Happy New Year (and a few new features)!

Just a quick note to say Happy New Year to all of our great clients! Thank you very much for using our software and supporting our business. We have had a great year in 2012, started working with a lot of new users, and are looking forward to a strong 2013. As always, we continue to grow thanks to your referrals and ideas. Many of our best features were thought of by users. Just skimming through the blog and these internal messages, shows how much changed in 2012. And we have lots more ideas for 2013.

Again, thank you for being a ReservationKey client, and have a great 2013!

John


(on the job, at a client meeting in Mexico)


And now, the new features list...

We've added a new report, this one called, Custom Fields Report. It is currently the third one from the bottom of the list of reports. It is a great way to create a list of reservations based on answers to custom fields. First, select the custom field, then select the answer (if a dropdown type) or enter your search criteria.



Over in the Gift Certificates section, we've added the ability to edit existing certificates. Also, when editing, there is now an option to send (or resend) the confirmation message to the buyer.

Quicker Access to Calendar

Now there is another way to directly select which month to jump to on the internal availability calendar. This is useful when you need to go to a month different from the last viewed month, without having to load the calendar first (such as when you are on the Reservation Details screen and need to jump to a different month on the calendar).

Just put your mouse over the [T] link and a menu of months will appear. Previously the [T] was to take you to "Today" only. Clicking the [T] still does that, but now you can also select a month to jump to.

New Features in Email Templates

We've added two new features:
1. Link email templates to specific rooms/units.
2. Set a default From email address.

Most of the additional settings in the templates section have been moved to an expandable Advanced Options section.

Linking Email Templates To Specific Rooms/Units

With this feature, it is possible to set which templates should appear in the Correspondence button list (in the Reservation Details screen). If a template is linked to specific rooms/units, then the template will only show up in the list if the linked rooms/units are part of the reservation. This feature most likely will primarily be used by our property manager users since they often have emails that are specific to the unit (such as a vacation rental) being reserved. Now, instead of having to sort through a list that contains many emails not related to the reservation, the email list only shows the emails pertaining to rooms/units contained in the reservation.



If NO units are selected, then the template is treated as generic and will always show in the Correspondence template selection dropdown field.

Default From Email

When opening the Correspondence window, it is now possible to set what the From field should default to. This is in addition to the To, CC, and BCC fields which were previously user configurable.



We plan to also expand this feature to the Email Schedules, where we will have an option to set a From email address for all of the different triggering events.

New Option For Disabling Online Bookings

Maybe this is the time of year that you want to turn off your online booking page and take a break for a few days. Some innkeepers want to be able to take reservations, but only via phone calls so that they can properly instruct potential guests. Or maybe you have a special message you want to show the guest, and as long as they have read the message, they can continue and make an online booking.

To turn your page off and display a message, go to Website Tab, Reservation Pages, edit, and scroll down to the part for Disable Online Bookings. There, set the start and end dates for the period you want your page to show your offline message. Select a message from one of your templates. If you haven't already created a message for this purpose, be sure to do so in the Website Messages section.

The new features here, are the checkboxes (highlighted in the screenshot below) that allow you to include a Continue button below your message. And also, now a checkbox to hide the Waiting List form in case you don't want to use that form for these disabled periods.



Here is an example, of how one user is using this feature, with the Continue button enabled. The text of the button can be modified using our Custom Text feature.



Individual rooms can also be blocked with the Set As Unavailable on the Rooms/Units page. We have short tutorial videos on how to block rooms and how to un-block rooms.