ResEngine

We get a lot of questions about how to take reservations online, and here’s our first of many public reservation options. By default, access to all of your calendars is set to “private”, meaning only you and your staff can manage them. Now you can edit any calendar to set it’s access to “public requests” so that anyone can submit a reservation request.

The way it works is pretty simple… once you set a calendar to “public requests” a web address will be assigned to that calendar which is displayed any time you are using that calendar, usually below it.

You can use this web address in e-mails, ads or on your own website to bring users to a form that collects their details, shows them what’s available for the timeframe requested, and allows them to make a reservation request.

Both parties then get an e-mail with the request details and the reservation is automatically added to your ResEngine calendar with the status of “Requested”. All you have to do is switch the reservation status to “Reserved” or “Confirmed” and use the contact information provided to deliver any reservation or payment details.

This is the most simple, flexible way of managing online reservation requests, and it allows you to follow in any way you choose. Since you enable reservation requests on a calendar by calendar basis, you can even choose exactly what portion of your inventory to make available in this way.

We’ve expanded the traditional ResEngine “activity log” to be as versatile as the new calendar views. You can now view the Activity List using the same range slider, and easily switch back and forth between calendar and list views by using the two small icons to the left of the range slider.

Calendars are great for checking availability, but list views are better when “working the desk”… when you have to quickly look up reservations as people arrive. The list views offer the same access to guest and reservation details.

ResEngine calendars are now more powerful than ever, and it’s easier to manage them while working. Calendars now have a revamped edit screen with new features for adding and removing resources, setting display preferences through Profiles (more info here) and setting options for taking reservation requests from the public (more info here).

And working with calendars has been pulled out of the “My Settings” section and placed directly in the Calendars sub-menu for easy access.

All ResEngine accounts now have a Profile. When creating a new account you choose your profile during sign-up. Existing accounts can always change their profile by visiting the “My Settings” section.

Your account profile sets a number of display settings and defaults for your ResEngine account. For instance, if you use the “Vacation Rental” profile, your calendars default to 30 day views and various screens use labels for working with “guests” and reserving “nights”. If you switch to the “Salon” profile, your calendars default to the 1 day view where you work with “customers” and make “appointments”.

But what if you rent rooms and jet skis? Have no fear, you can also set up Calendar Profiles that do the same thing, but for a specific calendar. By default, all of your calendars will use your Account Profile to decide how they look and work. But you can choose a Calendar Profile on the Calendar Edit screen that will override the account settings.

We’ve launched this feature with a dozen or so profiles and will be adding more over time. Here’s the current list, if you have an idea for a new one, send it to us at support@resengine.com

Current ResEngine Profiles:

• Boat Rentals
• Campground
• Court Reservations
• Equipment Rentals
• Field Reservations
• Hostel
• Hotel
• Marina
• Meeting Rooms
• Plane Rentals
• Salon
• Spa
• Vacation Rentals

A new slider appears above calendars that can be dragged back and forth to adjust the range of dates shown. The traditional ResEngine 7 day view is perfect for managing lots of nightly reservations. The new 30 day view is great for weekly reservations, or to just look further ahead when managing nightly reservations. You can switch quickly back and forth between these two views — they work great together!

The new 1 day view is great for those of you booking hourly or partial day reservations. For instance, say you book rooms nightly but you also rent bicycles on an hourly basis. If you set up a ResEngine calendar for each, you can set the rooms calendar to display either the 7 day or 30 day view, then set the bicycle calendar to display using the 1 day view.

You can now edit guest details directly on the Reservation Detail screen. Just click on any reservation on the calendar and the edit window will open. Below the guest name is a link called “Show Guest Details”. Clicking this link will expand the form to include the guest details along side the reservation details.

Not a fancy change, but it’s a nice time saver since you no longer have to pop over into the Guests Section to edit their phone numbers and such.

With the latest ResEngine update you can now keep track of all your cancelled reservations instead of just deleting them. Here’s how it works. When viewing the Reservation Details screen, there’s an Edit button along with a “Cancel Reservation” link. Clicking cancel sets the status of the reservation to “Cancelled” and removes it from all your calendars and list views.

So it works like the old “Delete Reservation” function, but now you can visit the Guests section and click “Cancelled” in the sub-menu and see a list of guests who have cancelled reservations, and you can even pull those reservations back up, either to review or to set the status back to “Reserved” or “Confirmed” to place the reservation back on your calendars.

More new stuff hits ResEngine today:

Dormitory Reservation Support

We call it dorm reservations, but it’s probably more properly referred
to as the ability to book multiple reservations into a single
resource. When setting up or editing a resource, just click “Allow
Multiple Reservations” if you’d like to allow multiple overlapping
bookings. ResEngine will then manage to your total occupancy,
regardless of who’s in there already. This is a great feature for
customers with overflow “dormitory” space that is reserved by bed
instead of by room.

Better Support for Internet Explorer

Some testers mocked us, but we wanted to make ResEngine available to
our friends who still use Internet Explorer. Thanks to Huey for his
hard work on this, especially when I went in and undid his changes so
he’d have to do them again. So IE7 and IE8 are supported feature for
feature, apart from a few animations, rounded corners and a few other
bits of polish.

A new ResEngine screencast has been posted. It’s about six minutes long and it’s a great overview of the application. You can view it at the ResEngine site here. I’ve also embedded it here. Once you click play, you will probably want to expand it to fullscreen to see the text better (the fullscreen toggle is near the bottom right of the player, it looks like a rectangular video screen).

Major User Interface Upgrade

Kudos to Hannah and Liz for some major user interface design work.
They created lots of accounts selling everything from Palapas to Jet
Skis (I SELL BOATS!) and came up with a ton of changes, upgrades and
polish that really help make ResEngine faster and easier to use. And
gosh it’s getting right pretty too!

Multiple Calendars

Admins can now set up multiple calendars from the settings menu and
all users can move resources on to and off of each calendar. This
makes the “main page” in ResEngine 3 times better (if you set up three
calendars!) because you can flip back and forth quickly to view
different groups of resources. What will people do with multiple
calendars? Perhaps show “King Beds” and “Twin Beds”, or show “Ocean
Views” and “Pool Views”, or use it to separate different parts of
their business with “Hotel Rooms”, “Villas”, “Dorms” and “Vans”.

Support for Today

Note to self: always include a “Today” button in the Time Machine. I
was so busy trying to fool the calendar by typing “2nd Friday in
August” that I forgot that most of the time when the phone rings you
want to zip back to today. So ta-da… a handy “Today Button”. Don’t
worry, if you need to zip to the 2nd Friday in August, that still
works to.

Streamlined Sign Up Without a Credit Card

We’ve updated the sign up process to allow for fast and easy account
creation, so we can encourage everyone to sign up and check things
out, even if they’re not the “dude with the card.” Create an account,
set things up and then show your boss how he can’t live without it!

Account Reset / Forgot Password

Overlooked for too long, ResEngine will now e-mail you a link to reset
your password if you forget it. So everyone pick better passwords, no
need to remember them now!

Tweaks, Fixes, Spit & Polish

Too many little things to mention this time, including some fine
tuning on the event calendar, enhancements to the pop-up edit windows,
and some plain ol’ cleaning up!