Course & Testing Scheduler
Help & Tutorials
Scheduling Dashboard
The “Dashboard” page is the first page that appears upon opening the Course & Test Scheduler. The “Dashboard” view summarizes monitoring information about all appointments, services, employees, and revenue. The dashboard is divided into three main sections, providing different information in each.
Date picker, with the predefined dates range, is on the top of the page and by default, it filters the data in the first, second and fourth dashboard sections and for the current week. You can modify the date range in the date picker which will cause data in the first three sections to be updated.
The first section of the dashboard shows metrics for the current date range selection and is divided into three blocks:
- Approved Appointments – This metric represents the number of approved appointments based on the date range you choose. In the chart below the number, you can see how many approved appointments were for each date in the selected date range. By clicking on the “View Approved Appointments” link below metric, you will be taken directly to the “Appointments” page. You’ll see appointments with the “Approved” status in the date range that has been previously set on the “Dashboard” page. The metric in the upper right corner of the Approved Appointments block shows the increase/decrease compared to the same period in the past (for example, if you select a range of 7 days, this number will show the change compared to the previous 7 days).
The first section of the dashboard shows metrics for the current date range selection and is divided into three blocks:
- Approved Appointments – This metric represents the number of approved appointments based on the date range you choose. In the chart below the number, you can see how many approved appointments were for each date in the selected date range. By clicking on the “View Approved Appointments” link below metric, you will be taken directly to the “Appointments” page. You’ll see appointments with the “Approved” status in the date range that has been previously set on the “Dashboard” page. The metric in the upper right corner of the Approved Appointments block shows the increase/decrease compared to the same period in the past (for example, if you select a range of 7 days, this number will show the change compared to the previous 7 days).
Percentage of load – This metric shows the percentage of load for all approved appointments for a chosen date range. It is calculated as the number of occupied hours/number of total working hours for the whole company. As for the Approved appointments, the chart below shows the percentage of load for each date in the chosen date range. In the upper right corner, you will see another metric that shows the increase/decrease compared to the previous period.
Adding New Employees
Step 1 | Menu
Look to the left side menu and locate “Courses & Testing” and select the 5th option titled “Employees”
Step 2 | Add New
On the upper right of the screen you will see “+ Add Employee” button
Step 3 | Details Tab
Now that you have the employee window open you will notice 5 different available tabs:
- Details
- Assigned Services
- Work Hours
- Days Off
- Special Days
Details Tab
The Details tab is where you will input personal details about the instructor.
Custom photograph – For Ideal fit please use a square image with the instructor’s face in the middle 1000px x 1000px.
First and last name – You can have more than one employee with the same first or last name.
Email address – You can not have multiple employees with the same email address. If there are multiple accounts using the same email account they will just merge together.
Their primary location – Employees are able to work from multiple different locations we just need their home location here.
Their WordPress user – In order for employees to see and edit their personal information as well as their schedule online they will need an user account. If the employee already has a user account you could search for it here with their username. If the employee doesn’t have an account yet we could set one up here
To make things easier just use the first and last name as their username.
Phone – What is their best number to be reached at.
Employee panel password – you can set them a temporary password as employees will be able to update their passwords once they are logged in.
Employee badge – These badges show on the front side of the website to customers as well as on the back end employee page.
Description – the description text box is viewable to customers from the front side of the website.
Currently all of our employees have this information included in their description
Motorcycle Certifications:
- Kickstart: Yes Coach #1&2
- Basic Motorcycle Permit Qualifying Course: Yes Coach #1&2
- Intermediate Motorcycle Permit Qualifying Course: Yes Coach #1&2
- Endorsement Motorcycle Qualifying Course: Yes Coach #1&2
- Advanced Motorcycle Course: No
- Top 3 Wheel Motorcycle Endorsement Qualifying Course: Yes Coach #1&2
- Private Motorcycle Coaching: Yes
Note (Internal) – Notes placed here are only viewable on their employee file as well as their employee portal.
Step 4 | Assigned Services Tab
This tab is where you can select what services your instructor is trained and approved to do. You also can adjust their price to be different than the standard prices. For example if it is an extremely popular person we could increase rates for that employee
Step 5 | Work Hours
The Employee has access to this page in their portal, and can make changes.
Work Hours – This is where you set custom working hours and breaks for any employee if his working hours and breaks differ from the ones set in the company’s global settings. You can choose different working hours and breaks for any day of the week. If you would like to set the same schedule for the entire week, simply configure Monday’s schedule and then click the “Apply to All Days” button – this way the Monday schedule will be copied to all the other days.
It is also possible to add multiple periods during the day and set a different set of services for each period. This way you can create a flexible service schedule for your employees.
On the right side of each period, you will see an option for selecting the services. You can select one, two, or more services, and those selected services will be provided by your employee just in that period. So, for example, you can set the “Beginning Permit Course” from 10 pm to 12 pm, and the “Top 3 Wheel Course” from 7 pm to 8 pm.
Please note:
If your employee should work on all Assigned Services, you should not select any services in the “Services” drop-down menu of the Work Hours tab since the system will automatically use all services the employee is assigned to in that work period. If you select all services and add a new service later, the employee will not automatically be assigned to this new service.
Additionally, it is possible to define multiple locations or separate locations for each employee’s working period as well. In the employee’s details you still need to set a single default location, so, if your employee works on only one location, just define it in the “Details” tab, and you won’t have to set it in the work hours for each period – the default location will be automatically assigned to all periods.
However, if you have one employee working on multiple locations, you can choose one or more locations for each time period that you create. This way, the same employee can be booked for specific services at certain hours at one location, and then provide the same or different services at a different location.
If you add multiple locations in the employee’s Work Hours, once a location is selected when booking, all other locations will be blocked at this time.
If your locations are physically separated, keep in mind that your employees will need time to get from one location to another, so it may be necessary to add buffer times for your services in order to make it possible for employees to get from one appointment to another.
Step 6 | Days Off
The Employee has access to this page in their portal, and can make changes.
Days Off Tab – this tab is where you will note any special days the employee needs off. If you note any days here that date will automatically not be available on the calendar for this employee. An example for doing this is if they are taken a two-week vacation, or they have a doctor’s appointment next Thursday.
To add a new day off – Select the blue “Add Day Off” link and it will expand So you can add a new Day off Name & Date. You have the option to make this date repeat annually by selecting the repeat yearly button.
Step 7 | Special Days
Special Days Tab – This Tab allows you to configure one or multiple days when the employee’s schedule is somehow different from the standard one. E.g. one can have different working hours, provide different services, and/or work in a different location for one Thursday only. Whether you need to set shorter or longer working hours for just one day or a period, set a different service for one specific day or a whole week, or assign the employee to a different location for a day – here you can do all of this.
Once you configure it, it will override the employee’s general working hours and his service schedule, but it will not override his days off.
Click on the “Add Special Day” button and the configuration section will appear. In the “Date” option choose a date or a range of dates, then set one or multiple periods of time with working hours, choose one or multiple services for each of them in the “Service” option, and select a specific location in the “Location” option, according to what’s the special day’s setup.
After you configure the special schedule, click on the “Save Special Day” button and this schedule will be applied.
If you have services that are only provided from time to time (not on a daily or a weekly basis, but on specific occasions), this feature is a perfect match to configure such services. You can simply delete the working hours for an employee and just use the special days, so the calendar on the front-end will show the first available appointment slot. This is useful, especially for services that happen from time to time. The customers won’t need to search for a date. Instead, the month with the available date will be shown right away.
When You are done press “Save”.
Services
Adding, Editing, and Deleting Services
Creating a category is required because each service needs to be included in a category for the calendar to work. Consequently, you’ll need to create at least one category to be able to start creating the services. This option is created especially for companies that provide a large number of different services to make it easier to group them. If you are not one of those companies and you don’t need to create categories, you only need to create one to use the calendar, it won’t appear on the front-end
After you have created at least one category you can start creating the services. Click on the “Add Service” button or the “+” button, and the “New Service” dialog will appear.
The “New Service” dialog is divided into five tabs:
- Details
- Duration and pricing
- Gallery
- Extras
- Settings
Service Details
The Service Details Tab is where you configure the most important service options.
Service photo – Click on the photo placeholder, upload the picture and this picture will appear on the back-end and on the front-end for that service. Please only use square images 500px x 500px
Service color – Click on the blue circle and you will see the color options which you can set for each service. This color will be used for differentiating services on the Calendar in the back-end.
Name – Here you need to write the service name, which is required.
Category – Here you need to select the category that this service belongs to.
Show service on site – Here you can choose whether the service that you create will be shown on site or not. By default, this option is enabled so services will be shown on the booking form on the front-end available for customers’ booking, but if you need to have some service just for making appointments on the back-end then you can disable this option for the specific service.
Set recurring appointment – This gives you the option to enable recurring appointments for this service in a free (All), Daily, Weekly, or Monthly fashion. Once you select one of the offered selections, two new options will appear:
- Handle unavailable recurring dates – how the plugin will offer the replacement dates/times if there’s an unavailable time slot in the recurring list.
- Handle recurring appointment payments – allows you to choose whether the customers will pay only for the 1st appointment, or for all appointments when booking.
Employees – Here you select the employees that will be assigned to the service.
Description – Here you can add a description that will appear on the front page if you use “Front-end Booking Catalog”. The description field supports HTML, so you can use it here in order to better customize your description.
Limit appointments per customer – By enabling this option, you can limit how many appointments a customer can book within a specific time frame and period for this particular service. For detailed instructions about this feature, please check out the Roles Settings.
Duration & Pricing
The Service Details Tab is where you configure the most important service options.
Duration – Here you need to choose the service duration. Time slots you see in the “Duration” option are based on the setting defined in the “Default Time Slot Step” in “General Settings”. One more option that you can set regarding the service duration is “Use service duration for booking a time slot” in General Settings. This option you can use if you want to make the time slot step the same as a service duration is in the booking process.
Please note: If you change the “Default Time Slot Step” after you’ve chosen durations for services, it will not affect existing and saved services but it can cause some issues in the booking process, as your time slot will not match durations.
Price – Here you need to enter the service price.
Custom duration and pricing – This option allows you to set more than one duration and price per service. You set one default price and duration for the service in the aforementioned options, and if you need more durations, and prices accordingly, you enable ‘Custom duration and pricing’, and set as many durations as you need for the service. Please note that the option will become available only after you set the default Duration of the service.
Enable deposit payments – This option allows you to enable deposit payments for the specific service. The option will not be visible if you set 0 as service price, but once you set a larger price the option will appear and when enabled show more options.
Buffer Time Before and Buffer Time After – These options give you the possibility to set the time before and after the appointment that needs to be reserved so that another booking for the same service and employee would not be made. It will not be seen on the front-end, but it will reduce the number of free time slots in the schedule of the employee. “Buffer Time Before” can be interpreted as the time your employee needs to prepare for appointments, while “Buffer Time After” is the time after the appointment that your employee needs to rest, clean up, or do something else before being able to accept the next appointment.
Minimum Capacity and Maximum Capacity – Here you can enter the minimum and the maximum number of persons per single service booking. If your company has a need for a group appointment (for example classes, tours, group training, etc.), this is where you’ll define its capacity. This option is available for every employee, so you can define a different capacity for each one.
Gallery
In this tab, you can add images to your service. These images will show up on the front page of your service. By clicking on the “Add Image” button, you can upload images from your device or choose them from your media library. By dragging them, you can adjust their order in which they will be shown on the front page of your service. If you hover over the image you will see a trash can so single click you can delete it.
Extras
Extras allow you to offer additional services or products that customers can purchase when booking an appointment. By clicking the “Add Extra” button, new options will appear.
Name – This is the place where you will enter a name for the extra. Besides the name, you will see the “Translate” option so you can translate extra name in multiple languages and use it on the multilingual website.
Duration – If you want to define additional services and give them a duration, this is where you do it. Duration is not required because there can be extras that your customers can buy without affecting the appointment’s duration (e.g. special equipment).
- When you create at least one extra, you will see an option to choose whether the extras will be mandatory in the booking process or not, and this option will show up above the extras list. If you enable the option “Set extra as a mandatory field“, you will be able to choose the minimum number of extras that will be mandatory for booking when the customer books the service they are created for.
Please note: If your extra service has a duration, you should know that currently extra time will not be multiplied by the number of persons in the booking or extras quantity, so you will see time for just one extra.
Price – This is where you set a price for your extra product or service.
Maximum Quantity – Here you can set the maximum number of extras that one customer can choose in the booking process. For example, if you set 1, a customer will only be able to add one extra to the service. If you set more, your customers will be able to add a larger number.
Settings
Some of the General Settings that are applied to all services, can be set for each service separately as well. You can set these options to be different per service: default appointments status, minimum time required before booking, minimum time required before canceling/rescheduling, the period available for booking in advance, and redirect URL after booking. You will find these options when you create or edit a service under the Settings tab. By default, these settings will have the same values as in General Settings.
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There are three more important options in the “Edit Service” dialog: “Duplicate”, “Hide” and “Delete”. The “Duplicate” and “Hide” options are available for users with administrator and manager roles, but the “Delete” option is only available for administrators.
“Duplicate” is a helpful option when you have several similar services. By using it, you won’t have to enter them all again. Open the service you want to duplicate, in the bottom left corner click on the “Duplicate” button, and the same service, will open again (just the copied version).
Next to the “Duplicate” is the “Hide” button. If you don’t want to delete your service, but you will not need it for some future period, you can hide it by clicking on this button. The hidden service will still be visible on the back-end of your plugin (in a gray color and with the hidden sign), but it will not be visible on the front-end of your website.
The “Delete” option is available only for the WordPress administrator. If you want to delete a service, click on the desired service, and in the “Edit Service” modal that appears, find the “Delete” button at the bottom left corner of the modal. Click on the “Delete” button, and one of three messages will appear depending on the number of connected appointments:
- If your service doesn’t have any connected appointments simply confirm your deleting,
- If your service has past appointments, you will see the information about the number of appointments and you will have to confirm your deleting,
- If your service has appointments in the future, you will be so informed and you will not be able to delete it.
Organizing Your Services
You can sort services in the list by choosing the type of sorting in the “Sort Service” dropdown or you can do this by the drag and drop option in the list. The order that you set here will be the order in which services will appear on the front-end forms for booking.
In the “Sort Service” dropdown you have four main options: Name Ascending, Name Descending, Price Ascending, and Price Descending, but you also have Custom as an option which will be automatically chosen if you move any service on the list with drag and drop option. For making the custom order by drag and drop, just click on the burger icon which you will see on each service, and drag and drop the service on the list.
Creating Appointments
The following process for scheduling an appointment begins after you click the “+ New Appointment” button located at the top of the page or the “+” (plus icon) button in the bottom right corner of the page. Once you click on any of the buttons, a “New Appointment” dialog will appear, allowing you to choose all necessary information in order to create a new appointment.
“New Appointment” dialog is divided into two tabs:
- “Schedule”: Use this field that you must populate pane to create a new appointment. “Customer(s)”, “Service”, “Employee”, “Date”, and “Time” are mandatory and you need to populate these fields to schedule a new appointment. There is no specific order in selecting “Customer(s)”, “Service” and “Employee”, but before you can choose the appointment date, you have to populate these three fields. After selecting the date, you will be able to select the time of the appointment:
- “Customer(s)”: Here you need to select the customer(s) to whom the service will be provided. If the customer is not an existing customer, click the “Create New” button. The “New Customer” dialog will open and you’ll be prompted to add basic details, such as the customer’s first name, last name, email address.
- The newly created customer will be added to the appointment. Each selected customer represents a single customer booking. After selecting the customer(s) you will be able to configure the number of persons for each customer booking. This can be useful when one customer wishes to book an appointment for several people. This is possible if services allow you to have more than one customer at the same time. It is also possible to change the booking status of each customer booking separately.
- “Service”: Select the service that will be delivered to a customer(s). Once you select the service, it will narrow down to the employee and location options. You will only be able to select employees that are assigned to provide the selected service and the locations where this service is offered.
- “Employee”: Find and select the employee that you want to provide the appointment. Selecting an employee will narrow down to the service and location options, so you will only be able to select the services that the chosen employee provides and to the work location of the employee.
- “Date”: Select an available appointment date from the date picker. Dates won’t be available until you choose the customer(s), service, and employee. Once you have selected the appointment date, you will be offered available time slots in the “Time” drop-down.
- “Time”: Choose the time of the appointment from the available time slots.
- “Service Category”: While this field is not required it will make it easier for you to select the service by filtering the services of the chosen category.
- “Location”: While this field not required, it will make it easier for you to select the employees that work in the selected location. The field is not visible if you don’t have at least one created location
- “Notify the customer(s)”: When this option is checked, a notification that contains the summary information for the booked appointment will be sent after you save this appointment.
- “Note (internal)”: Here you can write a quick note to pay attention to customer(s) particular needs. This note is internal and is not visible to the customer(s).
“Extras”: After selecting “Customer(s)”, “Employee” and “Service” navigate to the “Extras” tab to add the additional service extra. You can configure the extra for each customer booking. Check the extra item that you want to add to the appointment and choose the quantity of the extra item. If an extra item is chargeable the price of the extra will be multiplied by the number of persons in the customer booking. If the extra item increases the appointment duration it is recommended to select an extra item before you select the appointment time because selecting extra within a duration can decrease the number of available time slots.
Editing A Single Appointment
It often happens, that you need to make changes to an existing appointment. Maybe the customer needs to reschedule their appointment, or maybe an employee is unexpectedly out of the office. To edit an existing appointment, simply click on the “Edit” button to the right of the appointment you want to change.
Clicking on the “Edit” button will open the “Edit Appointment” dialog where you can change any appointment parameters. The difference between the “Edit Appointment” and “New Appointment” dialogs is that the “Edit Appointment” dialog has the “Payments” tab where you can see and change payment information.
In the “Edit Appointment” dialog you have the option to reschedule the appointment, change customer booking status, change the employee, change the service… If you are changing the date, you may see that a selected employee is not available for the newly selected date, or that the selected time slot is busy. If this occurs, simply select a different employee or choose a different time slot.
You can choose whether or not to send the customer(s) an email notification of the change, notification by checking/unchecking the “Notify the customer(s)” checkbox.
Once you’re finished, click the “Save” button in the dialog footer to save your changes.
To delete an appointment from the “Edit Appointment” dialog, simply click on the “Trash” icon button and click “Delete” to confirm.
You can also duplicate the appointment by clicking on the “Copy” icon button. It will open a “New Appointment” dialog with the same information as the duplicated appointment. You’ll have to pick an available date and available time slot for the new appointment. Duplicating an appointment might be helpful when you are in a meeting with a customer, and he/she wants a follow-up appointment for the same service and employee.
List of Appointments
The “Appointment” page shows all the information about individual appointments. To specify the number of records that are to be displayed, select the required number in the “Default items per page” in the “General Settings”.
With the search input, you can search for appointments by customer’s name, employee’s name, or service’s name.
Your appointments can be exported as a CSV for reporting. At the top right of the “Appointments” page, next to the search input, tap the “Export” icon button. Clicking on the “Export” icon button opens a dialog that allows you to choose the delimiter used for CSV and select the columns you’d like to export. When you are ready tap on the “Export” button in the dialog to download the CSV file.
With filters that appear at the top of the page, you can narrow down appointments by common characteristics such as date, employees, customer, services, or status. The date filter is predefined by the period of seven days starting from the current date.
The appointments table is grouped by date and provides information about the appointments such as time, a customer(s), employee, service, duration, payment, and status. You can expand an appointment (row) by clicking on it. An expanded record shows the information about the customer’s phone customer’s email. You can use the “Status” drop-down to change the status of all customer bookings at the time. Click the “Edit” button to open the “Edit Appointment” dialog for the chosen appointment.
You can delete multiple appointments at the same time by checking the appointments you want to delete. The dialog box will appear in the table footer when you check at least one appointment you want to delete. Once you are certain you want to delete the records click the “Trash” icon and then the “Delete” button.
Events
Events can be used for various occasions, from basic one or multiple days traveling tours, scheduling conferences to set up group training or classes that repeat for some period of time. For whatever you need, you can create one or multi-day events, that can repeat and even have assigned employee that works on your everyday services.
Let’s begin with creating your first Event. Go to the “Events” page, click on the “+ New Event” button or the “+” on the bottom right side of the page, and the “New Event” dialog will appear. We will now go through the options.
Details
Details is the first tab for creating the event. It consists of the following options:
Name – For every event you can set up the event name. The event name will be shown on the Event front-end list for booking and because of that this field in the modal is mandatory. Besides the name, you will see the “Translate” option so you can write a name in multiple languages and show it on the multilingual website.
Date – “Dates” and “Time” are the options that you will use to set the schedule of your event. If you have an event that lasts just one day, for example, on 15th June from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. you will set the following: Dates 15th June – 15th June, Time from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. However, if your event lasts several days you will have two options: (1) if the event starts and ends each day at the same time, you will create a range of dates in the “Dates” option and set “Time” for those dates, (2) if your event has different start and end times on different days, you will use “Add Date” option to set the specific time for each date.
Recurring – The recurring option is here if you want to create an event that repeats from time to time. Once you check the “This is a recurring event” option you will see three new ones: “Repeat event”, “Every” and “Until when?”, so you can set how often the event will repeat. In the “Repeat event” option you can choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly, in “Every”, corresponding to the previous selection, you can choose if the event will repeat every Day, 2 days, or every Week, 2 weeks, etc. and in “Until when?” you choose the date until the event should repeat.
If you choose Monthly recurrence, you will have two additional options to choose for the event recurrence: Each – where you can choose a specific date in the month, and On where you can choose the day of the week and which day in the month would it be.
Booking opens immediately and Booking closes when event starts – these two options are here so you can decide whether you will allow booking from the moment you create the event and until the event starts or you will set specific dates for one or both options. By default, these options are checked, but if you unchecked them you will see two new options to define the dates and times when the booking starts or/and closes.
Apply this to all recurring events – If this option is not checked the plugin will calculate the time for opening or closing booking based on the selected time for the first event. So, for example, if the date when the booking will open for that event is 7 days before the event, each recurring event will also open for booking 7 days before its start. By default, this option is checked, and all of the recurring events will have the same opening and closing time that is set for the first event.
Select Address – Here you can set up the location of your event, which will be shown on the front-end event list. You can choose one of the locations that you have previously created on the Locations page or you can select Custom Address as an option and the new option “Custom Address” will show up below where you can then write the custom address.
Staff – This option is here if you need to assign some employees to the event. The option is not mandatory so you can choose whether you need an employee assigned to the event or not, and you can also assign multiple employees. Once you assign the employee that will be shown in his calendar and that employee will become unavailable for appointment bookings at that time. However, if some appointment has already been booked and you scheduled the event after, the event and appointment will be at the same time, so pay attention to this.
Tags – Here you can define the tag for your event. These tags will be shown on the front-end event list so the customers can filter the events. It is not necessary to create these tags, so if you, for example, don’t have too many events or your events are a part of the same category you don’t need to add tags to them. If you don’t create tags the tag filter will not be shown on the front-end event list and your customers will be able to filter the events only by the date. However, if you have, for example, various events like sports events, conferences, classes, you can create these tags to make it easier for your customers to find them.
Description – Here you can write your event’s description. This description will be shown on the event details in the front-end so you can basically write everything about your event details, schedule, notes, etc. Same as the name you can as well set the “Description” into multiple languages by clicking on the “Translate” option so you can show events in multiple languages on your website.
Pricing – is the second tab when creating an event. Here you manage the price and deposit options for the event. You can set one price for the event or custom pricing with different pricing categories and pricing by date range options.
Customize – is the third tab for creating the event.
Event Gallery – Here you can add pictures that will be shown on your event on the front-end list.
Event Colors – Here you can set the color in which your event will be shown on the front-end event list. This color will not be applied to the whole event, instead, it will be applied to the buttons in the event, calendar, and price. You can choose one of the preset colors or you can add custom color by writing its code.
Show event on site – This option is here so you can decide whether you want to show your event on the front-end events list. No matter whether the booking for the event is open or closed or the event is canceled or full you can choose here whether you want to show it on the front-end list.
Waiting List
After an event fills up you have the ability still waiting list. Waiting list customers are not guaranteed a spot however if one of your other customers cancel they would be first to be called about this opening.
It’s important to note that the Waiting List has its own capacity. For example, if your event is configured for 20 people, setting the maximum capacity of the waiting list to 10 means that once 20 attendees book the event, an additional 10 people can join the waiting list.
Additionally, you have the option to limit the number of extra guests that customers who join the waiting list can bring with them.
Recurring Events
Recurring events are events that occur on a repeating schedule. This is a common name for various occasions such as conferences, individual or group training, classes that repeat, etc. With Amelia, you can designate a timeframe for the repetition of single or multiple-day repeating events.
Think of recurring events as a testing session. For example, you have an event called “Permit skills test” which is a recurring event that recurs every week, on Saturdays, from 10:00 – 14:00. Every week, the “Staff” (employee) provides the same test, which means (s)he will repeat the same test (test) all the time. With this in mind, there’d be no reason why a single customer would want to book the same lecture for X number of weeks (because it is the same lecture every week).
Because of this, every recurring event is considered a separate event, and when a customer books one event, they are not automatically added to all recurring events.
Creating a Recurring Event
Similar to creating regular events, you need to access the “Events” page, click on the “+ New Event” button in the top right corner or the “+” on the bottom right corner of the page, and the “New Event” dialog will appear.
Additionally, you have the option to limit the number of extra guests that customers who join the waiting list can bring with them.
When an event is being created, set the date or the date range when it’s going to be held; choose the time, and below that, enable the “This is a recurring event” check box.
In there, choose:
- In what manner the event will repeat (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly);
- How it is going to repeat (every week, every 2 weeks, every 3 weeks, etc (this, of course, applies to days, months, or years as well));
- Until when it’s going to repeat.
Enabling the “Apply this to all recurring events” option will apply the options from when the booking opens and when the booking closes to all recurring events.
Example: If the booking for the first event opens on July 31st at midnight, the booking for all recurring events will also open on July 31st at midnight.
If the “Apply this to all recurring events” option is disabled, the plugin will calculate the time for opening and closing the booking based on the selected time for the first event.
Example: If the booking for the first event opens on July 31st at midnight, this would mean that it would open 34 hours before the event starts (remember, the 1st event in our example starts on August 1st, at 10:00 AM). So, when you disable the “Apply this to all recurring events” option, Amelia will apply the same logic to recurring events, so an event that’s set to repeat on August 8 will be open for booking on August 7th, at midnight.
We configured this event so the 1st event in the list opens on July 31st, at midnight, and that this will not apply to upcoming events, so you’ll notice that each event is in the “Upcoming” status. If we had configured the 1st event to open immediately (as soon as we create it), the status would be “Open”.
You’ll see that the booking opened immediately for the 1st event, but since we disabled the “Apply this to all recurring events” option, the upcoming events are still “Upcoming”:
