Overview
Organisations on the Booking Rooster's middleweight plan have the option to have courses auto-added to the Instructor's own Google or Outlook Calendars. Initial set-up of this option can take 2-3 weeks as the connection needs to be approved by Google or Outlook after being added by Booking Rooster.
This help-guide covers:
- What it does - the features in all Google/Outlook connections
- Optional extra settings
- Adding this feature to your software
- Limitations - the scenario's that calendar feeds are not suitable for.
What it does
This section relates to things that will happen in all cases when an instructor has connected Booking Rooster to their Google or Outlook calendar (we will call this, 'their calendar'). To have access to calendar feeds a user must have signed up, verified, and be an instructor. If you are not certain how to give a user instructor level access please see this help resource about user access options. Calendar feeds are managed on a schedule so there is:
- a delay of up to 30 minutes between adding or removing a course and their calendar changing
- a nightly update of more minor changes like course name, changes to the number of people booked.
Here's what happens automatically:
- When admins schedule an instructor to a course the course will be automatically inserted in their calendar within 30 minutes.
- When admins schedule leave or other off-days for an instructor in Contacts > Instructors (aka Trainers, Facilitators), this will also be inserted in their calendar automatically.
- The information included in the instructor's calendar for courses will include;
- Course title
- Location
- A link to the course in the kiosk
- Making them 'busy' in their Google Calendar
- Enables two calendar alerts to the instructor - one 24 hours and one 30 minutes before the event.
- At all times the course will display a status so the instructor can see at a glance whether the course is:
- Scheduled (created but has no ticket-holders yet) - usually orange*
- Booked (at least one ticket-holder) - usually light green*
- Fully booked (no tickets left) - usually dark green*
- Inactive (if the course has been created as, or changed to inactive)
- Pending (if the course has been created as, or changed to pending)
- When an administrator makes the following changes, the instructors calendar will be updated accordingly:
- Removing that trainer from the course or replacing them with another trainer
- Deleting a course
- Cancelling a course
- Activating a course that was inactive or pending.
- Making a course inactive or pending.
- Deleting leave or other 'off' days.
- If an administrator goes to contacts and unchecks "Is Trainer" for a person, their calendar feeds are automatically stopped.
*Sorry, there is only so much the software can do to colour code. Some calendars seem to have a mind of their own and may ignore the colour scheme.
Optional Extra Settings
It is possible to request the following extra features. There is an extra fee for adding these features::
- Displaying the number of people currently booked in the calendar.
- Displaying & updating the names of the ticketholders in the body of the email.*
*Displaying names in this way is discouraged. The names are visible to instructors in their kiosk. Adding them to the body of any email adds to data privacy risks. Support for tt=hese settings are available at custom programming rates. Too few organisations choose this feature to make it possible to include support for them in service plans.
Set up to add this feature to your Booking Rooster Software
To qualify for this feature you need to be on the middleweight plan, and have the feature set up.
If you do not have this feature already please contact support@bookingrooster.co.nz to request a quote. Once the quote is approved, please allow at least 2 weeks for set-up. Please remember that for this feature to work you need:
- Setup (by Booking Rooster)
- Activation (by the Instructor)
Activation
Instructors who want Google Calendar feeds need to activate the link themselves (Google's rule, not the Rooster's). Before starting this process each instructor should make sure they can:
- Log in to their own Booking Rooster
- Log in to their Google or Microsoft account (for some that might mean resetting the password now)
- Receive verification links from Google or Microsoft (probably with a code sent by SMS to our own mobile, but that will dependent on your own Google set up.
Step One: Start the Process in Booking Rooster
- Log in to their Booking Rooster account.
- Go to My Profile
- Scroll down to the "Manage Calendars" sub-heading
- Check the box to indicate which type of Calendar they wish to connect to.
- Check the "Allow us to modify...." button that pops up.
- Press OK to start the activation
Step Two: Approve Activation (Google Option)
If using an Outlook Calendar skip this section and contact support@bookingrooster.co.nz for more details of the approach you will need.
- You will be asked to sign in with the email address you use to log into your calendar.
- Then, enter your password for that account
- You will likely need to verify (in our case we have verification by SMS - you may have a different method. Note that the G-code will come via SMS to your phone if using this method.)
- You may be shown a warning screen. If you are, there are two steps to follow. You may or may not see them. If you do see them push Advanced on the first step then "Go to (your own site name (unsafe)). It will be safe for you because it is your own company site.
- Then you will see a message from Google saying something along the lines of "Booking Rooster wants access to your Google Account..." Press Continue
- You will be bought back to Booking Rooster and see the confirmation (Your account has been successfully updated. Calendar access approved).
Step Two: Approve Activation (Microsoft Option)
You will have started this process as in Step One above, but will have selected "Allow us to add and modify.... Outlook calendar) option and pressed OK.
Limitations
This features is suited for clients that offer course dates in a single block. It is not suitable for instructors that:
- Create one course that is run over several 'non contiguous' days (non-contiguous days are days that are not directly after each other. For example, a course that runs 8-5 every Monday for a term, or a course that runs on a variety of separate dates). For the calendar feeds to work for these multi-date 'non-contiguous' courses, each day or set of contiguous days would need to be treated as one course.
- Assign instructors to blended courses that are dated for longer than the duration of the physical course. In these cases the calendar feed would block out the instructor for the length of time the course is advertised for - often a whole month or more - not just the time the instructor is in the classroom.
- Use the sessional ticket feature to book different people into different time slots - the integration adds the whole event to the calendar, not the individual sessions.
There may be some workarounds for using calendar feeds in these situations. You would need to ask the Booking Rooster team whether these are right for you, and have this factored into your set-up quotation.
Need More Help?
Remember that support services are part of your package. Request help at:
- support@bookingrooster.co.nz
- For urgent assistance call +64 7 575 6903 or +64 21 960 960
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.