Types of sources and resources

The source is what the customer reserves and in principle consists of items such as service, employee or place. The specific combination and use of individual items depends purely on the type of business and the specific setting. Information about individual items is used not only in the offer of reservations, but also in the signpost and all information provided in the reservation process and reservation.

Any combination of service, location and staff creates a resource to be reserved. Its default name depends on the names of individual items, however, by setting the visibility and changing the order, this name can be changed, or it is possible to enter a completely custom name. Resources are an important building block of the entire system, as the right and thoughtful settings will allow you to work more efficiently with reservations using filters or monitor potential collisions. For subsequent display to users, it may be desirable to hide certain items within a given resource that are used primarily for internal purposes.

An example is the offer of yoga lessons. In addition to the service (yoga), it is also necessary for the operator to register an employee (lecturer) for each lesson. Thus, a separate resource is created for each employee, containing the service and employees (or also the location). It is possible to keep the default source name for internal display in the appointment calendar, but for display on the reservation page, it will be appropriate to hide the employee's name.

It is also possible to hide the name of the place at the source if, for example, an introductory signpost is set on the reservation page, which ensures that customers are directed to a specific group of dates. The resource name in the administration contains all items, however, the employee's name is probably more important than the branch, so you can also change the order by dragging to the selected position.

Now all you have to do is create a resource for each yoga instructor and then set the appropriate dates. On the reservation page, only the name of the service that is key for the customer will be used for the dates. The individual branches are placed in the introductory signpost and the individual branches of employees are completely hidden from customers.

Resource Archiving

The diversity of the offer can lead to a long and comprehensive list of resources for booking, so it is advisable to archive resources that are no longer used. As a result, the list in the reports will be clearer. Unused resources can be archived, but also used resources for which new terms are not only actively created. The archiving process reduces the list of reserved resources without directly deleting those resources. For existing dates and reservations, nothing changes in the case of resource archiving, as they are further offered on the reservation page, but administration work can be much more efficient. When it's time to create a new term for an archived resource, just change its status back to active by unchecking the appropriate setting and creating the term.

Set up and use resources

Resources can be added, modified or deleted as you wish. However, it is always important to keep in mind that the resource may already be tied to a date and used for specific bookings. The number of simultaneously active resource items (service, employee, location) is limited, depending on the currently purchased reenio prepaid package.

When creating resources, we recommend that you carefully consider what resources you will create and how you will offer them for booking. If this is not necessary for your specific business and booking offer, then there is no need to create and use resources with all resource items. In simple cases, it is not necessary to create a resource as a combination of items (service, employee, location), but just set the resource name.

You can specify up to three different types of source items within a single source and select one specific one within those types. When setting an appointment, you can then select more than one source, which serves to facilitate the creation of appointments. Typically, this is a situation where you set / use all 4 available tennis courts within one term. The system automatically creates an offer, which displays the individual sources separately and the customer will be able to choose from 4 different courts with the same deadline parameters.

The name of the term is taken from the set source / sources, when exactly what is set within the given source is used (name, individual items, order, visibility). Thanks to this, it is possible to very effectively influence what the offer of booking dates will look like.

Collisions monitoring in time

In addition, the resources serve as an information base for the offer of dates, incl. filtering and signposting, and then subsequently as information for individual reservations, it is also a very important element in automating the reservation process. Thanks to collision monitoring, it is possible to set a very comprehensive automatic evaluation of whether it is possible to create a reservation for a specific time or not, due to the use of resources (service, employee, place), eg occupying a sauna with another reservation in the same time. Collision monitoring is available for most types of appointments, ie it is not available, for example, for appointments using a seat reservation.

In caset two dates are tied to one source item (service, employee, place), two reservations cannot be created for these dates at the same time (of course in connection with a specific offer and method of booking for a particular business). An example is the rental of a multi-purpose playground on which it is possible to run more sports activities. One course is understood as a PLACE item and each sport will correspond to one resource. When booking a course for one of the sports, the course must be automatically blocked for all other sports, otherwise two customers could book two different activities at the same time, but there is only one course.

We must therefore use collision monitoring, when we activate it on such a source item, which is limiting from the point of view of the impossibility of the existence of current reservations. In our case, it is the item PLACE. The collision assessment is performed by taking into account all specific resources using the item and comparing it with existing reservations. If there is a reservation (incl. Time breaks) using a given specific source item at a given time, then the system will not allow the creation of another "collision" reservation.

When collision monitoring is set, it is also possible to determine whether the collision is to be evaluated within a given date or only between different dates. In practice, this means that if there is a term with a larger capacity, then monitoring collisions within the term will make it impossible to create more than one reservation at a given time and with adequate resources, even if the free capacity is sufficient! This can be used when resources of one type are selected en masse within a deadline, eg booking one tennis court blocks all other tennis courts at a given time.

The collision monitoring principle allows the use for blocking a longer period of time, for example in case of closure, reconstruction or vacation. If we want to disable reservations for certain dates, or only parts of them, we will use the creation of an off-date reservation in combination with the use of collision monitoring.

Configuring monitoring settings for off-date bookings will be reflected on the resulting booking page as an already booked date (the red highlight is slightly brighter for blocked dates than for traditional direct bookings), so customers will not be able to make new bookings. When setting up this special reservation, it is necessary to select the corresponding specific sources that we want to block, and also to activate collision monitoring for the given types of source items.

In order to block the customer's booking options, it is important to keep in mind that collision monitoring must be set at least once for a given period of time. Either when setting the given date (in connection with future reservations) or when creating the reservation itself outside the date.

The example below illustrates how we can simplify our work if the resource consists of a place (Courts) and a service (Tennis). If you need to block the possibility of booking courts in a given period (eg technical reasons), we will create a reservation outside the deadline (it does not matter whether the standard deadline has / does not have collision monitoring set). In order to be able to block all courts, it is necessary to create a resource containing only the tennis service, which is practically superior to the courts. Of course, at this moment there must be no standard reservation for the specified source and time period, because then the reservation could not be created correctly off-date!

The benefits of this two-source solution are two. We do not have to make as many reservations off-date as there are individual courts (to block reservations for all). And also, if we compile resources for the signpost, we can use the name of a specific service, ie Tennis. If necessary, it is possible to inform customers about restrictions or changes through the textual content of the reservation page or other communication channels (SMS, e-mail, etc.).

Collision monitoring functionality is a very effective tool for automation solutions within the services offered .Thanks to various combinations of service, location, employees in the source and the method of evaluation, it is possible to define relatively complex rules. It is thus possible, for example, to block reservations for individual tennis courts in the hall, in the event that the customer has already booked the entire hall for football. However, it is important to understand the principle of operation, try it out and design resources well and how they are interconnected.