I have experienced the following behavior of Amelia on my website, which is quite limiting.

With the settings employee panel 'on'; with synchronisation with an outlook calendar; with the general setting that client booked appointments are 'pending approval'; with the integration setting that pending approval appointments are entered to the outlook calendar;

When a customer is booking an appointment, and it is entered into the outlook calendar, then the employee can not confirm the booking on the employee panel !without also changing the time of the appointment!.  Neither can the employee edit and save the booking on the employee panel !without also changing the time of the appointment!

It appears that the initial record of the appointment pending approval in outlook prevents it to be confirmed to the same time that appears as already booked.

Notably appointments can be confirmed with the confirmation link, e.g. in emails.  However the employee panel appears of very limited use in the configuration above.  Is there a trick I am missing?

Hi Stefan,

Thanks but this is not explaining it.  Below the settings of the roles (excuse the German).

The issue is very specifically as I described and points to a problem with the way conflicts with reserved times in the outlook calendar are managed in the integration module.  It would make sense that an appointment can not be approved if the time is conflicting with a different commitment on the employee's outlook schedule.  However if this commitment is actually the same appointment, just entered as a requested appointment, then it makes no sense.  The plugin however treats the requested appointment as if it would be a 'foreign' commitment.

User roles have not been changed from the original version.  If you have an Amelia setup with Outlook integration for testing you should be able to replicate the error description.

Hi Stefan,

I am not sure how much accessing the website will help you as the problem is with the way the outlook integration is handled.  For this, I think, you will need to create an outlook calendar and integrate it with Amelia in the way it is described on Amelia tutorials.  Here I show you how the front end employee panel behaves, not allowing for the appointment to be confirmed at the very time it way originally scheduled by the customer.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3ubwcvfbrjqbgzyms8et4/Appointment-confirmation-error-outlook-integration.mp4?rlkey=qr15m5obn49nzmzdhwzgsmk5s&st=a9364f2c&dl=0

Kind regards,

Martin

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for testing the behavior.  I agree the issue is with the integration.  The connection is with the calender named 'Calendar' on the Outlook account '[email protected]'.  This is the right calendar and I did not make changes to integration settings after having made the video.

I understand that if 'remove the busy slots' of the employee is disabled the problem is avoided, however the whole purpose of the function is also lost, that is to avoid that employees are booked when they have other commitements planned, e.g. internal meetings.

I think there is an error in the plugin's logic testing for busy slots on the occasion of accepting appointments as it is not considering that a busy slot is actually busy with the requested meeting and hence is not to be considered busy for the purpose of approving the appointment.

Do you agree?

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your help with this.  I will actually create another office calendar for a different employee and connect it, so this allows for a fresh test of the whole function.  I am currently in the Austrian mountains, skiing with family so have limited availabilty.  I will get to this asap.

I am wondering though if the scenario I am working with is actually working with Amelia and it would give me a great deal of confidence this can be solved if you coudl confirm that if you have an employee connected to outlook the scenario describe initially is working without problems.  Do you have a system where this can be tested?

Scenario

With the settings employee panel 'on'; with synchronisation with an outlook calendar; with the general setting that client booked appointments are 'pending approval'; with the integration setting that pending approval appointments are entered to the outlook calendar;

When a customer is booking an appointment, and it is entered into the outlook calendar, then the employee can not confirm the booking on the employee panel ! without also changing the time of the appointment!.

- - -

Because if it is not working I will give up on that part of the functionality and work around it.

If you could check this out for me that would be super helpful!

Martin

Hi Stefan,

Regarding:

We have daily use cases where the sync functions perfectly. While it’s not a fully two-way sync, all appointments booked through Amelia will appear on the Outlook Calendar. However, appointments marked as "busy" on the Outlook Calendar won’t be shown in Amelia, but those times will be unavailable for booking in Amelia.

This described functionality works for me too.  I can block out times in Outlook and they don't show in Amelia.

The problem only emerges with the (here needed) integration setting that pending approval appointments are entered to the outlook calendar.  The pending approval appointment is entered into the outlook calendar as busy.  When it then comes to approving it the slot is not available anymore,  just the same way as if I had booked a different busy appointment at that place in the outlook calendar. 

I don't have the problem if I would consider either, that requested appointments are considered approved (then no approval step is nessesary) or if the requested pending appointments are not added to the outlook calendar (then there is no clash).

Thanks,

Martin

P.S.: This is why I have asked to confirm that the specific scenario has been seen working, rather than the more general functionality of outlook integration which works fine for me too.

Dear Uros,

Happy New Year!

I appreciate your working on this issue could take longer.  Can you give me an indication?  I have only installed Amelia as a pilot on my site but would go live with sensitive client data soon, which I am currently holding off doing.

Thanks for letting me know,

Martin

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for coming back to me.

What you are saying "the time slot calculation uses Outlook Calendar to check for busy slots. It then returns this time slot as busy because your appointment hasn’t been updated yet" is confirming my understanding.  

The workaround you are offering "you can work around this issue by changing the appointment status in the list view instead of using the appointment dialog" is not available on the employee panel (!) that is on the front end.  I appreciate this is a possibility in the backend, but then the whole front end is handycapped.  Or am I missing something and there is a way of changing the appointment status in the list view of the employee panel, and I missed how to enable that?
Just to be clear my request was about the front end employee panel all the way.

Best wishes,

Martin

Thank you Stefan,

I appreciate this is a complex plugin with many dependencies of functionality.  Having looked into a number of plugins I am convinced your product can serve a wider audience by strengthening the front end panel functionality.  For the employee panel it is the fix you have established now.  For the customerfront end panel to all appointments it is the possibility to make new appointments from the panel whereI can mange and change all my appointments.  I am looking forward to the developments.

From a process point of view you and your team may wish to reflect on how many steps and how much work is required for a cutomer to report a bug or possibility to improve a product.  Just look back to my original note and the process it took.  Perhaps there is room for improvement.

That said, thank you for your support!!!

I am looking forward to future releases for this great product.

Best wishes,

Martin