Blog
Being Equestrians ourselves we spend everyday pouring over the weather forecast. How cold will it go overnight? Will it rain today? We do this all in service of making the right choices for the myriad of decisions we have to make everyday! From which rug to put on through to deciding when to bring in - weather is always on our mind!
To help everyone with their weather addiction we’re introducing ‘Weather Forecasts’ into At The Yard. It’ll be visible on any calendar view (shown below) throughout the product for both customers & staff.
Whilst not designed to replace your favourite weather app, it’ll now show the overall weather condition and the high/low temperature for the day. Enough, at-least, to keep you roughly informed with only a glance!
This weather feature is powered by https://darksky.net/ who’s mobile app we’ve been using personally for years and so we’re excited to be bringing that data into At The Yard.
We’re also using the excellent Climacon weather icons created by Adam Whitcroft (http://adamwhitcroft.com/climacons/) which you’ll see on all our forecasts.
There is a small bit of one off setup you have to do as a yard owner to get this working. Simply go to Admin —> Yard Config. Once there, click on the Edit button under Location. If you then scroll down to the Location For Weather section and enter the Latitude and Longitude for your yards location. To find this out we just did a quick Google search (https://www.google.com/search?q=latitude+and+longitude+finder) and used one of the sites to convert the location to Lat/Long. Once you’ve done it once it’ll be available for all your customers to see.
In At The Yard we have always had Services & Facilities. Initially this was to differentiate between:
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.
Can you believe the first week of 2020 is already over. We’re determined to get the year off with a bang so we’re excited to be announcing our first feature release of the year - Included Facilities Schemes.
This feature allows you to manage the included facility usage you get as part of a livery/membership package. This brings it inline with the existing feature that allowed you to manage the included services.
We built this system on top of our previous work with service allowances and so it works in a very similar way. This means if you’re used to setting up the services that come included with your livery package you’ll find setting up included facilities quick and easy.
The first step is going to Admin → Services on the menu. Once there find the livery package you want to add a facility allowance to and then click on the edit drop down button. Find the ‘Edit Included Facilities Schemes’ button. Clicking this will bring up an overview of the existing facility allowances you have setup (shown below).
You’ll see all the existing schemes and the details of them. You can either click on Edit to make changes or click on New Included Facility Scheme to create a new allowance. This will bring up the scheme type selection screen which will allow you to choose the type of scheme that suits your needs. Once you’ve decided click on the ‘Create Scheme’ and you’ll be taken to the setup screen where you can fill in the details of the allowance.
You can create as many schemes as you need to allow you to encapsulate all the included facilities you offer as part of a package. The best part? Once setup it’ll just work. It’ll track everything for you either billing (or not billing) your customers as necessary.
Today we’re excited to announce our latest new feature called The Activity Log. The Activity Log will help owners keep up to date with completed services, updates and any changes about their horse all in one place and at a moments notice.
In our last blog post we introduced Rich Text & Images into the horse database. The activity log makes full use of this allowing you to publish updates with images to your customers so they can easily keep track of the latest information about their horse.
The screenshot below gives you an overview of what your customers can come to expect when viewing the Activity Log for their horses.
To make life simple the log supports filtering to allow you to focus on either Services or Updates and you can quickly and easily jump through dates to review past log entries.
As we go forward we’ll be adding additional log entry types as we introduce new features. This will ensure it will remain the place to go for the latest about your (or your customer’s) horses.
Today we’ve released an update to the Horse Database.
This update allows you to store Rich Text and images in the horse database (much like you’ll be used to in any word processor etc).
To explain how it works and what you can do with it we’ve made a quick video:
We think this new feature will let you better update your customers and keep more comprehensive records. For example you can:
We’re sure you’ll find lots of other uses we could never think of. We can’t wait to see what you do with it. As always if you have any questions or suggestions please get in touch!