17 January 2020

Service Ordering by Calendar View

In At The Yard we have always had Services & Facilities. Initially this was to differentiate between:

Ordering A Service - which the yard staff controlled the exact fulfilment time (e.g. Turn out).
Booking A Facility - which was available to be booked in slots through out the day to allow both the yard and customer to ensure they were available (e.g. The arena).

However, as time has moved on the difference between these two, whilst still there, has become blurred. For example a Riding Lesson fulfilled by a member of staff is still a service, but the timing of it has to suit both the instructor, the customer and also the availability of the arena.

To make this possible we’ve introduced an upgrade to Services in At The Yard - Service Ordering by Calendar View. This allows you to have the best of both worlds!

You can still define something like a Lesson as a service (as it should be) but have all the features previously only found in facilities such as slot lengths, max bookings per slot and more.

To get this setup is quite simple. When creating a new Discrete Service you need to select ‘Yes’ under ‘Allow ordering by calendar?’. When you do this you’ll be presented with the option to setup the parameters of the available slots (as seen below).

Once filled in click ‘Create Service’ as normal and your new calendar view service is ready.

Underlying this new feature is a ‘Hidden Facility’ which is created to co-exist with the service. Not only does this mean we can bring you all of the existing features supported by facilities, but as we add more they’ll automatically be included.

Personally we’re really excited for this update. Not only will it make everything clearer to both staff and customers but it also resolves a personal ‘annoyance’ for us, in that before you had to use various workarounds to make this functionality possible.