Hi,
I may have already asked this but is there a rule to limit how many uses a members can put on the schedule at once, or limit how far out they can schedule?

Last season we went with members can book up to 2 weeks in advance but have 3 they can book throughout the summer. This season we decided it might work better and simplify to allow 3 to 4 days on the calender at once so they can choose to book now or in the future. However I didnt see the option so we kept tract ourselves.

If this option is not available I would think once of these would be a critical fundamental rule for a boat share to keep members from overbooking the calender.

Thanks!!

Hi Jared,

We do allow you to limit how many back to back or consecutive reservations a person can have but the limit on total reservations a person can make is only limited by their percentage at this point.

So if I understand what you're saying it sounds like you would want two things. One would be to limit how far in the future a person could book reservations - something like "Prevent users from making reservations more than X months in advance." Does that sound right?

The other one I'm less clear on. Is it something like, "Limit users to X number of reservations in Y period of time"?

Let me know if I have it right.

Cheers,

John Davis

Hey John,
Okay that's what I thought but wanted to confirm.

If im correct, your % limitation is based on each month? So if I give a member 10% total, it would be 5% per month if there were only two months? I just have to convert number of uses we give members to %. If there is any way to easily add "number of uses" for the total term rather than % per month I would be more inclined to use that since our program is. But I can make this work if need be.

So if I understand what you're saying it sounds like you would want two things. One would be to limit how far in the future a person could book reservations - something like "Prevent users from making reservations more than X months in advance." Does that sound right?
Thats correct, we only allowed them to book 2 weeks in advance last season to keep members from booking up the whole summer. However most of them are family people and some have their whole summer planned out so they needed the ability to schedule some a month or two ahead in July and Aug. rather than short term so we then added a rule that they can book up to 3 in advance. I suppose we could have allowed up to a month or two in advance but then we would have to limit how many they could have on the schedule at once otherwise they would have too many on the calender at once. This is why we implemented the next rule....

The other one I'm less clear on. Is it something like, "Limit users to X number of reservations in Y period of time"?
Yes you got it. We changed to this scheduling model over the last one because it seems to simplify what we were wanting to accomplish from the last rule. It doesn't allow a member to hog the schedule, allows them to book anytime in advance as well as in the short term today or next week. Also this is how a couple other local companies do it too, and they allow 3 to 4 uses on the schedule at once.

At this point we are trying the second model however if for some reason it doesn't work we are going to want to go back to the first.
Do you have any thoughts on the differences between the two?

Hope that makes sense and if it doesn't or you want to chat about it feel free to call me. Im willing to help out anyway I can if you are able to add this feature to your service. Im surprised that others aren't asking for something similar as it seems there has to be some sort of main rule that keeps members from hogging the whole summer or year.

Hi Jared - Correct - limitations are based calculated each month - so Shannon Peterson, for example, has 10% of the standard days and 10% of the premium days for any given month. If my math is right, she would have 2 premium slots and 3 standard slots per month - as the code exists now she could book all of those slots every month for the whole year but she couldn't book more than those 5 slots in any given month.

Since the scheduler is kind of based on percentages as part of it's foundation it would be fairly difficult I think to change it to number of uses - however, I think we should be able to add the "Prevent users from making reservations more than X months in advance." and the "Limit users to X number of reservations in Y period of time." I'll talk with the dev guys and see if we can figure that one out - seems like a good addition to the functionality.

Let me know if you think of anything else.

John Davis

Hi Jared - we have just completed the custom time slot thing as well as the other two scheduler changes we talked about and are in the process of testing it - it was a big change to the scheduler code so it may take a couple of days to get it fully tested. I'll let you know when we release it.

Best,

John Davis

Hi Jared - we just released the custom time slot functionality and a few others - have a look at https://www.nauticalmonk...hanges-and-enhancements/  for details and let me know if you run into any problems.