FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
Why should we select your service?
My objective is to provide you with simplest to use software that is customized to your
unique scheduling requirements. Features
can easily be turned on and off depending on what you need. Therefore customizing to
meet your needs is usually a trivial task. You can browse my list of
clients to get an
idea for how I really do customize.
Rather than get an expensive complicated program , you get something
much simpler and affordable that
only has the features you need. Your staff can be trained in minutes and your users
will love the ease of use. I firmly believe that Less is more! I look
forward to your
challenging requirements and am confident you will be pleased by what I can offer.
What are some of the customizable features?
The online scheduling software has numerous customizable features that allow me to
quickly and inexpensively create a tailored solution to your online scheduling needs. The main features are:
- Reserve up to 2 years in advance
- Various access permission levels to distinguish among what users and admin can see and
do. For example:
- Users may only view schedule
- Users may make appointments but not see details of other booked times on calendar
- Users may make appointments but can not edit/cancel them
- Set up mass repeating bookings over multiple times, persons and days
- Seamlessly integrate with your PayPal Business account to accept online
payments for appointments. Users
can pay either with credit card or PayPal account. Funds are directly deposited into your
PayPal Business account . All you pay is PayPal merchant fees which are quite low
considering they pay good interest rates on your balance.
- Many printable formats i.e daily, weekly, monthly
- Powerful searchable log file to generate reports and identify trends. Log file can also
be downloaded to Excel for further analysis
- Send automatic email reminders x number of days before the clients appointment
- Online chat module to let users and admin communicate with each other in
real-time online
- Integrate an online customer/ client database using my
i-Database software. You can store all your customer / client information online in the
database to retrieve quickly for scheduling of appointments
- Group scheduling that allows individuals to control their own
calendar while the administrator can view and edit all staff calendar from one web page.
- Instantly updates and refreshes schedule (within 1 minute) if another
user makes an appointment from a different computer
- Allow users to book appointments through a
single simple registration form without having to navigate the entire scheduler
to look for an open slot to click on.
- Customized reporting based on your search criteria, i.e all
appointments for John with customer Smith.
- Encrypted data storage for medical patient information
- Auto-fill feature to remember user names so you do not have to re-type
all the person's information when making multiple appointments for them.
- Auto-find customers to automatically insert all of a customer's
information
into the schedule by just typing in a few of their details.
- Availability module that lets each staff define their own
availability and block out a range of dates
so all other times would be automatically booked.
- Automatically book off set times each week, such as for lunch and reduced weekend hours
- A user can just select a service and the
program will block off the corresponding amount of
time for that service.
-
Compatible with Blackberrys and most mobile
hand-held devices such as cell phones and PDA's with an internet connection.
- Synchronize with local Outlook Calendar through Export. Import functionality
is under development but can be done through special scrips I have written.
- Automatically send an Outlook invitation each time a user makes an appointment
online. You can synchronize your Outlook calendar with the web calendar by accepting the
invitation.
- Redundant server access for clients on the Gold support plan.
If the server is down, I will provide you with a link
to a backup server hosting another domain of ours. This way you will still
be able to access your schedule if the primary server is down for
maintenance. This rarely happens but is certainly useful if you must always have access to
your schedule.
- E-mail notifications of schedule updates
- Color code staff for
- All fonts, design, logos are customizable to your needs
- Foreign language versions available (i.e Spanish )
- Integrate Mapquest online direction routing and maps based on the locations of
your online appointments. The software intelligently scans the appointments for valid
addresses to create clickable links to Mapquest for routing.
easy identification when viewing many staff calendars on one page
- Zip code distance calculator to intelligently find the nearest
technician for example.
How reliable is your service?
The biggest problem with hosted software is not having access to your system in case the server is down. Therefore over the years
I have evolved to offer quadruple redundant backups. The four backup systems in place are:
- Daily, weekly and monthly backups of your scheduling system to multiple unrelated
servers. In case one server is down for more than 8 hours,
I can restore your backup on
another server. Clients on the Gold
support plan are able to immediately restore their backup system anytime.
- If your data gets lost/corrupted I can restore your last daily , weekly or
monthly backup. This has never happened, however, it is a serious problem so
I have
multiple solutions for it.
- A feature to email your appointments for the week twice a week.
- You can download your log file of all appointments
locally to Excel or Access.
- You can also export a standard calendar file that can be imported
into your PC calendaring software such as Microsoft Outlook.
So long as you frequently download your log file and save your most
recent weekly appointment email, then you always
have a record of all appointments. I can email your backed up
log file as well if the server is down for just a short time. If the
server is down for more than 1 hour I can restore your backup on the
backup server.
How secure is our data and is it HIPAA compliant ( for
medical
patient information ) ?
The online scheduler meets and exceeds HIPAA requirements for security
. However there is additional maintenance cost with my high security version.
Additionally every user must enter the access passcode in order to
use the system.
I implement the following features that make
your information very secure.
- Data is stored encrypted on the server ( So nothing is clear text to
read if someone were to break into the server files )
- Encryption keys are only sent as persistent cookies. No keys
are stored on the server
- Data is sent encrypted over https
- Cookies are set to expire so it will log you out after 8 hours. This
way the scheduler does not remain up if left unattended for more than
eight hours .
- The system logs all logins for an audit trail
- Strong encryption keys must be used ( longer than 8 characters ) and
must be changed every six months
Can we host the software on our server?
Unfortunately we do not host the code on other servers. It is just too complicated for
what it is worth. The code still has to be maintained which is difficult to do
if the code is on another server. Therefore it would cost much more if you hosted.
I will be glad to add your logo , font and coloring scheme to match your website, so
users will not feel they are on a different site.
If your only concern is people leaving your site then you can use
iframes if you do not want people to know they are leaving your site when scheduling.
In reality this should not be a concern as it does not make any difference
for the user.
What are the main benefits of an online scheduling system for us?
The main benefits of scheduling online are:
- Centrally located schedule accessible by anyone with an internet connection
- Move paperwork around the office online 24/7
- Schedule can be updated from home, on the road ( PDA / cell phone ) or office
- Virtually eliminate phone calls to the central scheduling office
- Minimize errors from verbal mis-communications
- Time savings from phone and email tag avoidance
Do you provide phone support?
E-mail is my chosen mode of communication. 90% of emails are responded
to in less than 3 hours. I am only able to
provide phone support for clients on the Gold support plan. However,
any client is encouraged to leave a detailed voicemail if their question
is too long to type by email.
Unfortunately phone support takes too much time and is not profitable
given the low monthly fee I charge for my services. My products are
fairly generic and I have step-by-step instructions for everything online.
I also receive
many non-serious inquiries so responding by phone to all is not possible.
Is it possible to resell your software?
It is possible to resell to other clients, but I would still need
to host/support/mantain the program. You would need to gather client
requirements and explain how it works to them. Since billing and most
support would be handled by you, I would charge a lower monthly fee than
average.
