Development Blog: December 2005

Read the thoughts and ideas of the developers and contibuters to Arctic Reservations, an online reservation management tool.

 
by Nathan Perkins

New Year Post

Just wanted to make a post in celebration of the new year. I am very happy with the progress of Arctic Reservations to date, having created some features that I am very proud of. The interface especially, I think, makes the software smooth and easy to use.

But of course, it is also time to look at what features are soon to come. That includes online reservations, the ability to manage credit card payments and the long awaited integration with the photo site. These features should start appear in the next couple of months.

Happy new year and looking forward to continuing to work with all of our clients! - Nathan

December 31, 2005 9:16AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Permissions

User permissions have now been added to Arctic Reservations, a much requested feature. All existing users will retain full access. But now there are three (well, kind of four) different levels of permissions that can be used:

• Read Only - Users with this permission cannot change any information in the system, only view customers and existing reservations.
• User - A typical user has full control over reservations and customer details, but cannot change settings in the administration menu (including payment plans, inquiry letters, etc).
• Super User - This user has access to the full set of menus, and can change administrative functions. The one thing this user cannot do is change other users permissions and a few other key little controls.
• Administrator - The administrator is the very first user who is setup on Arctic Reservations and can control all settings, even other users' permissions.

Due to the size of this update, the ability to change user permission levels may take anywhere from 1-2 hours to one day to appear on your account.

Some clients have asked about creating read only accounts specific to one trip. This is not really feasible due to the amount of flexibility that exists when creating and managing trips/rivers. For this feature to be implemented, you would have to manually add users to all new trips. At this point I am going to discourage having such a feature, but if demand persists, I will add it eventually.

Labels: features

December 29, 2005 9:41AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

A bunch of little things (and a couple of big ones)

Here is a list of small design things that would be nice to fix. I know some of these are tiny, but I thought I'd mention them.

1. Look at ECHO's home page. The person I booked today and took payment from isn't listed under "next launch."
2. We talked about giving specific types of logins to different people. I'd like to create a manager login at the least that has access to trip information, but can not edit anything. It would be really cool if we could limit them to specific trip(s). For example, I'd like it if our Rogue manager could see all of the guide schools and the Rogue trips and that's all. Am I dreaming here? I'd also like to create a login type where there are no access to the admin functions.
3. Some outfitters have government fees that are a percent of trip cost. Could we change "items" to include "percent of trip" and "percent of total?"
4. Could we add a discount type that takes a percent off of adult (or default) prices only.
5. I've noticed when sending an email that all attachments are shown at the bottom. Before only the attachments that went with that trip were shown. Did something change?
6. This might be a big one (and even attached to the triggers part). We would really like to be able to edit the default email that is sent with the invoices. We'd also like to change the reply-to.
7. When you create a new reservation, the word "trip" is used instead of "launch" on that page.
8. We'd like to edit some of the information shown on the invoice and even be able to "check" off some of the things on the invoice page so that they aren't shown on the invoice. For example, on the Tuolumne we never need flight information, so it would be nice to not show that.
9. On the invoices, Government use fees are always shown last. Could we make it so that payments (or things done chronologically) are shown last?
10. Could we make the ECHO logo larger on the invoice?
11. On the trip roster, if someone wants 50 paddle boat and 50% inflatable kayak, there is no zero shown for oar boat. So it shows "-50-50" instead of "0-50-50."

December 28, 2005 5:14PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Nathan Perkins

Upcoming Improvements

After reading a lot of the posts and activity from last week, here is a list of upcoming changes that I perceived should be made. Keep your eyes open for the changes to be made later this week.

1. Allow custom colors for how trips appear on the calendar. In addition, include trip name and other basic details inside the trip line, so that you don't have to put your mouse over the trip to view such information.

2. Make it so that there can be inquiries specific to a trip. That will allow more targeted marketing and better follow up calls. (Also, a much more complex inquiry overhaul is needed to track which inquiries have been followed-up on and leave other general notes.)

3. Differentiate between soft and hard reservations (depending on receiving a reservation deposit, usually). This will be defined in the payment plan part of trips.

4. Offer a little swatch of color at the beginning of lines on the calendar, which will define how full the trip is, making it easier to sell the trips with low numbwers. In addition, there will be a way to flag trips with a custom color, which can aid general marketing practices by directing new reservations.

5. Possibly add tools to the calendar to flag or add notes to specific dates. This could later be expanded to provided an event/calendar/todo system, which would help offices organize in general (way down the road for this feature).

I would love feedback on these, if you think I missed anything or need any other features.

December 26, 2005 2:05PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Inquiries, Hard Reservations, and Soft Reservations

Pete and I just had a long talk about the difference between a company that mainly runs one day trips vs one that runs mostly multi-day. There are several differences about when money is taken and what it means to take a reservation versus an inquiry. Then there is a soft reservation versus a hard reservation. I think that "payment plans" deal with most of this and that we'll need to work on the vocaubulary a little.

A soft reservation for ECHO (multi-day) would mean that someone is interested in a trip and needs a few days (by definition..10 days..which we've defined in payment plans) to make their deposit. A hard reservation means that we have a deposit. When someone calls us, this information is vital to our sales because we can quickly say yes, no, or maybe. The ability to say "Maybe. I'll call you back in the morning" instead of "Sorry..We're full" is huge.

A soft reservation for a one day company(Pete comment if I'm wrong here) would mean that spaces for a trip will be held for a variable amount of days until that person can make a decision. Pete would like to be reminded somehow(probably in the home page) when this amount of time is about to expire. Also many people in this stage don't have an exact date in mind, but more like a range. I think what he wants is to be able to make a "soft reservation" (or mayber there is a better word) for a person without specifying the date. Or maybe specify the date, but easily switch it.

One thing that you should know when working on this is that with ECHO we know our trip dates for this summer and we can only start on specific dates. Pete can start a trip on any of his rivers on pretty much any date that he wants to. He may have a group call tonight that wants to put a trip together for the weekend. And he'll make it happen. We do this about 0.001% of the time if at all.

December 22, 2005 5:18PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Simply Incredible

That last update was incredible. The two big improvements that I saw were 1) the ability to choose a trip from the calendar(it would be even better if color coded by trip type), and 2)The way people are booked into trips. I took a real-time reservation yesterday where I entered the information into the system as I was talking on the phone. We always write inormation down and enter it in later. Thanks.

I have one small thing for you when you have a chance. I was entering trip information in the system for a guest today from their registration form. So I went to the person's record and updated everything, an then pressed "update customer." The next meny gave me a few choices. The most helpful option (which isn't there) would be to update the customer's information that pertains to the trip they've booked. So maybe add "edit reservation" if that customer has one.

December 21, 2005 8:55AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Nathan Perkins

Reservation Process Updated

A lot of the interface surrounding reservation creation and guest list management has been updated. Updates include the ability to edit all guests on one page. Another important change is the new ability to update a specific guest settings for all guests going on a reservation. Since usually transportation information and comfort needs are the same for a group, you now only have to fill the information in once. Finally, reservations now have a more complex status listing, grouping reservations by "finished", "invoiced" and "paid". In addition, several smaller changes have been made.

Labels: features

December 20, 2005 4:42PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Launch Calendar Released

The calendar feature launched today, offering a much more visual way of browsing upcoming launches. In addition, the calendar offers easy acceess to trip information by simply holding your mouse over a trip shown in the calendar. This feature will soon replace the trip selection tool for new reservations.

In response to Zach's recent post, I think it is a superb idea. The ability to control customer reminders and customer contact is a great way to save office time. In addition, you mentioned disabling alerts for some invoice; my thought was you should be able to disable alerts for some customers (ie, your best customers, who you don't want to bother). Before I get to that though, the whole reservation editing/booking system needs an interface overhaul so that it is easier to use. That is my first priority.

Labels: features

December 16, 2005 2:11PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Email Triggers

I hope you're ready to start another project soon. I've been thinking quite a bit about "email triggers." The idea here would be that we have emails sent some number of days after (or before) inquiries, reservations, deposit, or trips. I see a system much like the one set up for creating payment plans where we can manage the emails sent.

This is what I'm thinking. When someone makes an inquiry, the system would send a follow up email some number of days after. Then when they make a reservation, the system would send them an email the day before their deposit is due (as a reminder..and this email would eventually link to a way to pay). Then they would get an email a few days before final payment is due (if they haven't paid it). Then maybe a pre-trip email and definitely a post trip email that would invite them to the photo site and/or ask them to fill out an online evaluation.

I think that the "triggers" would be different for each trip type so we'd set them up in the trip type definition. We should also set it up so that we have to check a box on the invoice to send these emails as we don't want to "harass" some of our guests.

And, finally, we'd like to be able to customize these emails (subject and body) by river as well. It would be really cool if we could upload a text and html version of the email and send them as Multipart/Alternative.

December 16, 2005 11:43AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Preview: Calendar View

When talking with one of our newest customers, he was mentioning the need to be able to view all launches from a more global perspective (ie, a calendar). It occured to me that Arctic Reservations had no such functionality, so I began designing the launch calendar, which helps visualize upcoming launches, their duration and additional details.

Although not done, a preview of this new functionality can be seen below. The feature should launch by this weekend, and hopefully by Friday afternoon. Yet to be done is creating a popup that appears when you hold the mouse over a trip, showing trip details. Eventually, this calendar format will replace the current list of trips on the new reservation page, as it offers a more compact and efficient way to view more information.

December 15, 2005 10:48PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Unpaid Invoices

Here's a little thing. Today I gave a 2 free spots to 2 musicians that we comp on a trip. The system did a couple little things that it would be nice to fix.

1. It listed on the invoice that $0 deposit ($100/person) and $0 is due. Can we have it list nothing at all when the trip price is free (this isn't a big deal if it's hard to do).
2. The thing that we need to fix is that this invoice is now on top of the "unpaid invoices." I think the system believes that they owe money still.

December 15, 2005 12:34PM • permalink • 7 comments

 
by Zachary Collier

Works Great

Thanks, that works great. This drops about 200 names from our current mailing and saves $50.

I was going through some of the name and fixing mistakes or mispellings and noticed that Arctic won't let company names include "&" or other symbols. Could you allow that?

That reminds me of international customers as we have a handful of them. There isn't a place for country on the customer record and we decided that we didn't want to clutter up the customer information form with a "country" field as this is a very small percent of our customers. And we would never direct mail overseas. So what we've been doing is entering their city, state, and country into the "city" field so that we have the information. That leaves the zip code blank so we don't add them to any mailng accidentaly. Does this seem like a clean solution?

December 15, 2005 9:10AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Nathan Perkins

Customer Search

Zach's comment about needing a way to eliminate customers who have had recent activity is a very good point. For this reason, the customer search now has fields for "most recent inquiry" and "most recent reservation". Using these, you can eliminate customers who have had active communication with you from your mailing list.

Implementing these involved expanding the search function in an interesting way. In order to test people's most recent reservations and inquiries, you must actually go through each customer row and look up such data. For this reason, now searches that have eitehr "most recent inquiry" and "most recent reservation" will take longer (14 seconds as opposed to 0.1 seconds for about 7,000 customers). Although this still isn't too long, it is important to be aware of why some searches might take a lot longer.

Eventually, similarly complex fields will be added which extend the running time of searches as well.

Labels: features

December 15, 2005 6:46AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Zachary Collier

Mailing List Addition

I'm finalizing a mailing list (customer search) right now for a mailing that we're doing in January.

Is it possible to add functionality to the customer search that would remove everyone from a search that has booked (or even inquired about) a trip since a certain date? My goal here is to not send brochures to customers that have booked or inquired since last summer.

December 14, 2005 2:46PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Welcome

Welcome to the new blog, where you will be able to track the development of Arctic Reservations. Arctic Reservations is a powerful, web based tool for reservation management, designed specifically for outdoor adventure companies. It's features range from invoicing, to marketing, to trip management.

Both Zachary Collier and I (Nathan Perkins) will be posting to this site, detailing our thoughts on Arctic Reservations and recent progress (new features). We welcome people to leave comments or questions.

To learn more about Arctic Reservations, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions page.

December 14, 2005 12:15PM • permalink • 0 comments