Room / Resource Booking product

Topic Information

arkid

3 Apr 2008 10:30 AM

Hi

This may seem outside of the scope of the product but i need a php shop that can handle requests to purchase a resource. Ie, a room, via a calendar date/time selection widget. This would also require conflict checking so that resources cant be overbooked etc.

I cant find any very comprehensive php web based product online that fulfils this requirement - if you know of one please let me know. Ive seen a few like "phpscheduleit" but they just arent developed enough and dont really provide a checkout process, they are more for users in an office.

As I say, i know this may seem like something way out of the scope of what viart should be capable of, but it just seems to be an area of the market that lacks quality web products. This feature, combined with viarts general CMS / forum and other features would make a great product to allow customers wanting a reservation type website to install viart and nothing else, managing the entire site via its cms.

If anyone has any suggestions as to products that do this well already or add-ons or ways of somehow integrating such a feature with viart please post them here!

SajMalik

3 Apr 2008 11:16 AM

I am setting up a site that handles workshop reservations.

I have the product as the event date - this describes the event and venue will have links to custom pages - eg Hotel De Luxe will also be a link to the page about the venue.

Stock level is the maximum number of places availabe so a visitor cannot over book.

You can see where I am so far at http://www.PROGRE55.org.uk

I find Viart amazing at how flexible it can be with imagination!!

Hope this helps.

Chris

arkid

3 Apr 2008 5:56 PM

I thought about this already, but its not an option as I cant list products in the same way you are for monthly courses. I need to have a complete calendar selection feature, with each day being broken down into hourly or half hourly individually bookable entities.

A

SajMalik

3 Apr 2008 6:06 PM

I don't see a way you can do this with Viart.

BG (Guest)

15 Apr 2008 6:18 PM

I've been wondering about this too, in the form of delivery slots.

I wanted customers to be able to select a date and time of delivery, from a list of pre-defined (by the shop owner) dates and times - but in a way that once a time slot is taken by a customer, it is no longer available to other customers.

I'm sure the concept could be adapted to suit almost anybody's needs, as the "delivery" field can be substituted with anything.

your-shoppingcouk

15 Apr 2008 6:25 PM

Likewise, would be interested in customers being able to able to select delivery dates / times

arkid

15 Apr 2008 6:42 PM

I thought id post an answer to this that I actually got from
Anjula at ViArt Support. It doesnt answer my personal request, as the checking function to stop duplicate date bookings is the key thing for me and that is currently outside of viarts scope.

However, adding a calendar to the interface and storing these results is quite easy. For anyone interested, heres a good rundown on how to do that...

If you want to use options per a product, you can create a calendar javascript file on all pages you want to use it on, like products.html, somewhere between <head></head> tags:

<script language="JavaScript" src="js/calendar.js"></script>

and add special code into 'After control field' for an option, as below:

<A HREF="#"
onClick="setDateField(document.form_{item_id}.property_name_{property_id}, 'YYYY/MM/DD');
top.newWin = window.open('js/calendar.html','cal','dependent=yes,width=210,height=230,screenX=200,screenY=300,titlebar=yes'); top.newWin.focus(); return false;">
<IMG SRC="images/calendar.gif" BORDER=0><font size=1>{CALENDAR_MSG}</font></A>

In case you are interested in having a more advanced functionality, then additional programming is required. Please, let us know should we calculate the cost for such customization.

vic140

31 Dec 2010 2:44 PM

Appointments and Resource Booking...

Anything new here? I am using hitappoint.com's product for booking appointments, mostly online phone consultations. HitAppoint is by far the best I have found. So far I just sell appointments in my viart system and then send the customer a link for scheduling.

I would love to integrate HitAppoint (or something else?) with ViArt. I was about to approach support for a quote, but thought I would check if anyone has something else in place.

Also, is anyone else interested in an integrated appointments feature? HitAppoint has 4 products that vary from free to $249. Check out their website if you want to learn how it works. It claims to easily integrate with customer info from another database. It is joomla compatible but I don't think that is relevant.

Greg

arkid

31 Dec 2010 3:01 PM

Hi vic140

Interesting product. Its incredibly ugly out of the box though, 1/10 for presentation from hitappoint. I would expect something to look a lot slicker if they are charging 100s of dollars.

Still if it works it works and naturally I understand one can customise the look.

About integrating with viart, im sure it can be done but i came to the conclusion that any such calendar integration would be quite a hack to have to work with viart and would require a lot of extra coding.

My idea was to extend viart to be able to parse it certain information over extended url parameters, which would in effect create custom products on the fly that you could then checkout with.

Ultimately though I've been looking for something out of the box that is at least partly open-source and php based and is a full booking system, ideally one with possibility for booking by seats.

if anyone finds / knows of such a thing please share your experiences!

Last modified: 31 Dec 2010 3:01 PM

Ibn Saeed

31 Dec 2010 4:49 PM

Try the following:

http://www.checkfront.com/

http://php.brickhost.com/

vic140

1 Jan 2011 3:12 AM

ibn saeed, both of these look promising. I prefer the $79 solution from hitappoint right now (for a single user).

I agree arikid, it is 1 or 10 in the looks department initially, but it can be set up to match the rest of my site and gives a simple clear way for people to sign up for appointments.

I think the integration might be pretty simple. Anyone else interested?

Greg