www.Appointment.com

Remembrance Day update

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:57:00 +0000

Today is "Remembrance Day" in Canada and we have limited staff available.
support@appointment.com will be monitored for urgent issues.

At the same time, our "Live Support" chat and e-mail support is extending the opening hours to serve more timezones.
Appointment.com Consumer Portal directory is going live as well. If you would like to be listed, please log in as the "Admin/Vendor", go to "Vendor Admin" and select the categories that you would like to be listed under.

System upgrade delayed until tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:03:00 +0000

System upgrade delayed until tomorrow.

Appointment.com Catches the Flu

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Many of our customers will have noticed that site performance on Thursday was extremely and unacceptably slow. I wanted to fill you in on what happened and how we are resolving it.

We recently added as customers several vaccination clinics that are offering online appointments for H1N1 flu shots. Demand for the limited quantity of the H1N1 vaccines is so great that an enormous number of people all went to the site at the exact same time, creating a huge spike in traffic. Even once the vaccines were all gone, people were still trying to get appointments, so there was little letup in traffic over the course of the day. To be specific, we saw traffic spike by almost 20 times our normal traffic, and continue at the level for almost the entire day. Quite simply, we were overwhelmed by the suddenness and volume of this traffic, and many of you bore the brunt of this through slow or inaccessible calendars.

Due to this, we are adding additional server capacity. This will require a scheduled outage this Sunday night, November 8, from 8:00 PM to midnight PST; we have chosen these off-peak hours so as to inconvenience the least number of customers. Once this upgrade is complete, we are confident that Appointment.com will have sufficient server capacity to handle sudden spikes in traffic, and that this incident should not reoccur.

We appreciate your patience and forbearance more than you can imagine, and hope that you will find the performance improvements of Appointment.com a worthwhile addition.

Development update and getting ready for the flu shot season

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:59:00 +0000

Our development team is working at full capacity to complete the "Beta" stage of Version 3.0 for www.Appointment.com. The release date has been delayed to the end of this month because we have continued to add new features, but they will be well worth the wait!

In the meantime, Version 2.0 is running well and and we have seen an increase in the demand for many kinds of "Online Appointment Scheduling" tasks. There is particularly strong increase in the need for online scheduling with the upcoming flu season.
More flu shot clinics are using www.Appointment.com than ever before, with both the regular flu shots and now the H1N1 immunizations. Flu clinics who utilize online scheduling are benefiting because they have the ability to book multiple appointments for one time-slot, making the booking process very simple and easy for patients and providers.

P.S. follow our Tweets at our new Twitter URL at
http://twitter.com/appointmentcom

BookingCalendar.com is now Appointment.com

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:19:00 +0000

We started the idea of BookingCalendar.com in 1999, and since then, it has become one of the leading online appointment scheduling systems. I would like to thank all of our many loyal customers who, over the years, have helped drive us to create the most advanced online appointment scheduling systems available. Your comments and encouragement have truly been invaluable.

Now it is time for the next step in our evolution.

The most immediate change is a new name: Appointment.com. And over the next weeks and months, you are going to see some rather dramatic changes to the system, including:

A new look and feel that is easier to use and understand
Streamlined administration
Enhanced reporting
A consumer portal for scheduling appointments

We will be sending out a more detailed description of these changes, as well as our development roadmap, to our customers in the next few weeks, and look forward to your comments.

While an enhanced UI and feature set are significant, equally important is that Appointment.com is now part of the Epik network of web sites. Through this alliance, we have been able to expand our vision, ability to execute, and capacity to grow even more rapidly. Over the coming months, you will begin to enjoy the fruits of this relationship with Epik, including links to various directories and portals, improved SEO, site discoverability, and online lead generation.

This truly is an exciting time for Appointment.com.

Max Fanderl

Founder and COO, Appointment.com

New Service Display

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:52:00 +0000

You can now display the service your customer has chosen directly on your schedule, rather than in the pop-up. To enable this go to Vendor Admin-Calendar Display Options and Enable "Display Service Name directly under Customer Name on schedule". The next time you visit your schedule, you will see the service!

The Promotional/Coupon Code Function is Complete!

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:28:00 +0000

We have just added the ability to create and use promotional codes and coupons. To get started go to your Optional Features in Vendor Admin and enable this function. Return to the Administration menu and go to Promotional Code Admin. Here you can add a new Promotional Code by selecting your own code, dates that it can be used and even the number allowed. When your client enters this code the discount or dollar amount will be automatically removed from their total cost.

This function can be a great asset for your marketing and to encourage your users to book online. You can provide a coupon code to new users to receive discounts on their first booking or a promotional codes for new services or seasonal events that you offer.

Please let us know if you have any questions about this new feature.
BookingCalendar.com

Newest updates

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:10:00 +0000

We have recently done some small updates that you may find useful in your calendar:
1.) You can now customize the text of cancellation emails sent to your clients. You can access this under Schedule Admin and "Default Schedule Settings".
2.) You can disable the "Language" selection field from the customer registration form. You can find this in Vendor Admin under 'Optional Features' and 'Display Language in Signup page'. By default this is set to 'Disable'.
3.) In place of the {customer_name} tag in emails, which displays the customer first and last name, you can now use {first_name} {last_name} to display one or the other. You can edit these emails in Schedule and Event Admin.
4.) The ICS file for exporting bookings into Outlook or iCal is now available for events.
5.) A checkbox has been added in Event Admin to disable the start and finish times from being displayed in the email confirmations.
6.) A new tag is available for vendor and customer confirmation emails to display how a booking was paid. Please add this {paid_by} tag within the {repeat_area} tags in your email confirmations if you would like this to display.

Please let us know if you have any questions about these new additions.
Thank you,
BookingCalendar.com

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:59:00 +0000

Over the last couple month we have been fine-tuning the system and adding a new Ajax component into the booking process. This will improve calendar speed, especially for those using a lot of "Schedules" in their calendars. This will not change how the calendar looks or works, it just makes it faster.

Another great improvement that comes with the AJAX application is the ability to block out your available times with clicking on the "Lock" (only for "Administrators" and "Booking Agents"), rather than making dummy bookings. This will significantly speed up your schedule changes.
How will this work?
Logged in as the "Vendor" or "Agent" you will see a lock next to each available time. By clicking on the lock, you will be able to lock one or multiple time-blocks, adding a note for yourself. The customer will not be able to book these time-blocks, however, you as the administrator or agent still can book an appointment for the blocked times.

The process of booking existing customers has been changed as well. We eliminated the pop-up screen to search for customers. Now you can simply enter the first three letters of the customers "first or last name" and you will see a list of possible customers to be selected from a drop down.

We hope that you find these upgrades helpful and time-saving.
Thank you,
BookingCalendar.com

Happy Holidays from BookingCalendar.com

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:50:00 +0000

All the staff at BookingCalendar.com would like to wish our customers happy holidays and a safe and happy new year. We are looking forward to another year of success and have many new exciting upgrades planned. We have recently optimized the software and the speed of the calendar is better than ever. Please continue to watch for new features, as we add them regularly.

BookingCalendar.com does a presentation for the World Massage Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:33:00 +0000

BookingCalendar.com has just recently presented online for the World Massage Conference (www.Worldmassageconference.com). This unique event is a first of its kind that allows massage therapists to educate themselves on a variety of topics on the online from their own homes. By doing this they can collect credits for their licenses. We were able to offer some insight into the value of using the internet to complement one's business and the many uses and money saving capabilities of an online scheduler.

V-cards displaying the wrong time in Outlook, when imported from BookingCalendar.com

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:21:00 +0000

There are several reasons that this can occur. There are many versions of Outlook available, all with varying issues with v-cards and timezones. The first thing to check is whether or not your timezone is set correctly in your Outlook calendar, you can follow the steps at http://it.cas.psu.edu/Training/HowTo/Outlook/CalendarTime.htm.
The next thing to keep in mind is if there is an upcoming time change. BookingCalendar.com and Google calendar adjust their appointment times after the time change has taken place, whereas Outlook adjusts this as the booking is imported. This can mean that the time will appear wrong when the V-card is imported, but it will match up with the booking once the time change has occurred.
If none of these steps work for you, you may want to consider syncing your BookingCalendar with Google and Google to Outlook. To do this you need to setup an account with Google and then turn on the Google sync in BookingCalendar ( in either Vendor Admin or Schedule Admin). Once you have enabled the sync from BookingCalendar to Google, you need to sync your Google calendar with your Outlook calendar. Once this is done, any future bookings will be added to Google and then automatically to Outlook. This sync is in real time and will prevent you from needing to click the v-cards or using the ics file. The bookings will take longer to sync from Google to Outlook than from BookingCalendar to Google, but is still be more efficient than using the v-cards.

BookingCalendar.com in combination with Facebook / MySpace.com is a great way to grow your business.

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:40:00 +0000

MySpace and Facebook are fast becoming the most widely used internet marketing tools and they are completely free. You can use these tools in conjunction with your existing website to give more exposure to your company, enter discussion forums and make contacts with other businesses. If you do not have a website these free pages can be of great use to you. You can direct clients to your MySpace or Facebook page and include information about yourself and your services. You can customize these pages with pictures and include a link to your online bookingcalendar. The links to MySpace and Facebook pages can be quite lengthy, so to simplify the link/page you want your clients to visit, you can easily buy a domain/website name (usually under $10/yr). A domain name is just like a website name, www.companyname.com, and can be forwarded to another address, such as a MySpace or Facebook page. For example, if you send your client to www.companyname.com, your MySpace page will come up. You can do the same thing to direct people right to the bookingcalendar, if you do not want to use MySpace or Facebook. You can buy domains at godaddy.com and yahoo.smallbusiness.com, along with several other places.

New Backup System Implemented to store your BookingCalendar.com appointments on your PC

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:34:00 +0000

You can now store your BookingCalendar.com appointments on your PC as well. Our new backup system allows you to save your current and future bookings on your computer. This is a great feature to have in place in the event of an internet connection issue. To load the backup system on your computer please access this link:
https://www.mybookingcalendar.com/flash/default.html
You may need to load a newer version of flash. Once the program is loaded, log into the backup system. To access your bookings for a particular day, do a search in the Search Schedule Booking section on the right. If you leave this page open, bookings will be updated very 4 hours, or you can manually update the system anytime by selecting Load Bookings from site.

Specific Links to Schedules and Locations

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:27:00 +0000

Specific links for Location Admin and Schedule Admin are now included directly within a location or schedule and no longer have to be manually created. These will allow you to send specific links to your clients (or add links to a website) which only display one location or schedule. To access these links, once you have added a Location or Schedule, select Modify and you will see a field for "Direct link access", which displays the necessary link. This is very useful when you have a Location or Schedule that you want to prevent one set of clients from seeing, or you want to direct certain clients to one schedule only. For example, if you do chair massage, you will want one set of corporate clients to view Schedule A and another group to only view Schedule B, so you can send each client group a different link.

Better Agent Access

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:20:00 +0000

Using the "Agent Auto Login URL", your agents can be automatically logged into the calendar and have a specific URL to save as a bookmark or desktop shortcut. To create an Agent, go to Agent Admin and select Add new Agent. Once you have done the basic Agent settings, update the profile and then Modify it again. You will now see a link under "Agent Auto Login URL". This is the link that you can use to auto login your agents and save as a bookmark.

Change to Customer/Agent Password Access

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:29:00 +0000

Due to changes in internet security and privacy requirements we have made a change to accessing customer and agent passwords. To increase customer privacy you will no longer be able to view passwords in customer/agent profiles. The customer and agent will be emailed their password anytime you select to Reset Password and the customer can view/change their password when logged into their own profile. If you need to access the calendar as a customer or agent you will need to go into their profile and enter your own email address into their profile and then select to Reset Password. You will then be emailed their login information. You will want to be sure that you put their email address back into the profile and contact them to let them know that you have changed this information.

Quick Setup Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:22:00 +0000

We have just added a new page to improve and simplify the calendar setup and editing process. You can access this Quick Setup page with the link in the main calendar navigation bar. You can see that the main administration functions are all on this one page (Vendor Admin, Schedule Admin, Service Admin), so you do not have to access the menu to move from one to another. You can also make many changes right on this page. We hope that this makes your use of the calendar easier and we would be happy to receive any feedback on this.

QuickBooks Merchant Services Gateway

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:51:00 +0000

We have added the QuickBooks Merchant Services gateway. This can be found and setup through your Vendor Admin or Schedule Admin.

Start/Finish Times for Services

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:00:00 +0000

You can now add start and finish times to your services. This will allow you to limit the availability of individual services to certain times of the day. This is very useful for users who offer one service in the morning and another in the afternoon. You can access this in your Service Admin.

Sync BookingCalendar.com with Outlook

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:51:00 +0000

BookingCalendar.com has added a new feature that allows you to save your appointments as an ICS file. This file can be imported into Outlook.
This can be a useful tool, but it is not the ideal way to keep your Outlook calendar in sync with your BookingCalendar.com.
We would suggest that you get a free Gmail account which includes the Google Calendar. Now you can activate the API (sync option) in BookingCalendar.com to update the Google Calendar.
Google Calendar now has a plug in to sync with Outlook.
Details in how to set up the sync option from Google to Outlook is at
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=98563
This is a better option because this allows your Outlook sync to be automatic, bypassing the need for opening v-cards and the ICS file.

BookingCalendar.com is now listed at Google Marketplace

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:36:00 +0000

We are happy and proud to be approved and listed in the "Google Solutions Market Place" as the Online Appointment Scheduler for Google Calendars.

This is great news as Google recognizes BookingCalendar.com as a tool to let customers schedule appointments and have these then update their Google Calendar.

Also this integration is a great backup plan for "Vendors" to have all their BookingCalendar.com appointments synced with a Google Calendar for free.

Click here to see the Google Solution Market Place listing.

Google API added for Booking Agents and Vendors

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:26:00 +0000

We have now added the Google Calendar API for "Booking Agents" and the "Vendor" to update their Google Calendar with booked and canceled appointments.
This is a very good tool if you would like to take advantage of the Google SMS notification and invitation feature.

St. George Bank (Australia) Payment Gateway

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:20:00 +0000

We have included the St. George Payment Gateway API into www.BookingCalendar.com for our Australian customers.

Edit Subject line of e-mail notifications

noreply@blogger.com (Appointment.com) — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:36:00 +0000

We have added a new feature to customize and add information into the "subject line" for each e-mail notification. See this in your "Schedule Admin".