An appointment is a type of reservation product that requires both a staff member and a resource to be available. With an appointment, only one customer can book for a service at a time, e.g. beauty and massage appointments. This article provides you with step-by-step instructions on how to set up Appointment products for use with IBIS Scheduler. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS

  

Set up appointment products

There are several steps to creating Appointment products. Click the link below to jump to the relevant section or follow them in the order for setting up a new product.

Step 1: Create the product

  1. Open the Operator products screen under the Reservations menu > Product setup tab.
  2. Click the Add button and enter the details as follows, then click Save.
    • Code (max 10 alphanumeric characters, no spaces)
    • Product name 
    • Set the product type to Appointment.
    • Select your company contact from the Operator droplist
    • In the Account column, select your direct internal account.
    • Set the online policy to Internal.
  3. Once your product has been added, update the following details, then press Save.
    • Add a Description which will show online for Appointment type products only
    • Add a Grouping for ease of reporting
    • Set the Duration (required) e.g. ‘1h’ / ‘30m’ / ‘1h30m’ which determines how long the product will take to complete. If you add a +, the system will automatically add a 10 or 15-minute cleaning time to the product which can be removed when booking if desired.
    • Restrict times: comma-separated list of time(s) (ranges) the product IS available for. E.g.: 09:00-12:00,21:00-22:00. When nothing is entered, it is always available.
    • Restrict days: Days of the week the product IS available for. When none are selected, all days apply.
    • Display colour: The colour of the booking when it appears on the Appointment screen.
    • Start and end date: the product will be only available between the selected dates 


Step 2: Setup the price code

A Price code allows you to allocate pricing to your appointment products. To set up a new price code:

  1. Open the Price code screen and add a new row by clicking the green + button at the top of the grid.
  2. Fill in the Price code (10 letters or less, no space, apostrophes or other symbols). 
  3. Fill in the Description of the price code and select whether it can be Discounted or is liable for Commission by ticking the boxes.
  4. Set the online policy to Internal only. If the policy is set to inactive, the price code will be hidden by default.
  5. Click Save and close the screen.

    Add a new price code


Step 3: Set up price options

Price options are the items your customers or staff can select when they book your Appointments. Price options are common to all products within the system. Typically, you would set up one generic price option for Appointments e.g. "Treatment". If you need to configure a new price option, follow these steps: 

  1. Open the Price Options screen, then click Add. Fill in the details as follows, then click Save.
    • Option code (10 letters or less, no spaces or apostrophes).
    • Option name which will appear on the booking.  
    • Type of option. Select either:
      1. Person - Associated with customers (e.g. Treatment). An option of type "person" is counted as a "pax" on Reservation reports. If used, set the Places to 1.
      2. Addon -  Associated with upgrades and cannot be purchased online without an associated 'person' in the booking. E.g. Fiji body butter upgrade. If used, set the Places to 0.
    • Select the list order for this option to determine how they should be prioritised in the Scheduler booking screen, or online. 
    • Set the Edit policy to ‘Internal’ to allow staff to overwrite or 'no edit’ if not.
    • If you wish to sell your product online, you must specify the online security policy for the price options.
    • To prevent discounts and/or commission from being applied to any price options, untick the Disc OK and Comm OK boxes for the option.
  2. Once the price option is saved, you can set the following in the Restrictionsif needed:
    • Restrict day: days of the week the option IS available for. When none are selected, all days apply.
    • Restrict time: comma-separated list of time(s) (ranges) the option IS available for. E.g.: 09:00-12:00,21:00-22:00. When nothing is entered, it is always available.


Step 4: Set up pricing

In the Seasonal pricing screen, you assign prices to the price options against a price code. See related article for details. 


Step 6: Building the product

To put together the product & pricing, please follow the below process. However, please note that you do not require a service (unless you use online check-in) and that Appointment products can only have one component.


Building a product ties together the product, price code and service. Each row in the Build Products screen is a product component. A simple product will have a single component, but a more complex product will have multiple components. Generally, you will have a product component for each service in your product.

  1. Open the Build products screen and select the Operator and Product from this droplists.
  2. Add a new row by clicking the + button at the top of the grid. Add a row
  3. Fill in the Code field (10 letters or less, no spaces or apostrophes). Each component code must be unique.
  4. Fill in the Name of the product component. Make this name meaningful as it will appear on the Booking screen for your frontline staff to see.
  5. Tick the Primary tick box if you only have one component. If you have multiple components, your primary component will be the component that the availability times work from. You can only have one primary component per product!
  6. Tick the Required tick box if you only have one component. If you have multiple components, at least one component must be required. E.g. you could have a jet boat product with a jet boat component and a transport component. The jet boat component would be required but the transport component would not, as pax may choose to self-drive.
  7. Specify the priority (e.g. 1) - if your product has 2 or more components, the priority controls the order these items appear in the Booking screen.
  8. Select the appropriate Service code and Price code from the drop-down lists.
  9. If your product has one component, the Time Sensitivity and Time Offset can be left as default. If you are building a multi-component product, you will need to adjust the time offset so that all the services can be found for the product. See the related section on Time offsets & sensitivities to help you with your configuration.
  10. Save your changes.
  11. If your product requires users to record a pickup or dropoff location, highlight the primary component row, then click the Details tab.
  12. Enter a caption in the Pickup or Dropoff field (e.g. 'Pickup' or 'Meet at'. Captions ending with a * will allow the pickup location to be edited by the user from within the Booking screen).


Step 7: Configure product groups

You will need to set up product groups to order appointments in your product tree, as well as for navigation online.

  1. In IBIS, navigate to System > Online groups > Online product groups.
  2. Click Create new and enter the details as follows, then click Save.
    1. Group Code: alpha-numeric code consisting of a maximum of 10 characters (can include a dash). For Appointment products, this has to start with the word “scheduler”, e.g. “SchedulerA”
    2. Group name: This will display in your product tree as well as for customers online.
    3. Operator: if you have multiple operators set up in your system, select the appropriate one.
    4. Description: this can be seen online by customers.
    5. Grouping, Start sector and End sector can be ignored.
  3. To add products to a group, click on Edit on the group you just added, then tick the products in the grid that belong to that group.
  4. Save your changes at the bottom of the grid.


Set up resources

Your resources are your rooms, private pools, boats or tables.

  1. Open the Resources screen, then click Add 
  2. Enter the resource Name, e.g. “Pool 1” or “Nail station”
  3. Select a Type from either Standard or Manager required (i.e. the resource can only be utilised if there is a product manager assigned to it).
  4. Enter the maximum places for the resource (1 for appointment resources)
  5. Click Save


Set up staff 

The staff is set up like your regular staff who use IBIS. However, there is a specific property against the user which will set them up as a “product manager”. Product managers are recognised by the Appointment scheduler screen in order for you to set their rosters and abilities.

  1. Open the User setup screen, then click Add.
  2. Fill in the user details (you will be required to fill out the login details even if the staff member will not login to IBIS), then click Save
  3. In the details panel for the user, tick the box to enable the Product manager setting
  4. Save your changes.

 


Set up product relationships 

To determine which staff members (Managers) or rooms (Resources) can be utilised for specific products:

  1. Open the Product relationships screen under the Operations menu.
  2. Select the product (only hire or appointment products can be selected)
  3. Tick the boxes for the appropriate Managers and Resources.
  4. This screen auto-saves, so just close it when you’re done.


Manage availability 

There are several steps to managing your availability: 

Step 1: Add availability

You set up staff and resource availability in the Scheduler setup screen under the Operations menu.

  1. Navigate to Operations > Scheduler setup. 
  2. By default, the screen opens showing you the current day, and all staff members. Change to the Resources tab to see your pools/rooms.
  3. To set a time frame, hold down your left mouse button at the start time, then drag it down to the finish time. It will automatically set the availability to “Available_online”. Changes are saved automatically.
If you want to copy a time frame-block, hold down CTRL on your keyboard, click down on the block and move your mouse in any direction.


 


Step 2: Set the availability policies

If you want to change the availability you can right-click and select a different policy. These are the various policies available:

  • Available online: bookings made online on your e-commerce site can go into this resource.
  • Available internal: bookings made by your staff can go into this resource, and will not be available online.
  • Unavailable options for staff: break, on-call, reserve, training, sick leave, annual leave
  • Unavailable options for resources: Break, Reserve, Maintenance, Transit, Cleaning.

Once availability has been set (including the unavailable statuses), you’ll be able to see the staff/resource on the Appointments screen. That means you will not see staff/resources which have no availability set. You will, however, see someone who has called in sick, so your team can then reschedule the appointments with other staff members. If someone is on reserve or on call, you can change their status to available when they come in so they can get more bookings.


Step 3: Roster in breaks

To roster in a break where a staff member can’t be booked, create another block of time outside of the time you just created and change the policy to “break” by right-clicking on the time block. Then drag the break to what time the break usually takes place. The available time column will automatically adjust in size so you can put the break next to it.


Breaks can be moved around the Appointment screen without having to open the Scheduler setup screen.


Step 4: Allocate a dedicated resource manager to a room

You might need to assign your staff members to a particular room for the day. In this case, you can right-click on the staff member time block and select the Dedicated resource from the list. Once dedicated, you will see a red line and the resource appear on the time slot. Once the product manager has been dedicated to a resource, he/she is only bookable for products available for that resource.


If you had already set resource availability before you dedicated your resource, you must delete the original availability as it will not be linked to the resource. To delete, click on the resource and select delete on your keyboard.


When you allocate a staff member to a room (resource), that staff person can only be booked for products that are available in that room, and no other staff members will be able to be booked for those. Only staff members defined in the Product relationship screen should be allocated as the dedicated resource manager.

 

To dedicate a resouce, the resource type must be 'Manager' in the Resources screen.


 


Step 5: Limit bookings to a max amount/time per therapist

You can cap the number and duration of therapies that can be performed by a single staff person per day. E.g. you might allow a maximum of 4 massage appointments or 5 hrs of massage therapy time per therapist per day, whichever comes first. This function prevents bookings from being made online when the max has been reached. Internally you can override this setting at your discretion. 


To configure the Manager constraint settings:

  1. Open the System settings screen in IBIS Online, and browse to the Scheduler section.
  2. Set the maximum manager appointments and maximum manager time (in mins) per day, then click Save.
  3. Open the Operator products screen and tick the Mgr constraint box for any products that require it, then click Save.


  4. When you make a booking and the maximum settings have been reached, the therapist will no longer be bookable online. On the Appointment scheduler screen, your team can see the number of bookings/duration next to the therapist's name in the Appointment screen and decide if they want to book or not.



    4 = total number of bookings
    [3] = number of bookings with the constraint setting set
    4:45 = total amount of time booked in 


Step 6: Copy template days

Once you’ve created a day or weekly roster for your staff/resources, you can use the Copy function to apply this over a specific time frame. To copy a template:

  1. Click the Copy button on the bottom left of the screen.
  2. The Start date is the next day following your template, but this can be amended of course.
  3. The End date needs to be amended to whenever you want your pre-planned roster to end.
  4. Select the days to copy into:
    1. If you’re applying a week template, leave all days ticked
    2. If you’re applying a day template, tick the days of the week you want it to copy on. This can be useful if someone has the same working hours all week, so you can set the first day manually, and then copy it over the workdays for one week. Following that you can then select the whole week to copy over several weeks. 
    3. Click Copy. You’ll see a message with the result of your copy. If you amended an existing roster, it won’t copy the time blocks which are the same. 
Repeat steps 1 and 2 for Resources as well as Staff!


 

What if I want to set online availability, but haven’t got a staff roster yet?

The system is designed to only book staff and resources which you can and want to have booked. It can happen, however, that you don’t have a roster available yet, but you also don’t want to miss out on forward online bookings. 


A way to deal with this is to set up a couple of phantom staff members. You can add these the same as regular staff members as described above, and tick all product boxes which your current staff can deliver in the Product relationship screen. Then you can set their online availability and once the time comes around that you do have a staff roster available and you’ve applied it, you can reschedule the bookings onto your actual staff and then remove the availability entirely so they don’t take up a column space on your Appointments screen.


Alternatively, you load up the usual staff rosters far in advance, and if anything changes, you'll need to adjust the rosters and reschedule the bookings made.