or if you are using PHP mail.

Please go to the notifications section inspect the page then try and send test notifications and then if there are any issues you will see the error in the network section. If there is any please send us a screenshot so that we can take a look.

The error should show unless you are using PHP mail. We can help only if you are using SMTP if you are using WP mail which is this party plugin then you need to reach out to their support team and if you are using PHP mail you need to change this

We strongly recommend changing the mail service setting to SMTP or Mailgun because the email that is sent with PHP Mail generally gets flagged as spam by mail servers and also can take some time to send. See below how to configure SMTP and Mailgun mail services.

So please set the SMTP on your site

• SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) – In this article, we show how to configure the SMTP mail service for Gmail, but you can set it up for any other outgoing service that supports SMTP for a mail client. When you select this option, four inputs will appear – you need to populate them to configure SMTP properly. A Google SMTP example:
  • SMTP Host – smtp.gmail.com
  • SMTP Port – 587
  • SMTP Secure – TLS
  • SMTP Username – Your Gmail address
  • SMTP Password – Your App password (details about setting up an app password can be found in the notice section below)

  The most commonly used SMTP Ports are 465 and 587. Port 465 uses “SSL” as SMTP Secure, while port 587 uses “TLS” as SMTP Secure. Make sure to check what the correct SMTP settings are for your mailing provider.

Google SMTP (Gmail accounts):

From 30 May 2022, Google will no longer support the use of third-party apps or devices which ask you to sign in to your Google Account using only your username and password, so “Allow less secure apps” will be removed.

In order to continue using SMTP with Gmail, you will need to set up an App Password for Amelia. App Passwords can only be used with accounts that have 2-Step Verification turned on. Instructions about this can be found on Google’s Documentation, here.

For detailed set-up instructions, please take a look at this article on our official support platform.

Microsoft SMTP (outlook, hotmail, live, and office365 email accounts):

If you’re having issues using SMTP with your Microsoft account, please make sure to set up an App Password for Amelia. App Passwords can only be used with accounts that have 2-Step Verification turned on in the Security Basics section of your Microsoft account. Instructions about this can be found on Microsoft’s Documentation, here.

For detailed set-up instructions, please take a look at this article on our official support platform.

Hope this helps. 

Hello again,

You are using WP mail 

As we explained we can help with notifications only if you are using SMTP not a third party plugin such as WP mail or if you are using PHP mail

we have tested this just in case and there are now errors in your console

So in this case you need to reach out to their support team so that they can check this on their end.

Should you have any further inquiries, we kindly request that you open separate tickets for each question and we will gladly help you there.

We wish you all the best and hope you have a wonderful day ahead.  

Hello again,

Please let us know did you read both of our previous replies?

2 times and now for the third time we a writing to you that we can only help with notifications when you are using SMTP.

You are still using WP mail we have checked again

So you need to reach out to their support team so that they can take a closer look.

You are sending now notifications through them so for any notifications issue you need to reach out to their support team.

Should you have any further inquiries, we kindly request that you open separate tickets for each question and we will gladly help you there.

We wish you all the best and hope you have a wonderful day ahead. 

Hello again,

I discovered you have an issue with your Notifications, if I try to make any Test Email from the Amelia/Notifications section, for Customers or Employees, there is this error 500, with the error text : 

"SMTP Error: Could not authenticate "

Then I try my own SMTP credentials on your Amelia - and this time, the Test Notification goes through without errors.

-

This means the issue comes from your Email provider,

the error is pointing to the wrong SMTP credentials.

I have now reverted to your original SMTP settings.

Please check your Email SMTP credentials, and try to do a Test Email from Amelia's Notifications tab.

If you see an error, and on the top right if it says "Can not send Email",  please keep your browser developer console open, and the Network Tab, check in the "Preview" what is the error message,

if it still says "Can not authenticate", try to get support from your Email provider and isolate the issue.

-

An alternate approach can be to install a 3rd Party WP Mail SMTP Plugin on WordPress,

then configure your SMTP provider there, and do a Test Email in this Plugin.

If the test goes through, then in Amelia just set up WP Mail as your chosen Email provider, then it should work.

Let us know how it goes.