Arctic Reservations

Development Blog: January 2006

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

 
by Nathan Perkins

Coming Soon: Inquiries Update

At the end of this week, a big new update will be released, revamping the inquiry system. In the update, inquiries will be expanded to have many more fields (specific trips, follow-up dates, group size, etc). The idea of this update is to make the inquiry data much more in depth and be able to track all customer interactions.

As part of the update, the create inquiry and the create reservation will be combined. Specifically, the section where you select the customer and the trip. This way, you can carry on a conversation with the customer and begin filling in certain details and discussing trips before committing the customer to either just an inquiry or a full blown reservation.

Note: There may be intermittent outages Friday as the updates are installed.

January 31, 2006 10:21PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Zachary Collier

More Minor Changes

We sent out a mailing last week and are getting back the postcards with changes of address, so I've been using Arctic quite a bit to make changes to customer records. Here are a couple of suggestions based on my recent use.

1. Make the [customer mode] text either go away or be selected when you click in that box.
2. Allow the symbol & in the first name field. We have several clients that we send to "Bob & Mary"
3. The delete button for "hanging up" on a customer is scary. Even the words "hang up" would be better.

Labels:

January 31, 2006 12:07PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Some Layout Changes

Customer mode changes everything. Now the system is much simpler and we should think about changing the navigation and some other minor things.

1. The words "home page" don't need to be on the home page anymore. In fact, many of the titles can be eliminated.
2. Some of the helpful notes are starting to get repetitive. Maybe take those off, or create a "learning mode" that can be turned on or off that has the helpful notes.
3. I'm going to claim that we don't need the "create customer" area anymore. Because new customers should go through the "customer mode" so that we always check to see if a customer is already in our database. The "create caller" page should also have the "add to e-news" and "mailing list checkboxes. Also on this page, the default for email is "cemail" and it should be blank.

That's all for now. Thanks for all the hard work, Nathan.

Labels:

January 28, 2006 10:26AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Nathan Perkins

Customer Mode (formerly caller mode)

The customer mode upgrade, replacing caller mode, has been made. This change builds the feature directly into the design (so it takes up less space), speeds the process up and removes the button from the home page (you can no longer disable the feature). In addition, extra options like the ability to see reservations and user commands can easily be accessed from a popup box.

To test the latest version, login to Arctic Reservations and use the customer mode box on the top of any page.

Labels:

January 26, 2006 4:12PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

A few more thing after talking to Pete

I talked to Pete for a while and there are two things we can do to make the system more efficient.

1. If the name in caller mode is an exact match then go right to the customer record.
2. If it's not an exact match, then go to the select customer page. Once you select a customer, then go to the customer record. Since the options for creating reservations, inquiries, etc are already on this page they don't need to be in the caller mode box.

I spoke to Pete about the layout and we thought that the quick search should stay and that the "caller mode" or whatever we call it should be a permanent part of the system (i.e. always there) as a descent sized box underneath the "currently logged in as:"

January 24, 2006 10:51AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Some Feedback on Caller Mode

I need to say that Caller mode is awesome. I've been wanting something like this, but haven't found the energy to verbalize. I think I have Pete to thank for verbalizing it and Nathan for implementing it. I've used it quite extensively over the past few days and here is my feedback.

1. It's awesome. (I think I might have already said that)
2. The button on the home page does stand out quite a bit and being in caller mode can get a little annoying after a while.
3. I now use caller mode for all new reservations and all new inquires, whether I'm on the phone or not. Maybe it should be "customer mode." But we should always be in customer mode.
3. I see the "customer mode" or "customer search" going in the top bar of the system next to (or replacing) quick search. Before caller mode I did everything through quick search. Now I'll be doing everything through "caller mode."
4. One of the best things about "caller mode" is that you stay logged into that customer until you "end call." I would really like to keep this. The "end call" has been confusing to everyone that I show. Maybe if we replace "caller mode" with "customer mode", then "end call" could be replaced with "log out of customer " or something like that.
5. When you edit customer in caller mode, some of the options are missing. The ones that I'd like to add are the "join e-news" and "mailing list" options as we use these quite often when dealing with customers.

Pete...This was your concept so I'd love to hear some feedback.

January 24, 2006 9:05AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Overview Report

A new overview report has been added, although it has a lot of room for improvement. The overview report is designed to give general, helpful information for a given date range (most likely, the current season). It includes such information as number of reservations, guests and user days. In addition, these numbers are broken down for trips. The report can be run for any date range and is easily accessed from the reports section on the left menu.

The room for improvement is really based on feedback. Although only a small amount of information is shown now, more fields can be added (already in progress: total sales and total payments). I would love to hear from customers about what other numbers would be helpful to include in the overview report.

Labels:

January 23, 2006 7:48AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Caller Mode Released

As seen by Zach's last excited post, caller mode has been added to Arctic Reservations. This allows you to find a customer when they call, searching for sound alike names (spelling shouldn't be an issue). Then, you can either create the customer in the database, or select an existing one. Once a customer has been selected, their name and key links will appear on the top of all pages. This allows you to keep a caller's information at your fingertips as you navigate around Arctic Reservations. If you go to the create inquiry or create reservation page, the customer will be selected by default as well.

To test out caller mode, just click the phone on the home page to enable it. The button will change eventually, but I was feeling uncreative when I added that.

Labels:

January 21, 2006 11:59AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Zachary Collier

Caller Mode....WOW!

I've been impressed by new features before, but the new "caller mode" blows me away. I can't wait to be in the office monday morning and take some calls. Pete: thanks for the great idea. Nathan: thanks for going above and beyond again.

My only suggestion would be to do something better with that button. I have no idea what, but it seems sort of odd on that front page.

Or are you planning more buttons like that? Maybe Create a new inquiry button like that that we can use to see if the customer is in the system before adding them as an inquiry. Those two buttons should remove the entire "create" navigation from the left as we would always use the buttons instead of the navigation. The "create invoice" can go under the navigation as admin since we rarely use it and it should be restricted to superusers anyway.

January 21, 2006 1:41AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Reservation Workflow Topics

The reservation update seems to be working fine. We've entered quite a few reservations and inquiries today and haven't run in to any problems. I can't wait to see that new search feature either...We've talked about something like that.

I have a couple of changes for you in terms of reservation workflow.
1. When create a reservation, we never know the bag, pad, tent, loding info. Could you take the reservation guest editor out of the workflow for new reservations? We'll only use it after someone has made a reservation and sent us the information by fax or mail. Sometime in the future, we'd like to have them enter that stuff through our web page on their own.

2. When someone makes a reservation they are almost always a member of the trip. Could you have the guest list automatically populate with the guest that made the reservation. It would be really cool if the trip was automatically populated with their whole family because in many cases the same family come year after year. We can always change the guest list if it's not the family.

When both of these are in place, once we enter the number of people per pricing plan, the next page would be the reservation general details page with at least the person making the reservation listed as a customer.

January 16, 2006 3:16PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Nathan Perkins

Yet Another Search Feature...

Soon to be added is yet another search feature, for finding customers who call to place reservations. The new search feature is able to look for names that sound similar in case of poor spelling, and then ranks all results based on the likeliness that they are the caller. This feature will be released shortly under the larger caller feature, that allows you to track customer phone calls and easily access their customer information. Click the thumbnail to see sample results pulled up by the search feature.

Caller Search Feature

Labels:

January 15, 2006 1:59PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Reservation Pricing Update

A big, important reservation pricing update was just rolled out. Now it allows you to change trip pricing information from the invoice, as well as from the reservation edit guests page. In addition, you may now further customize pricing information, offering custom names and prices. The pricing information for trips and launches simply serves as an easy to select guide now, but you are free to do any pricing level you want.

In addition, a few other problems that appeared with the edit guests page (which required that you save it twice to update the invoice) should be fixed now. Please double check all invoices to make sure they match the information you entered, just for the next few days, to make sure the update works correctly.

Labels:

January 12, 2006 5:20PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Zachary Collier

Reservation Glitch

I ran into a reservation glitch today.

Dick created a Middle Fork trip today. It's an early season discounted trip for $1095/person whether it's an adult or a youth. He forgot to put this in so he booked the people at full price. So I went in and changed the launch price to $1095. The price on the invoice didn't adjust. So I went to the reservation guest editor and noticed there that the price is $1095 (even though the invoice says something else). It's reservation R109.

January 11, 2006 6:41PM • permalink • 1 comment