Aug 12 2018 05:31 PM - edited Aug 12 2018 05:36 PM
Hi Everyone,
Have found an awesome solution to having multiple staff members with external email addresses ALL automatically assigned to a booking and notified via email at the time of the booking. You can use this solution for internal addresses as well.
It uses a distribution list as the only staff member assigned to a service, ensuring that staff member is always picked. When that service is selected by the client, ALL the staff members in the distribution list are notified automatically.
Say you have three staff members with external email addresses added to this distribution list.
Now when a booking is made for the service (assigned to the external distribution list Staff member) all three of three of these other staff members are automatically emailed with bookings calendar invite message.
If the booking is rescheduled or cancelled all three of the staff members get notified.
This only works well if you require all three of these staff members to always be present for a service to occur. If any one of them can't be available you will need to mark the distribution list associated staff member as having Time Off to stop the service being selected for certain dates.
This is a fantastic solution that works around the shortcomings where multiple staff are assigned to a service (three in this example) but when a client makes a booking, randomly only ONE of the staff members is selected and notified automatically. You then manually have to select the other two if you require all three staff to be notified.
Hoping in the future Bookings will allow an option to force all assigned staff members to a service to be available and notified when a booking is made, this is the preferred solution but for now this workaround achieves the same result.
Hope this helps anyone else with this need.
Alastair
Sep 19 2018 01:55 PM
Using your solution (distribution list) - will the Booking function be able to validate calendar of each staff member to confirm available time open for booking ?
Sep 19 2018 04:44 PM
Hi François,
The distribution list email address is created as its own unique staff member. So unfortunately, no it cannot confirm availability of each individual staff member contained in the distribution list, as you desire.
What this solution does, is email all staff members on the list when an appointment is made, updated or canceled. They are all sent the booking notices and the calendar items automatically.
Staff availability is not covered by this solution, except for the distribution list staff member itself. I am sorry that this workaround does not meet you needs in this case.
Alastair
Sep 14 2021 05:35 PM - edited Sep 15 2021 08:04 AM
That solution won't meet my needs if it doesn't check availability. May as well just put one person on it and then forward the invite to everyone else. And you'd be rescheduling constantly.
Sep 15 2021 06:00 AM
Sep 15 2021 08:01 AM
Jul 31 2022 08:52 PM