We are very excited to be sharing this new feature which we are calling Schedule. Schedule is flexible enough to be used for booking a variety of patron appointment types, such as curbside pickup, time with a reference librarian or a homework help session. It is currently available in Control Panel for any system administrators that have completed the Implementation Request Form as of today.
We recommend you begin by creating your HTML widgets as you will need to create at least one widget for each appointment type you plan to offer. After you create the widget(s), you should move onto configuring the appointment type(s). Detailed instructions for each step of the process are as follows:
This HTML widget will contain your welcome message and image(s) for your landing page and will appear for all appointment types in this group. For example, all Curbside Pickup appointments or all Reserve a Librarian appointments.
You may choose to create an optional widget(s) to contain information about a specific location. This widget will appear below the booking calendar as depicted below. If you have multiple locations, you can create an HTML widget for each location and the information below the calendar will update to reflect those details from the branch selected in the dropdown menu.
Additional information about how to create widgets can be found on our Communico College page.
Once you’ve created your widgets, you will want to begin configuring your new appointment types. You can begin by selecting ‘Schedule’ from your left-hand menu, followed by selecting the ‘Settings’ button.
When creating your new category, you’ll need to enter the following:
Next, you will want to add your groups. This is where you will enter either location or appointment type(s) for a specific branch. For example, if you’re configuring Curbside Pickup you may have ‘Front Parking Lot’. For Reserve a Librarian, this may be more specific appointment types like ‘Homework Help’ or ‘Tech Help’.
Here is where you will decide pertinent configuration details about your new appointment group including:
Once you’ve filled in the details above, you will create your actual asset. In the Curbside example, this would be ‘Parking Space 1’, ‘Parking Space 2’, etc. For Reserve a Librarian, this may be ‘Tech Help-Librarian 1’ and'Tech Help-Librarian 2’.
Lastly, you will configure the availability for each asset type; you can have a schedule that varies for each asset. Our Schedule module also allows for you to add exceptions to your appointment availability that may differ from regular branch hours.
To review the appointment schedule, select the ‘Schedule’ button followed by ‘Appointments’ button. Here you can view all of the appointments booked for a specific date range and can filter by location. You may also use search terms to find a specific appointment booking. At this time, this view only allows you to cancel these appointments or email the patron details of their appointment.
If you have questions about getting started with this new feature you can read our Schedule FAQs or contact your Customer Success Manager or customersuccess@communico.us.