April 2020, and we\u2019re still in confinement, the good thing is that we\u2019re working hard at Wappointment making our product better everyday. We\u2019ve released versions 1.3.1 (March 31st), 1.3.2 (April 9th) , and now it\u2019s version 1.4.0 (April 16th).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up until now you could connect only one of your personal calendars (Google Cal, Apple iCal, Outlook Calendar, etc..) .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well synching calendars can be a bit of heavy process depending on how many appointments you have and when you\u2019ve created your calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance your Google Calendar holds all the events since the creation of your google account, for some of us that\u2019s like nearly 20 years of data<\/strong>. So depending how active you were during those past 20 years, let\u2019s say that file could be pretty heavy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, talking to users made us realise that we needed to give you more flexibility. So we\u2019ve added a Sync tab in your Wappointment > Settings<\/strong> and you can now connect up to 4 calendars. Basically any calendar that is in the .ics format<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our system is pretty optimized, it will check your calendar every 5 minutes<\/strong>, and will parse it only if changes were detected<\/strong>(huge saver). So here is some powerful stuff for you straight in our free plugin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well this one is a feature we were hesitant on adding earlier as we\u2019re trying to keep our settings panel as simple as possible. We really want it to work for the 90% of you and then add more features in new addons for specific needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We really value your experience and want you to just have a smooth sail handling your appointments\u2019 schedule, and not having to read documentation to just understand how to configure our plugin. This said buffer time was at the limit of core features, it can be pretty useful. So let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically that\u2019s the time you need in between appointments so that you can prepare for the next one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, let\u2019s say you provide short 25 minutes 1 on 1 English Classes to your students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But you need 5 minutes to prepare for your next class, well before we implemented the buffer time you\u2019d need to set your appointment\u2019s duration to 30 minutes and just explain individually to each of your client that the appointment duration is actually only 25minutes long. Sounds confusing for your customers right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now with buffer time, you simply set your appointment duration to 25 minutes, then set the buffer time in Settings > Advanced<\/strong> to 5 minutes. And here you go, no more confusion, the appointment lasts 25 minutes, so that\u2019s clear to your customers what they are getting; and then you become unavailable 5 minutes after the appointment, so nobody can book you during that short period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is a small win, it took us 5 minutes to implement and it\u2019s our way to make your visitors\u2019 experience way smoother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By adding that feature, we\u2019ve just saved your visitors one click and avoided potential confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s one click you may ask? Well that\u2019s one step closer to conversion. Instead of letting them confused in front of a calendar that may or may not have any availability in the current month, well we just skip to the good part where they can select the first available slot you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well this one is a tiny one, but it can prove useful. when you setup your email reminders and confirmation, you are able to add different tags(Client\u2019s name, appointment\u2019s duration, Service name, \u2026), that will be then dynamically replaced when sending to your customer. This was working fine in the body of your emails, but it was not working in the subject of the email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that\u2019s it, it does work now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the day some of you contact us, there are bugs that needs to be corrected. And we try to ship the corrections as fast as we can. Above I\u2019ve listed some of the features we\u2019ve added, but here are some others we\u2019ve fixed:<\/p>\n\n\n\nBuffer time after appointment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What is buffer time?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Booking form auto-select first day with available slots<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Tag replacement on subject of email reminders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Why so many updates?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s next?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n