New year, new features: What’s next For BookedIN
We’re already a few weeks into 2012, but with Chinese New Year on the horizon I thought I could still get away with a New Year’s post. It’s also the Year of the Dragon, which epitomizes ambition and dominance, so it seemed like a good time to talk about the next round of features that are going to make BookedIN even better.
With our public booking feature launched and getting some fantastic feedback we naturally started thinking about what would come next. Fortunately, our users weren’t shy about telling us what they needed. Whether it was through support requests or on Twitter the message was the same; 3rd party calendar support and e-mail confirmations! Needless to say, we got right on them (and a few other bonus features).
E-mail confirmations will be going live before the end of January. They’ll give you the ability to to send a confirmation e-mail 2 – 5 days before any scheduled service. You client will be able to confirm the appointment booking directly from the e-mail and you’ll see a checkmark on the schedule once it’s confirmed.
You’ll also be able to personalize any e-mails getting sent to your customers and it’ll be easier to keep in touch once they’ve been sent out. Your business name will be displayed and it will come directly from your business email address, so all your clients have to do is hit “reply” to drop you a line.
January Bonus Feature: You’ll be able to add extra time to any appointment to account for cleanup, breaks, processing, etc.
Once February rolls around you’ll be able to synch BookedIN with 3rd party calendars; specifically iCal, Google Calendar and Outlook. This was, hands down, the most common request from our users so we’re really excited to see it nearing completion. After all, BookedIN is all about letting you book your way, so it only makes sense to support the tools you’re already using.
February Bonus Feature: We’re giving you the ability to re-order the services you display to your clients on the public booking page. It’s a little change, but it guarantees you’ll be able to put your most popular services when everybody can find them.
Of course, this is just the first round of updates coming to BookedIN this year, but we’ll pull back the curtain on the rest soon enough. Until then, I’ll be busy looking for a suitably epic dragon poster to put up in the lobby.
