FAQ
Q: How is the Week Schedule open hours used?
A:
The time slots returned by the Public API will always be between the start and end time for the given date. The end time of an Appointment booked through the Public API will not be after the Week Schedule end time. For example, with a Week Schedule from 09:00 - 16:00 and a Service length of 15 minutes, the last possible timeslot that would be made available through the public API would be 15:45 - 16:00.
Q: Why is there a difference in Week Schedule open hours and Branch open hours?
A:
The Branch open hours is typically used for informational purposes about the general operating hours of a Branch. The Week Schedule is exclusively about when the Branch will accept Appointment bookings. An example could be a Branch that during a few hours each day accepts "drop in" customers and during these hours the staff should not be occupied with pre-booked Appointments.
Q: How do we change calendar open hours?
A:
The week schedule(s) are associated to a Branch through an Appointment Profile created for a given Branch. It is possible to have many Appointment Profiles for a given Branch and each Appointment Profile can specify a different Week Schedule than the other Appointment Profiles. If your enterprise has several Branches, where one or more needs to have their own bookable hours, it is just a matter of creating an alternate Week Schedule and then changing the selected Week Schedule in the Appointment Profile of the given Branch.
Q: My Week Schedule is between 09:00 - 17:00, but I can still create Appointments using the Calendar View outside of this time period. Why?
A:
Week Schedules are only enforced for bookings done through the Public API, including presenting available timeslots for a given date etc.
Q: My Resource R1 is already booked between 12:00 - 13:00. But R1 is still selectable when I try to create an Appointment using the Calendar View at that date and time. Why?
A:
Existing Appointments for a given Resource is only taken into account when bookings are done through the Public API. The Calendar View allows double-booked Resources.
Q: I have placed a 'Block' every day between 12-13 for lunch in my Week Schedule. I can still create Appointments through the Calendar View between 12-13. Why?
A:
Week schedule Blocks are only enforced for bookings done through the Public API, including presenting available timeslots for a given date etc. The Calendar View allows bookings at any time or date as it is only used by internal staff members.
Q: How does the "additional customer duration" on the Service work?
A:
In the context of bookings made through the Public API, each additional customer on an Appointment may increase the total free time required for a Resource in order for it to be eligible for an Appointment. If your Service is "passport applications" you may allow an Appointment to be made for several customers on a single Appointment, a family for example. Since accepting passport applications for several people probably consumes more time than for a single person, the calendar administrator can specify the number of additional minutes per extra customer on the Appointment. So if we have a default 5 minute duration and an extra 3 minutes per additional customer, the total required duration for a family of four members would be 5+3+3+3 == 14 minutes. 5 minutes for the 1st person and three x 3 minutes for the additional three family members. This means that in the context of a booking through the Public API for this family, a free time slot of at least 14 minutes would be required on an applicable resource. So if the last available time for a given Resource were 15:45 - 16:00, that 14 minute Appointment would fit into the last slot and a booking would be possible, but with one more customer on in (for a total of 5), the required time would be 17 minutes and an Appointment will not be possible to create since it would end at 16:02.
Q: What's the purpose of the color specified on the Resource?
A:
Appointments are color-coded in the Calendar View according to their associated Resource.
Q: In the Week Schedule, what's the difference between "Bookable Days" and "Working Days"?
A:
In order for a day to be bookable through the Public API, both 'Bookable' and 'Working day' must be checked. The separation into two fields are for future-proofing purposes where we may introduce more fine-granularity into scheduling.
Q: Can I change that 64-character long "publicId" on Branches and Services?
A:
Yes, you can change them to something else, just make sure they have not been stored as identifiers in an external system or perhaps used in emailable links sent to customers or similar.
Q: What are those "Orchestra Branch Id" and "Orchestra Service Id" fields?
A:
They are used to map Branch and Service objects to their logical counterparts inside Orchestra. Typically, they are populated when using the Fetch button but in case you create a Service manually you will need to map it to an Orchestra Service if you want the Appointment to be synced over to Orchestra from the Calendar.
You perform the mapping by entering a number into the Orchestra Branch Id/Orchestra Service Id field in the Edit Branch/Edit Service window. This number must be the same as the primary key of the Branch/Service in Orchestra, e.g. qp_central.branches/qp_central.services table.
You can also determine this number by opening the Orchestra Business Configuration application, go to the Branches/Services list and select a Branch/Service, which opens the Edit window. In the browser's URL field, you should then see something like:
http://<ORCHESTRA_IP>:8080/qsystem/system-web/#Branches:edit:branch=2
or:
http://<ORCHESTRA_IP>:8080/qsystem/system-web/#Services:edit:service=1
The last segment, "branch=[N]" or “service=[N]” identifies the primary key of the Branch/Service in Orchestra.
However, typically you should use the Fetch button which fills in this information for you automatically.
Q: Can a Resource be member of several Resource Groups?
A:
Yes.
Q: If a Branch has several Appointment Profiles, how is the Public API time slot evaluation affected?
A:
Time slots are evaluated on a per Appointment Profile basis where the final result is stored in a unique set of HH:mm values.
Q: How does the "Allow booking N days M minutes from now for a period of NN days" work?
A:
This only applies to the Public API - it affects the base date range from which bookable dates and timeslots will be evaluated. For example, if the current date and time is 2014-06-06 11:00 (a Friday), we have a 09:00 - 17:00 Week Schedule from Monday-Friday and we have specified 1 days, 0 minutes from now and 14 days as the period - the first bookable day will be Monday the 9th since neither the Saturday or Sunday is bookable. Then, the next Mon-Fri for 14 calendar days will be bookable, meaning that the last bookable date in the period will be 2014-06-20 (the 22nd is a Sunday). If the Allow booking would be 0 days and 120 minutes, it would mean the first bookable slot would be at 2014-06-06 13:00 and the last one would be 2014-06-20.
Q: How do I configure customer identification?
A:
By default, the Orchestra Calendar will map the 'externalId' field on the Customer object to the 'cardNumber' field in the qp_central.customers table. This can be reconfigured in the System Settings -> Online Booking Settings by selecting a different Unique customer identifier field: [publicId, email, phone, identificationNumber, externalId]. When booking an Appointment through the public API, the calendar will try to identify the customer by this field by searching with that value on the qp_central.customers.cardNumber field. The 'cardNumber' can also be changed to one of the following under System Settings -> Orchestra Synchronization Settings: [cardNumber,customField1,customField2,customField3,customField4,customField5]. Please note that the calendar always writes the customer's generated publicId value into customField5 and the email address into customField4.
Q: What's the format of longitude and latitude on the Branch object, and what are they used for?
A:
Values are typically imported from Orchestra when the "Fetch" button is used. If entered manually, a double-precision decimal value is used such as 57.636902, 12.017655. They currently only serve an informational purpose in the Orchestra Calendar, but they could for example be used by an external system showing Branch locations on a map based on Branch data fetched from the Calendar Public API.
Q: What's the purpose of the Branch 'Custom Settings'?
A:
By default, the custom settings for a Branch isn't used by the Calendar, but an external system may use the Custom Settings to store some arbitrary data that doesn't fit any of the standard fields on the Branch object.
Q: Can I change the name of a Branch or Service after fetching it from Orchestra?
A:
Yes, as long as you keep the Orchestra ID the Service/Branch names can be changed.
Q: I have created an Appointment Profile according to all instructions, but no Services are selectable in the Calendar View or in Public API responses?
A:
Please make sure you actually mark the Services you want to serve on your Branch in the Appointment Profile by Ctrl+clicking on them in the multi-choice selection dialog.
Q: How do I select multiple Services in an Appointment Profile or multiple Resources for a Resource Group?
A:
Ctrl+click on each item or Shift-click to select a range of items in the multi-choice lists.