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Resources

Action: EMPLOYEE

Setting appointments is equivalent to reserving time for a specific date/time to insure there are adequate employees or resources to handle the customer demand.

Resources (usually dressing rooms, but may be other items) are non-human that a shop can use to schedule appointments with.

When appointments are booked to Sales Associates, Resource may still be applied to the appointment. This would typically be done when the appointment is started (by the customer showing up at the appointment's reserved date/time) to indicate the Dressing Room assigned. Assigning dressing rooms is optional when booking by SA, but can let other shop personnel know where the appointment is being performed.

The program will display a warning message when the user attempts to create an appointment with a Resource or Sales Associate that currently has an appointment with an over lapping time period.

This Resource feature will also automatically update a Web Page located on a private web-site, hosted at BBL, with appointment details. This page can be used for displays within the store.

Fields

Type... Sales Associate or Resource. Should be set to Resource.

ID... A eight character/code name of the Resource. Cannot be edited after creation. Resource URL...The URL to a web page what will be automatically created once a Resource is created. The content of the page is automatically updated based upon the HTML templates (explained later in this topic) when an appointment is started or completed that uses the Resource.

The web page the URL links to will show Customer Name assigned the Resource on the appointment detail form, as well as the appointment start time and whatever other details defined by the template.

The URL is intended to be displayed on an LCD tablet above the dressing room. The web page at that URL will always show the current status of the dressing room. So, if a shop has four dressing rooms, a tablet would place a tablet above each door. The tablet above the door would be set to always show the Resource URL for that dressing room.

A Browser KIOSK application is recommended to display the Resource URL. KIOSK browser apps provide key features to facilitate the page display. Kiosk Browser Pro has been tested on Android tablets and it works well: http://www.android-kiosk.com/. Others exist for IOS/Apple.

Basically the browser must be able to be programmed to always display a specific URL and for it to auto refresh the URL after a specified number of seconds and to hide the browser menus and address bar..

The web page is automatically generated using two HTML template files that are located in the User folder.

The User folder is located one level up from the Livedata folder. Locate it by going to Setup->System Maintenance->Open Data Folder. When Windows Explorer opens, it will show the Livedata folder. Go up one level and the User folder will be visible. The two HTML files are

resourceused.html resourceempty.htm

Each one is a template file with merge codes that will be updated automatically.

When an appointment is started using a Resource, the resourceused.html file is uploaded to the resource URL which is hosted at BBL, with any appointment merge codes replaced. When an appointment is completed. the resourceempty.html is merged and uploaded.

The template files may be edited, like any webpage using HTML. A knowledgeable webmaster could customize the template files easily to reach the desired look and branding. BBL also provides customization for a reasonable fee.

Add ResourceDisplay=YES to the TPSWIN.INI file to enable this feature.

  • Store ... Future Feature to have rooms by store
  • Skill ranking…How this Resource ranks among all the Resources with this skill (1-999, 1 being the best) used exclusively by the optional appointment management module.
  • Skill ranking must be unique among Sales Associates and Resources. When showing Resources that can perform an appointment from the Appointment Detail tab,ProfitSystem® will display the SAs/Resources sorted by this ranking.
  • Department...Select a pre-defined department for the resource.
  • Pager ID…The seven digit cap code for the pager the Resouce is currently carrying. Only applicable if you have an in-house paging system. This number can usually be found on the back of the pager. Contact BBL for compatible paging systems.

Buttons

Avail Schedule…Displays the Schedule form the current Resource.

Schedule exceptions …Displays the Schedule Exceptions form for the current Resource.

Notes ...Allows for an unlimited amount of general information to be stored concerning this SA for reference.

Delete... Delete the displayed SA record.

Add... Adds a new record for a SA

Done... Closes the form and returns to the previous form.

Save... Saves all edits.

Cancel... Cancel any edits and returns form to previous state.