Booking Agent Set Up and Use

As part of you winery subscription to eCELLAR you have access to Booking Agents within Reservations Manager (Note: Your winery must have migrated to Designer Widgets, legacy clients will be unable to utilize these capabilities).  Booking Agents are used on your website to invite customers to request experiences (e.g. tours, tastings, and events) at your winery.

Some Details about Booking Agents:

Customers can access their existing accounts or if they don't have one, create a new account to place a reservation request.  

The experience requests can be automatically Booked or Requested and then be found on the corresponding tab of your Reservations Manager calendar.

An email notification is sent to the Reservations Manager contact within eCellar for each reservation request received. 

A confirmation email can automatically be sent to the customer confirming the receipt of their request.

How to use Booking Agent(s)

Location in ACP Menu: Res Mgr -> Booking Agents

Setting up a new Booking Agent:

From the Res Mgr tab choose Booking Agent. Choose Add Booking Agent in the upper right hand corner, and fill out the form. Please note that all fields are required unless otherwise noted.

These settings are created and managed in the Reservation Manager calendar Settings:

1. Select Reservation Type
2. Select Location
3. Select Station (Optional - Stations will be no longer be supported in future versions of Reservations Manager and should not be used for new Booking Agents as they have been replaced by Tables within Floor Plans)

Note: These setting cannot be changed after initial creation.

4. Enter the Public Name (Required): This displays as the Reservation Type on you website.

5. The Slug (Required): Will auto-populate upon clicking tab.

   Important: If you change the slug AFTER the Booking Agent (BA) has been created, any website navigation or emails sent containing the pervious slug will no longer work.

6. Automate: These are actions that will automatically occur as part of making a reservation:
   1. Booked reservation status: When checked a reservation will come into the calendar as Booked. If not checked, reservations will be Requested.
   2. Send email confirmation: And email (from Email Templates) will be sent to the customer upon the reservation completion on the website.
   3. Create Order: As of August 2023, Orders can be created via Reservation manager. Products can be automatically included, or optional. See this article for details to set up.
   4. Collect Payment: This relates specifically to the Reservation Order and is described in Reservation Orders help doc referred to above.
   5. Send Order receipt: This relates specifically to the Reservation Order and is described in Reservation Orders help doc referred to above.
7. Requires: These are optional settings that upon checking require the customer to include unless they have an existing account with the information.
8. Ask Customer: If checked the customer can provide the respective information.

9. Schedule:
   1. Active: Check this box to make the Booking agent active online.
   2. Active Dates: The date the Booking Agent should be visible online.
   3. Blackout Dates: Those dates that that will be unavailable and cannot be booked online.

   4. Book Ahead By (Required): The number of hours in advance that a reservation may be made.

      NOTE: This is hours from the immediate time. I.E.: 18 hours from the time it is now.

   5. Cancel up to: This allows cancellations online, and sets the number of hours beforehand that a reservation may be cancelled.

9. For Display Only: These do not control your bookings or reservations, they are for information online only.
   1. Min Party Size: Indicates the minimum number of guests for a reservation.
   2. Max Party Size: Indicates the maximum number of guests for a reservation.
   3. Duration: The length of time you want displayed on you web site.
   4. Description: Using Plain Text or HTML you can describe the experience and include specific details and instructions.

10. Floor Plans: See this article for details on setting up and using Floor Plans.
11. Create Order: See this article for detail on setting up Reservation Orders
12. Limit Booking: Allows you to limit the experience to specific Customer Types And/Or Wine Club tiers.

13. Availability: The specific times, number of parties/guests, days, and other details for the experience can be set for each Timeslot.

    IMPORTANT NOTE: Parties represents the maximum concurrent groups to be seen at that Timeslot.

    1. Click on the linked times to edit a Timeslot, or the Add a New Timeslot to add.

14. Edit / Add Timeslot:
    1. Times can be added in as little as 15-minute increments. Be aware of capacity when overlapping timeslots.
    2. Party Size is the number of guests per party.
    3. Parties represents the maximum concurrent groups to be seen at that Timeslot.
    4. Online makes the timeslot visible on your web site. Unchecked, this is a good way to incorporate scheduled clean up time and/or additional flexibility for your reservations staff.
    5. Auto Assign when checked will assign the reservation a table per the associated Floor Plan(s).
    6. Days indicated the day of the week the particular timeslot is available.
    7. Click Continue to save and create additional Timeslots.