Arctic Reservations

Development Blog

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

 
by Nathan Perkins

Reservation Details Face Lift

The reservation details page has received a design revamp. It now puts more focus on the essential data and provides a handy side bar with access to common commands and other important details. The new design embodies many of the principles that were used when creating the launch page that was implemented a few months ago. This update should ease access to reservation details. Below you can see an image of the new page.

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June 11, 2007 4:42PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

E-mail Features

Arctic Reservations new template based e-mail system (which still is in beta) has been implemented throughout the site. The e-mail system allows for highly customizable HTML templates for sending e-mails... that means your e-mails can include graphics, custom attachments and many more features. In addition, the new e-mail system allows you to easily create the template in your favorite e-mail client and simply e-mail it to a special address. Then the site does the rest, turning your design into a template where content will later be added.

Now, in addition to marketing e-mails, you can now use the new e-mail features in other parts of the site, such as when sending an invoice. And all e-mails sent will be logged for fifteen days, allowing you to view previously sent messages and resend message if they did not go through. The sent e-mail log can be accessed from the "E-mail" button on the left menu.

Previously, the template based e-mail system was going to include tools for mass messaging customers. We are sorry to say that this feature has been removed. If the site was to include tools for mass messaging, we would run the risk of our e-mails being blocked by large internet service providers. We decided that it is more important that individual e-mails consistently get through (such as launch invoices and photo site invitations), rather then offering a mass message feature. Currently, customer information can already easily be exported and imported into third party e-mail messaging systems.

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June 9, 2007 3:05PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Mail Merge Support

When creating a new inquiry, Arctic Reservations has always included the ability to send out a hard copy letter (as well as an e-mail) to the customer. This offers a great way to create personalized content, which can be sent to the customer helping ensure a reservation down the road.

But the system has been limited, as the actual letters had to be designed in Arctic Reservations and were downloaded as static PDF documents for printing. This meant that there was little ability to customize the letter based on a specific question the customer asked.

Today, that has been fixed. In addition to PDF letters, you can create letters that work as a mail merge instead. When you run the end of day report, you will get mail merge files for those new letters. Then, just download the mail merge file and import it into your favorite word processor (e.g., Microsoft Word). This way, you can use the familiar interface of your favorite word processor to prepare your letter template and also make little changes before printing the individual letters.

To use the new feature, just go to the "Manage" menu and select "Letters". Then either edit an existing letter or create a new letter and just check the mail merge box at the top. In the next end of day report, you will be provided mail merge files (with the extension "csv"). By default, the files open in Excel, but you can also select them as a mail merge data source in Microsoft Word (or your preferred word processor).

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April 1, 2007 6:39PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Reservation Summary

A new report is now available for all Arctic Reservation customers. The reservation summary report allows you to prepare a table showing all launches over a certain period of time. For each launch, there are lists of the individual reservations with details on the primary guest, the number of guests and deposit information. This summary is easy to print (just clicking print in the browser should give you a high quality, nice looking printout). Whether printed or viewed on the computer, the list gives a nice overview of coming season and can offer a great quick reference to upcoming availability.

You can provide a variety of different search parameters when preparing the reservation summary, such as what trip types to include and what date range to include. In addition, the reservation summary can be customized for some outfitters to include pool dates in case a particular launch is overbooked and more permits need to be purchased.

And of course, the reservation summary has full support for sublaunches. Sublaunches and their reservations will be enumerated separately on the summary.

Want to try preparing a reservation summary? Current customers can access it through the "Reports" menu. If you are not yet a customer, sign up for a demo to try out the handy reservation summary.

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March 7, 2007 7:50AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

SSL Installation

I am happy to announce that Arctic Reservations is once again offering SSL encrypted access. This feature was offered a short while ago, but due to complications that prevented some users from accessing the software, we rolled back the SSL option until the larger problems could be fixed. After many tweaks and hours calling others for input, SSL is now available again!

All users can access their primary Arctic Reservations installation via a 256bit SSL certificate. This means that all data sent between your computer and our server is encrypted using todays leading encryption technique. Although the risk of such communications being intercepted is extremely low, it is becoming increasingly important to protect client data.

The need for security is especially important for an upcoming feature that I can only hint at now: "credit card processing." When handling client credit card information, it is vital to implement such leading encryption tools to prevent fraud and ensure the security of your customer's personal information. More details about credit card processing will be coming soon, as our first beta testing will begin shortly.

Note that SSL certificate installation required some big changes: we had to rewrite a core set of files and completely reconfigure the server (this is why it took so long to offer this feature). During the upgrade, all installations had to be moved to a new IP address. Although this should not adversely effect software performance, your computer may still try to access the old IP address for 24-48 hours. As a result, you will not be able to access your installation. If this happens to you, please call your support representative and he/she will provide instructions for clearing cached DNS information. During such a large overhaul, other problems may have arisen. If this is the case, please contact support right away... we will be standing by to make any needed corrections.

By default, all accounts allow users to select whether or not to use SSL certificates when they first access the website. Administrators can change settings to either always require an SSL access or never allow SSL access. I strongly encourage administrators to always require SSL certificates.

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March 6, 2007 9:34PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

New Overview Histograms

The overview report has been expanded to include two new options. These new options allow you to view histograms of either reservations or inquires, allowing you to breakdown useful statistics. For example, you can compare how many reservations are booked in the morning with how many are booked in the afternoon. Or you could compare the number of reservations booked in one month with another month. In addition to comparing booking times, you may also compare how many reservations each reservation agent has booked. The same histograms are available for inquiries as well.

These new reports are meant to help provide indicators in terms of when customers are most willing to book reservations as well as when to anticipate the most load on reservation staff.

With time, more histograms and other graphs will be available throughout the Arctic Reservations staff. Today marks the first step in providing useful analytic tools for viewing and interpreting the large amount of data that Arctic Reservations automatically collects. If you have suggests for a specific graph or tool, we'd love to hear it. Just leave a comment on this post.

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February 18, 2007 6:31PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

New Features: Inquiry improvements

New features were added over the weekend, including:

  • Trip specific inquiries - You can now create inquiries that reference a specific trip. This helps the person following up the inquiry, as they have instant access to all details regarding that trip (including availability, etc).
  • Inquiry to reservation button - Along with the new trip specific inquiries is a new button that allows you to convert an inquiry into a reservation. Clicking the "reserve" button next to an inquiry will mark the inquiry as completed and will take you to the new reservation page with the customer and trip information already selected. This makes it easy to book a reservation for a customer during a follow up phone call.
  • New trip selector - To go with the new customer selection tool is a new trip selection tool. This can be seen both on the new inquiry and the new reservation page. The trip selection tool allows the pages to be much cleaner and more useful.

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December 4, 2006 10:48AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

New Feature: Reservation Process

Administrators can now change the sequence of events for when you create a new reservation. Under the reservations tab on the system settings page, there is a new option for what to do after creating a new reservation. For example, if you collect deposits immediatly after booking the reservation, you can set it to go to the resrvation invoice. Or if you want to collect user data next, specify the user details page. By default, it simply takes you to a reservation summary page.

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October 18, 2006 9:29PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Update: Reservation Notes

A new feature has been adding allowing different types of reservation notes (before, there was just a single notes field). Now you are able to differentiate notes that you want included on the trip roster, notes that you want only visible from the reservation system and notes that you want sent to the customer. When you later e-mail out the invoice for the reservation, the notes will automatically be inserted into that e-mail.

This allows you to track additional information, such as wet suite sizes and pickup time. The wet suite size might be stored in the roster notes field, so that it will be printed on the roster. The pickup time would go in the customer notes field, so that they would get the information later, along with the invoice.

In addition, invoice e-mails can include the trip name. You may also specify CC and BCC addresses to share the trip details with customer friends or keep an in office record.

Note: If you want to have the customer notes and trip name inserted into your invoice e-mails, make sure an administrator changes your invoice e-mail template to include these two new fields. If you use the default invoice e-mail template, we have already made the change for you.

Update (10-18-2006): Administrators can now specify descriptions for the different note fields. The descriptions instruct the booking agent what details to include in each of the note fields. To change these descriptions, go to the new reservations tab on the system settings page.

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October 17, 2006 4:02PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Find Invoices

Want to find or print a number of invoices? Whether you want to search by payment status, creation date or due date, a new invoice tool helps. The Find Invoice feature allows you to search by a number of criteria. Results will then either be returned in a table listing all matching invoices or will be prepared in a PDF document, which you can print directly (along with mailing labels, of course).

This feature can be found under the new "Invoice" section of the menu.

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August 27, 2006 3:36PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Customer Selection Window

This weekend, an upgrade has introduced a new way of having "internal windows". This update will allow you to be able to do multiple things on one page. With time, you will see these internal windows on more and more pages. But to start with, we are going to do a very specific test to ensure proper function and cross browser support. To see the new customer selection window, create a new inquiry. The process has been consolidated down to one page, where you can do everything from creating a new customer to editing an existing customer while creating the inquiry.

As always, we love to hear feedback on new features. Just use your support page to tell us about ideas or problems with the new internal window feature.

With time, expect to see this technique used on more pages (such as the new reservation page).

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August 20, 2006 10:37AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Credits; Downloads

Two new features!

Credits - You can now credit people on their invoice. If you want to remove a charge and have a record of removing it, just credit the amount. This is an addition to the item types that you can have on an invoice (charge, discount, payment, refund and now credit). In addition, now when canceling a reservation or a reservation guest, the software will allow you to credit all charges associated with that reservation.

Downloads for Sale - If you use the Photo Site module to allow guests to share photos after their trip, guests now have the option to purchase a download of all photos from the trip so that they can have a local copy. This is meant to complement the existing opportunity to purchase CDs with all trip photos. Downloads are prepared automatically and delivered by e-mail, usually within the hour of the purchase.

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July 31, 2006 6:22PM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Nathan Perkins

Launch Openings

A new feature has been added to the "new reservation" page meant to assist with monitoring the number of reservations per launch, especially when it comes to sublaunches. After selecting a trip, a table with the number of openings, reservations and remaining free spots will appear allowing for you to visually confirm the proper number of openings before proceeding with the reservation.

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June 28, 2006 6:54PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

New Trip Field

A new field has been added to the trip editor that allows you to select a river. Although only a few rivers are listed now, selecting a river allows you to access reports and forms specific to that river (for example, BLM Manifest or Forest Service Registration Form). With time, the collection of supported rivers will grow, making it easy to prepare reports specific to your trip.

In other news, big pages (such as the home page and the launches page) have been optimized for much faster loading. Although the speed was not an issue before, this will ensure Arctic Reservations ability to scale to larger amounts of information.

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June 27, 2006 9:14PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Upgrades

This weekend brought many new updates that have been in the works for the last couple weeks.

Reports are now managed according to trip river. When you create a new trip, select which river it is from our listing. When you select the river, reports associated with that specific river (ie, BLM permits or boater registration forms) will instantly be available to you. Since this is a new feature, there are only a handful of rivers, but with continued feedback from our customers this will grow as more rivers and more reports are added and maintained.

The Overview report has been upgraded to include financial information, regarding how much has been billed, payments that have been collected and other helpful tidbits. And with this new information comes a much nicer visual layout. In addition, information from the overview report now appears on individual launch detail pages. Now you can see the user days or financial information for a specific launch easily.

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April 25, 2006 8:59AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

New Menus

The Arctic Reservations design has been upgraded with a new menu system, making navigation from tool to tool even easier (*gasp*). Now, menus use popup functionality to eliminate the need to scroll up or down in order to see the whole menu. I know that in some cases, popup menus can be a pain, but for compact navigation and for easy access to specific tasks, they seemed like the most appropriate choice. In addition, the menu floats in the left bar, so even if you scroll down, it will be in the exact sample place. This saves you the trouble of scrolling all the way back to the top of the page in order to use the menu.

This new feature has been tested in the following browsers: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Safari. If it worked in those three, it should work in any other browser that supports Arctic Reservations. If you run into problems or have feed back, just use the contact support link or e-mail support now.

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April 5, 2006 7:03PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

International Support

Customer records now allow international address information. By selecting a country other then the United States, the zip and the state field are replaced by province and postal code.

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March 30, 2006 9:06AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Little Updates

Some nice little updates have been made recently:
  • Print pages: Now if you use your browsers print functionality, just the page content will be printed and none of the design around the edge. This makes it much easier to create print-outs from the site and save yourself paper.
     
  • Hide End of Day Report Notification: Use the settings page to disable the end of day report if you don't use it or already are in the habit of running it every day.

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March 21, 2006 5:11PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Trip Page

With the new subtrip/sublaunch update that got rolled out today, I was inspired to revamp the trip page, which has long needed a better layout. With the change, the information is more efficiently organized allowing the user better access to the commands as well as view of all information without scrolling.

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March 20, 2006 6:43PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Calendar Cleanup, Reports and Subtrips

This is just a general update post about a variety of feature requests (one of which I have made):

Calendar Cleanup: (finally) The calendar has now been simplified, getting it all to be much smaller (by having smaller lines representing trips). This allows it to be on one screen even with many trips, yet you do not need to scroll. Also, now instead of every launch getting its own color, every trip gets its own color. This makes it much clearer to look at. If you really liked it the other way, I can change it easily on a per account basis (eventually, it will appear in the settings editor). Also note that if you have launches with no trip type, they will each receive their own color.

Reports: In response to Zach's suggestion, I agree completely. With time, we will build up a collection of reports that each company can pick and choose from. Reports will vary for different purposes (accounting, permits, marketing, etc) and different programs (PDF, Excel, QuickBooks, etc). As we receive new requests for trips, they will be added to the library of reports so that other companies can benefit from similar reports. This project will grow slowly at first, but with time their will be a collection of choices available.

Subtrips/sublaunches: Soon (ie, end of this week), you will be able to have subtrips. This means that a trip might have a few different subtrips/sublaunches (for example, only going on part of a trip) that have their own duration, start day and costs. This will help offer a variety of options for one overall trip, yet common reports and information will be tracked for the main launch. Reports can either be run for the main launch, or any of the sublaunches. This is a big change and may take a little cleaning up, but it should be ready by the end of this week.

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March 7, 2006 9:38PM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Invoice Custom Message

A long requested update now allows you to have customized messages in the bottom left hand corner of the invoice. Use the settings page to setup the default message, as well as preset messages that can be selected. Then, when viewing an invoice, you can click edit next to any of the lines of the custom message. From there, either select a preset message or type in a custom one for special guests. Or, if you want to revert to the default message, there is even a link for that.

Note for existing customers: all custom messages will be blank for now. Use the settings menu to customize the message, and then click "set to default" on invoices that you want to add the message to. Otherwise, it will remain blank.

We went for the ultimate flexibility for this feature, but understand that this can easily make it to confusing. As a result, I encourage you to play around with it a little (nothing can go wrong if that's all you are changing), and then contact your support representative if you having any further questions.

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March 1, 2006 12:33AM • permalink • 0 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Faster, More Secure and Easier....

Lots of big updates tonight:

Faster - New optimization software has been installed that improves the speed of pages many times over. We already noticed the speed improvement as some of the most complex pages dropped from half a second to 0.08 seconds. Just think about that for a moment.... our software can manage all your businesses data in less then a tenth of a second.

More Secure - A new full system backup feature has been added for administrators, which allows customers to prepare and download all reservation data at their leisure. This offers peace of mind as you know that your vital business information is in your hands at all times. To access the new feature, click "Backup" in the admin menu on the left.

Easier - New help links now appear on top of some pages (and will hopefully start popping up on more). To be specific, it is replacing the "User:" text, which is helpful occasionally, but does not need to be on all pages. Right now you can see the little link on the top of the following pages: users, settings, backup and customer search. Look in that area on more pages for easy access to frequently asked questions and added help for the feature you are currently using.

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

 
by Nathan Perkins

System Settings

A new system settings manager allows you to customize the functionality and operation of the Arctic Reservations software suite. Within the system settings manager, you can change company details, invoice templates and other important default settings that previously had to be made by your support team. As the software grows, more and more settings will be available for customization through the settings menu.

Note that only administrators can change system settings (in order for a user to become an administrator, a support team member will have to make the change). It can be accessed from the "Admin" menu on the left side of the software.

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February 19, 2006 11:16AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Some More Minor Changes

I hope you're ready for some more exciting small changes.

1. We've decided that we don't need the "group type" when we make a reservation. Mostly because half the time we're guessing. I think that a better way to get this information is to ask them on their evaluation. Does removing the group type mess other things up?

2. The Sierra Mac invoices have information in the lower left corner that only apply to ECHO. Could you remove that completely?

3. We'd like to have a system that allows us to modify what is written in the lower left hand corner of our invoices. We're doing 95% of our invoices by email now so some of that stuff barely applies.

a. We only need their off river plans for Middle Fork trips.
b. When we have their registration form (release) checked off in the system, it would be nice if it stopped printing that. Or if it said "received."
c. We should take the "enclosed you should find" part off entirely.
d. It would be nice if we could edit the message at the bottom.

That should be enough to annoy you for a while!

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February 10, 2006 11:20AM • permalink • 1 comment

 
by Zachary Collier

Inquiry System

As usual, we were all pretty excited about this last update. In just one day, it has changed the way we deal with inquiries. Will the next update automatically remove an inquiry from the main page if they've made a reservation?

We've found a bug in Safari. When you check the blue ball in Safari it doesn't register it as being checked. This may also be related to the other bug we found in Safari where it doesn't show the "hang up" button (the left arrow). We've been using Camino (by Mozilla) for the Macs in the office and both of these bugs seem to work fine.

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February 7, 2006 10:27AM • permalink • 2 comments

 
by Nathan Perkins

Inquiry System (Partial Launch)

The new inquiry system has partially launched. Due to the size of the update, it is being launched in parts to allow each part to be fully tested and integrated before moving on. As you might have seen, a new inquiry list has been implemented that shows inquiries in a more visually pleasing and easier to use format. In addition, there is now a follow up field that allows you to mark when an inquiry as "done" (for example, after you contact a customer again regarding the brochures you recently sent, etc). To do this, simply check the blue ball next to the inquiry. An orange check mark will then appear.

Any inquiries that you have not marked as done and that have a follow up date will appear on the home page, no matter the number. Since the follow up date field did not exist before, all old inquiries were automatically given a follow up date of two weeks from their creation. Existing users will have to mark inquiries that they have responded to as done.

The next part of the update which will be coming soon is the ability to associate inquiries with trips.

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February 5, 2006 11:35PM • 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.

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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.

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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.

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

 
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.

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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.

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

 
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

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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.

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January 12, 2006 5:20PM • 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.

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December 29, 2005 9:41AM • 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.

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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.

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December 16, 2005 2:11PM • 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.

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