Waiting List

With Waiting List Addon you can allow your customers to apply for a waiting list for fully booked time slots.

Admin – Setup of Waiting List

• Waiting list is setup for each service separately. To access the settings click More link under ID of the desired service on WP BASE → Business Settings → Services page.
• To activate Waiting List for a service, click Enable checkbox.
• A waiting list Capacity is also required. This number will determine how many clients can apply to the time slot to be added to the waiting list.
• When waiting list is enabled for a service, a “W” will be seen on top-right of service ID in the List of Services.

Admin – Adding a Booking for Waiting List

• Adding a booking for waiting list is not different than adding a manual booking. You just need to set status as “Waiting List”. For details please see  Adding and Editing a Booking.
• While on the front end clients can only apply to a time slot when it is busy, on admin side you can freely add a booking or edit its status as “Waiting List” when it is not busy. However, other restrictions, e.g. existence of available providers, are still in effect.

User Experience – Booking

• Waiting list selection for each time slot becomes available when that time slot is busy, a waiting list capacity for the service is defined and list capacity is not full.
• Booking process is the same as a regular booking, except for payment will not be done for the booking.
• When client completes the booking, he will receive Waiting List submission email. You can see and modify template for this email in Global Settings → Email → Waiting List Submission.

User Experience – Notification of an Opening

• WP BASE regularly checks if there is an opening for bookings in the waiting list. Opening can be because of cancellation, rescheduling or capacity increase of the service or any other. Whenever an opening is noticed, a notification email is sent to the owner of the booking. You can see and modify template for this email in Global Settings → Email → Waiting List Notify. Please note the CLAIM placeholder in this template. It creates a link using which client will “claim” the waiting list booking to be confirmed. Therefore make sure that it always stays in the template.
• Because there may be many emails to be sent at the same time, in order to prevent emails being rejected by your hosting company, Waiting List addon limits sending of emails as 10 emails at once, 50 emails per hour and 500 emails per day. If a limit is reached and there are still emails to be sent, they are executed at the next instance.
• Notification emails are sent up to one hour to the start time of the booking.

User Experience – Claiming a Booking

• Applying to an opening for a booking in waiting list is called “claiming”. Client claims a waiting list booking by clicking the link on the waiting list notify email.
• When client clicks this link, he is redirected to your website and if opening is still available, he is asked to login if not already logged in, and a confirmation message is displayed. Also confirmation message is sent to his email.
• If opening is not available any more, because another client may have already claimed it, client views a message (waiting_claim_failed in Display Settings > Custom Texts). He is still eligible for further openings; whenever there is another opening, he will be notified again.
• After booking time passes, waiting list bookings will be removed.

When used in combination with Shopping Cart, client can make a mixed cart, i.e. time slots in waiting list or not. Then client will receive two emails: One for the bookings in waiting list and one for the ones in confirmed/pending status.