June Newsletter – Hello World! Opening Borders and Business Doors

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After months of isolation, countries across the world are opening their borders, and more notably, businesses may open their doors again. Hopefully, yours is one of them. Let’s see what June has had to offer.

New in June

June, while getting rather hot in places, has also been a hotbed of project completions for us and the SimplyBook.me platform.

Client Fields

If you have ever wished that you could monitor your clients via their preferences and keep specific details saved against their names, the Client Fields feature is a great new tool for you. Client Fields only works with the Client login feature, but you can’t save data against a client if they don’t have a login. 

In much the same way as you would collect data pertinent to a single booking with the Intake Forms feature, you can do the same at first sign up with details that could be important to your client. Request information about allergies, any medical or social accommodations required, and so forth and have the data stored against the client detail, rather than a single booking. You can read more about the Client Fields release here.

MS Teams

We have been looking forward to this release, and now we have it. Another video calling integration with the SimplyBook.me scheduling platform. 

Some advantages that MS Teams has over our existing integration with Gruveo is that a) it’s HIPPA compliant for video medical consultations over the internet and b) it connects with the system vis MS Azure (released last month). If you want more details, see the release article here.

SMS Gateway Feature Enhancements

As we enhance our services to accommodate businesses around the world, we’ve been working to integrate regionally specific SMS gateway partners. Last month we welcomed Cyta (Cyprus), and this month HISMS and SMS for Saudi Arabia is all set. 

Second, we have updated the Trigger API and made it more flexible, which allows users to use custom SMS gateways for notifications with the added functionality of being able to mark which actions trigger messages.

Invoicing for Taiwan

Taiwanese businesses are legally required to report their purchase data into a state register with specific information. The payments system has an API which we have utilised to ensure that all invoice docs created from the SimplyBook.me platform comply with the state register and payment system.

Login with SMS

Our newest addition to the Google Authenticator plugin is the facility to login with SMS. Our Help Centre has details about other methods of using the Google Authenticator feature. SMS login allows the system to send you a message with the codes to authenticate your login. 

Fresh Look for the Help Centre

If you checked out the help centre article for the SMS Login, you might have noticed the fresh look the help centre is sporting. For improved navigation and ease of use, you can find help with almost every aspect of your SimplyBook.me platform.

Hot for July

We’ve got some scorching extra items coming in the next month, so keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming launches and upgrades to our fabulously flexible folio.

Booking waiting list

This waiting list is a significant development for us, and we know many of our clients who offer multiple bookings, and groups can’t wait for it to happen.

If you have super-popular services, classes or events that ALWAYS get booked up as soon as you post them, the chances are that other people are waiting desperately to see if a space becomes free. No one has the time to sit refreshing the screen to see if a spot opens up due to cancellation. The ideal solution is to have a waiting list for those clients who need that spot in your schedule.

You’ll have two options for how you can arrange your waiting list.

1. Automatically add the first names on the waiting list to the booking, as soon as spaces become available.
2. Collect a list of names on the waiting list, and when a spot becomes available email those names. The first person to respond and confirm will get the free space.

This feature is a massive task, and we have many of our developers working to bring it to life. It will be a fabulous addition to many of our clients with hectic and popular schedules.

 Company Clusters (for Enterprise)

Company Clusters will be a new admin interface, specifically for enterprise clients. The company cluster administrator will be able to add many companies by merely copying the data. For simplicity, this addition will enable clients to pay the cluster and subscription fees, for all accounts, in one click. The Cluster feature will allow top-level admin to have a full overview of companies, names and logins, their payments, and other essential admin information. 

This feature will be linked directly to the Directory Widget (that’s already live) and users will receive the directory solution specific to the cluster name.

Payfort for Enterprise

In response to requests from some of our enterprise clients, we will soon have integration allowing Payfort to be used with the SimplyBook.me system

That’s All for Now, Folks

We will keep you up to date with fresh ideas, tips and business development methods as July progresses, and we’ll get some videos coming your way for tutorials and featured highlights. 

You know where you can find us, here on our blog

See you next month with more updates and news.