October Newsletter: Happy Halloween

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October is coming to an end, which means some socially distanced spooky-times. However, there’s nothing uncanny about what we have in the October Newsletter.

Development Updates for October

Facebook and Instagram have required a lot of attention to rewriting native integration. We’re also giving a lot of time to our pursuit of ISO 270001 accreditation, which is a huge priority for us; security enhancements are a big part of that endeavour.

Updating Facebook & Instagram

With the release of our new API and the changes to integration parameters, Facebook has deprecated our old API. That meant we had to do a swift rewrite of our native integration with Facebook and Instagram to ensure that booking buttons, schedulers and Messenger chatbots continued to let clients book through your Facebook and Insta channels.

Enterprise Cluster Improvements

Since we released the new cluster enterprise scheduling solution, we have been upgrading and enhancing the functionality of the system. Greater functionality with individual features and access levels, as well as enterprise and cluster-specific enhancements

• We’ve made improvements to the clone function, which allows for the duplication of specific sub-systems. Cloning saves a lot of time. The updates to the clone function mean that only company settings, services, providers and other configured settings are cloned. The cloning process ignores clients’ information and booking histories to create a ‘clean’ duplicate.
• There is now Zapier integration for the enterprise solution. It’s possible to add a cluster login to the Zapier integration script. This enhancement allows for the system to acknowledge triggers only from specified clusters or even specific companies within a particular cluster.
• Cluster password reset. and other fixes and small enhancements

Security Enhancements

We’ve said it many times, but security is paramount to our clients and us, so we always have an eye on new measures, and security breach trends that might affect our system. It pays to keep up to date. We recently had a security audit to help us identify any weak points, which went well, and we have implemented several new measures to improve both our security and yours.

• With SSL officially being compromised across the board, the replacement TLS (transport layer security) has been implemented to protect the mail traffic to our mail servers. Many people are still calling it SSL because it has been around for so long, but TLS is the replacement.
• For the security of your system, we have created a new support level to allow for access to client information, reports, and booking data. The primary intent of this update is to limit easy access to any extracted client data. It’s incredibly important for restricting access to the system and data for new hires, and unauthorised persons.
• This month has also seen the continuation of company-wide security training and testing. Every member of our team, across all our offices, has undergone training and passed the test on data security measures. This is an annual occurrence and tailored to the security development that we have implemented.

ISO 27001 – Our Goal for the end of the year 

If you know what the ISO accreditation means you’ll know that ensuring we have a functional framework to ensure the tightest possible control of data integrity, accessibility and security is the key to having this little tag on our product. We’ve been working on this for a long time, and we’re aiming for completion by year-end. 

Coming Up Soon…

This is what’s coming soon. Some of these items are in their last round of testing, and others have just been started, but we are excited about them.

Payment Gateway Developments

There will be some new developments with the processing speed of payments through payment gateways and our PoS system. Alongside these developments, we also have some upgrades and improvements for the PoS interface and integration with the SimplyBook.me scheduling system to make it more intuitive for our users.

HIPAA & Google Authenticator – SMS is not enough

As a security enhancement to the HIPAA function, we will soon be removing the option to authenticate via SMS. Where patient data protection is paramount, SMS is falling out of favour as a secure method of confirming the authenticity of user access. By default, the system will use Google Authentication; however, confirmation by phone will still be possible, but only if the client has validated the phone number in advance. It is now possible to create up to ten one-time usage reserve codes with Google Authenticator, which clients can use as a reserve method of authentification.

Booking Waiting List

The last round of testing was looking good. Once you activate the waiting list feature, you can assign waiting list eligibility to any of your services or classes in their system with a checkbox. If an eligible service is fully booked, but another client wants to schedule a spot, they can finish the sign-up process, but it will flag the booking as “waiting list.” 

Once a client is on the waiting list, there are two options that you can choose to use

• Add the first awaiting client automatically to the newly available slot – and email them to let them know.
• All waiting clients receive an email to let them know of the opening – the first to confirm will have the free space.

Templates for emails

The Templates are nearing the end of development, with testing coming up this next month. Templates for a Newsletter mailing and a Promotional Offer will probably be the most frequently used options. However, there will still be a blank option to create a custom mail template if you have the HTML knowledge (or know someone who does).

That’s All For Now, Folks!

That’s all for our October Newsletter, but stay tuned in November for some exciting new developments, new features, and system tutorials.

If you didn’t see it, we’ve had a brief interview with Ingvar, the Founder of SimplyBook.me and our VP of sales. We also have a case study of Chill Barber in Austria, using our booking system to manage customer visits and offering a splendid experience to their clients.

We also have some super-secret new features coming up. Let’s say that you should keep your eyes peeled for the fabulous new features with the mobile app.