Booking features

Booking features simplify associating an object with diary to create a calendar event. They also replace “holidays” functionality previously provided in “locales”.

Note: It is not mandatory to use the “booking widget” to create bookings. You can also use a “form widget” with the properties and attributes from the “booking object” (set as the base object) along with the properties and attributes from the resource and, if using, “service objects”. More information about these objects are found under the Diaries section of this document.

Diaries
Diaries have been introduced to the “Processes & Timing” menu in MATS. This option lets you define rules and relationships: where who or what can be booked (the resource), what the resource will deliver (the service), where the booking will be saved (the booking object type) and when they can be booked (their availability).

Booking resources 
A booking resource is the thing or person that can be booked. Such as a room for a meeting, or pool car, or a person providing a service. A booking resource object is a mandatory requirement and requires a one-to-many relationship with the booking object. The resource object can use any object type.

Booking services 
Booking services represent an activity that the resources would deliver. For example, in the case of a beauty salon a service could be a manicure, pedicure, facial, massage, etc. These are associated to the resources that can perform the service. If the booking feature doesn’t have services, however, a service object is not necessary for the booking feature process.

A service object can use any object type and must have a one-to-many relationship with the booking object and a many-to-many relationship with the resources object.

Booking availability 
Once the resource and service objects are configured, timeslots and availability need to be set. Although a working day is set in the calendar page, here you can refine the actual available timeslots for bookings to take place, e.g. booking availability may only be available between certain hours in the morning and then a few hours in the afternoon, how long a booking slot is, e.g. 30 minute slots, and how many actual bookings can be made per booking slot, e.g. if you have only meeting rooms as the resources and no services, you can only have 1 booking per slot for each meeting room. However, if you have 2 or more people who can each do the same service type, then this would mean there is more than 1 booking per slot.

Timeout 
Additional settings allow you to include a timeout period for a reservation. For example, a reservation timeout might be required for booking pool cars. The booker goes to the booking site to book a pool car, if they do not complete the booking within the allotted time, then the reservation will timeout.

Platform Version 2023.3+