Page 3 - Example of a customised booking note
Page 4 - The Administration module
Page 5 - Creating and Managing your customised notes
Page 9 – Assigning notes to a category
At the Confirm stage of the reservation process, a brief note is required to explain the purpose of the booking. By default, this involves the booker completing a basic freetext field.
The text that is entered here is saved as the “Booking Note” and will be included in the various information pages and email notifications.
However, for certain rooms/resources, there may be specific information required in the Booking Note which could be missed with a generic freetext field.
Examples:
▪ If the Minibus is booked, you may need to know who will be the driver for insurance purposes.
▪ If the Main Hall is booked for a presentation, will they require IT Department assistance?
▪ If one of the Meeting Rooms is booked, should basic refreshments, a full lunch, or neither be provided?
This module enables the default Booking Note to be replaced with your own set of customised fields, thereby ensuring that the required information is always collected.
Whenever the minibus is booked, the following information is required…
▪ the destination
▪ the name of the driver
▪ the exact number of passengers involved.
Additionally, the booker needs to be reminded of the school’s “terms of use” policy.
To achieve this, the option during the Confirm stage needs to be changed from the default layout of…
To…
On completion of the booking, the four ‘input’ fields are then merged together into a single note…
Setting up customised Booking Notes involves three separate stages.
Stage One - Categories
If you have not already done so, your existing rooms and resources will need to be categorised first – e.g. classrooms under the category ‘Classrooms’, laptops under the category ‘Laptops’ etc.
If time is an issue then… For this particular module, only the items that will require alternative booking notes must have their categories set now. If applicable, you can update the other items at a later time.
Tip
Items under the same category will always share the same set of booking notes. Therefore, if your categories have already been set, some minor adjustments may be required.
Example 1: If your Sports Hall and Main Hall are both currently under the category ‘Halls’ - but they need different notes to each other - their categories will have to be broken down further (e.g. ‘Halls – Sports’ and ‘Halls – Other’).
Example 2: If you have both rooms and resources under the same category – but only want alternative notes to apply for the rooms – they too will need to be separated into different categories.
Stage Two – Notes
This area is where all of the individual booking notes (that can apply to any item) are created and maintained. This is covered in detail on the next few pages.
Stage Three – Allocations
This area determines which notes created during Stage Two each category should make use of.
Tip
If only one category will require a set of customised notes, this is a straightforward process of completing Stage One, then moving on to Stage Two, then finishing with Stage Three.
If, however, you have a number of categories requiring their own unique notes, it is recommended that you concentrate on just one category at a time – e.g. complete Stage Two then Stage Three for a single category, and then return to Stage Two for the next category.
This page displays all existing booking notes together in one place (regardless of which categories they apply to). From here, you can create new notes or amend existing ones.
Initially you will see just the default booking note. Usually, this should be left as it is.
To create a new customised Booking Note…
Type
There are three options…
i) Textbox - This is for an entry where the booker will need to type something in.
ii) List – This is for an entry where there are only a few valid replies. e.g. If this field needs the answer to a Yes/No question, or a single number between 1 and 10.
iii) Info – This is not part of the Booking Note as such. Instead, this option enables specific instructions/comments to be shown to the booker before they proceed with the reservation.
Friendly Name
This is the name that the note will be referred to throughout this admin module. It won’t appear on the actual Confirmation page – it’s intended as a visual aid to help recognise the purpose of each note (this will be of most use during Stage Three – particularly if your notes will significantly vary between categories).
Header
This is the blue text that appears directly above the textbox/list.
When ready, click Proceed.
Note Type - TextBox
The box near the top of the display is a preview of the note as it currently stands.
Within the Edit area, you can now manipulate the note’s height/width or include a brief comment that will appear immediately below the main text field.
Initially, the Prefix will be a copy of the Header. This text will be included in the final booking note itself – e.g. if the booker types “Wembley Stadium” into the textbox, the final note saved will be “Destination: Wembley Stadium”.
Clicking on the ‘explain’ link will give some examples of where you may need the header and prefix to differ.
After Confirming that you want to keep the changes made, you will then be returned to the previous page.
The new entry is now included in the list of available notes (along with an ‘edit’ option should further changes be required later).
Note Type - List
This page works along very similar lines to the Textbox version.
The main difference is that this type of note will need all valid responses to be recorded.
Within the Edit area is a ‘click here’ button for Listed Entries.
This will open up a large yellow box where you can log all entries that should appear in the drop-down list.
For our example, valid replies are any number between 1 and 12. Therefore, all twelve numbers need entering here, each separated by a line break.
Tip: Although there are no limits on how many valid entries can be recorded, generally a List should only be used if i) the number of possible answers is reasonably low, or ii) it’s something that a Textbox just can’t cover. Example: If this field requires a number between 1 and 100, it may just be simpler to create a Textbox that includes a comment (e.g. “Please enter a numerical value between 1 and 100”).
Note Type – Information Box
Here the Edit area includes various options regarding colours and sizes.
The larger yellow box is where the text required should be entered.
Note the ‘view html tips’ link just above this box. It includes examples of how you can highlight specific parts of the text, or include a direct link to an external page/document.
Important
Be careful if copying text directly from Microsoft Word or other external applications.
Certain characters typed in Word (such as speech marks or apostrophes) tend to be slightly different to those used by a webpage and may produce unexpected results. Along the same lines, do not copy/paste hyperlinks or tables directly from Word into the textarea – it will take more time to correct what isn’t compatible than it would be typing everything in from scratch.
Now that our five customised notes have been defined in Stage Two, we are ready to make them the replacement for the Transport category’s default note.
Using the yellow drop-down menu at the top of the page, select Transport.
As this category has not yet been assigned its own booking notes, it currently uses the default layout (as used by the category General). To change that…
Click on the large green Edit button.
The new page consists of a series of drop-down menus that determine which notes are to be included on the Confirm Booking page and the order they should appear. Additionally, each selection has a ‘Required Yes/No’ option which relates to whether it is a compulsory filed that the booker must complete, or if it can be left blank.
After updating the menus to fit our Transport requirements, the display will look like this…
Click Save at the bottom of the table and you will be returned to the previous page.
It will now show the result of the changes made.
Check the display carefully as this is exactly what the booker will see at the Confirm stage of the booking process.
Please download the attached guide
