New features: color codes for appointments, and 5 minute calendar intervals

We've just launched two new useful features, which should make your experience with Bookeo even better.

Color codes for appointments
Now you can associate a particular color to every service, so that when a new booking is made (by you or by a customer), the appointment will appear in the calendar using the specific color. This makes it easy to identify at a glance what the coming appointments are about!

But colors are not just limited to services. You can give colors any meaning that you like.
For example, instead of using different colors for different services, you can define a new 'Location' option (ex. if you work from two locations), and use blue for appointments in one location, and red for appointments in another location.

Or you can use the red color for appointments where a special optional treatment has been requested by the customer.

Finally, you can also manually change the color of a booking at any time! This is total flexibility!

5 minute calendar intervals
To give you more flexibility in setting the start and end time of your appointments, we have implemented the option to have the calendar grid in 5 minute intervals (9:00, 9:05, 9:10,...).

There was the real risk of making the calendar quite busy, but we managed to simplify the structure and use a smaller font, and the result is very pleasant to the eye.

But what about customers? They could be overwhelmed by having to choose whether to have an appointment at 12:00 or 12:05. That would make an awful lot of buttons in the booking page!

This is why we've decided to give you total flexibility - you can have 5 minute intervals for yourself, but give 15 minute intervals to customers (i.e. when they book an appointment online, they can choose 12:00, 12:15, 12:30, and so on.). So, flexibility for you, ease of use for your customers.

You can set both options in the Settings/Time settings/Time resolution page.

The importance of security

It is with some amusement that we have read of the latest "security vulnerability" being reported in the news.
Eric Butler, a Seattle developer, released last week a small application that lets anyone to sit in any unsecured wireless hotspot (most free hotspots are left unsecured, for simplicity), and steal the account credentials of anyone using facebook or twitter or... most web applications. All extremely easily, in just a couple of clicks.

It's really just a matter of sitting down at the table, opening the laptop, waiting for someone nearby to start tapping into their smartphone et... voila! Account is wide open.

Without going too much in details on how this is done - it's actually very simple - what is important is to understand that this vulnerability affects any web application accessed via open wi-fi - be it from smartphone or laptop or tablet.

The only real protection from this? From Eric himself: the application must use SSL encryption for the entire duration of the session - not just during login.

How do you know if the application you use is protected?

Just check for the padlock icon in the address bar (or at the bottom) of your browser. If it is present, and it is not marked "open" or "red" or "broken", then you are safe. If not... run to the hills (or to Bookeo)!

Here's what the padlock looks like in Internet Explorer

Facebook and Twitter are currently not protected.

Not surprisingly, banks always use full encryption for internet banking, so they're not affected by this problem.

What about Bookeo? We are paranoid about data security, and for this reason we chose since day one to use SSL encryption everywhere in the application. Manager interface, customers booking page - anywhere.

So, sit down and enjoy your coffee while using Bookeo, because you are protected from these risks. And then you can actually smile while reading these news.

Choices, choices...

Every business is different.
Have a look around at web sites of businesses that are in the same market (beauty therapists, massage therapists, business consultants, you name it), and every business has something different from the others.

A business may be a one person shop, another may have 20 consultants in 4 different cities.
Another business may not even have a "shop", but visit customers directly instead. Or be in the shop during the week, and on the road on weekends (and what about time off?).

When designing Bookeo, we studied a lot of businesses to understand what they needed. And then built something that was flexible enough to satisfy most of the needs out there. Not all, admittedly, but most.

Then came the fun: once we have built a product that is very flexible, how to help users make the most of it? We soon realized that a simple, guided wizard was the only sensible way forward, and that is what you see when you sign up with Bookeo. But we had to leave out of the wizard many other options and features, to keep it simple.

This is why it pays to wander around the "Settings" area of your account to discover what more you can do.
Add services. Set different prices, ex. for weekends. Or set some staff to work only part-time. Or add multiple locations.

But, of course, there is also a faster alternative. Just click on the little 'get help' link at the top of the page, and get in touch with us! We are passionate about scheduling for small businesses, maybe because we've learnt so much in studying them. In fact, whenever we browse past one of these small business web sites, we instinctively work out in our mind how to set them up in Bookeo!

So chances are that we can setup your booking site in no time, the way you wanted it, but never dared to ask. Until today!