Over half a year in development, it’s the WPMU DEV Appointments + Plugin!
Check it out:
So, who is Appointments + for?
Well, anyone who wants to take bookings for appointments, via an easy to use calendar, as part of their business such as:
- Hairdressers – you can specify different services (coloring etc.) and service providers (Jo, Sarah etc.)
- Gyms – Book, and even pay for, different persona trainers and training sessions
- Chiropractors - Choose your favourite chiro and a time that suits the client
- Tuition - Pick a subject, pick a teacher pick a time
- Counsellors – Doesn’t need to be commercial, make an appointment to see a counsellor through a community organisation
- And many, many, many more contexts…
Basically, this plugin allows you to create a complete, fully featured appointments system through any WordPress site… oh, and of course it works with Multisite and BuddyPress too.
Here’s a quick rundown of what the plugin is capable of doing:
- Simply allow customers the option to book their own appointments online
- Schedule appointments with clients yourself
- Enjoy a built-in CRM for managing customer contact information (it’s too easy)
- Collect payments or deposits using PayPal
- Manage your entire team by creating unlimited service providers and unlimited services
- Send confirmation and reminder emails to increase customer attendance rates (seriously useful)
- Allow you and your clients to book appointments up to one year out
- And last, but far from least, manage all appointments right from Google calendar – complete Google calendar sync
Booking an appointment only takes three clicks:
You can use PayPal to collect payments and deposits right out of the box with Appointments +.
You can even integrate it with our WordPress Membership plugin to offer discounts and payment vouchers to existing members of your site:
Setup customizable profiles for each of your team members and Appointments + will automatically display their available time slots:
Clients can click any service your company offers and Appointments + will display all your available team members for that service:
Admins and clients can save any appointment directly to their Google Calendar….with NO API coding required! Just click a button and the appointment shows up on your Google calendar:
PLUS, you get more than 30 more custom appointment features that rival the most sophisticated (and much more expensive!) booking platforms, including:
- Create unlimited services
- Create unlimited service provider profiles
- Create “black out” dates and times
- Edit schedules from front or back-end of WordPress
- 100% compatible with BuddyPress
- Pro-rate appointments that run long
- Short codes for inserting into posts/pages
- Display daily, weekly, or monthly schedules
- Book appointments up to one year out
- Gravatar support for personalizing provider profiles
- Custom Color labels for appointments
- Form autofill for repeat clients
- Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or WordPress login
- Integrates with WPMU DEV Membership plugin
- Ability to offer discounts to existing members
- Send clients appointment reminders
- Full client CRM
- Save client emails into CRM
- Take phone appointments manually
- Ability to remove unpaid appointments
- Multiple Widgets included
- Full user’s manual
- Custom filter and action hooks
Simply put, Appointments + is the only tool you’ll ever need for managing your client appointments and for organizing your business online!
Download. Love our plugins? Check out this list of the top WordPress plugins.
This will go great with our plugin! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/design-approval-system/ We will definitely help promote!
Thanks,
The SlickRemix Team
Would love to see a demo so I can make sure it does everything we hope it will.
Hi Nathan,
We’re working on a nice live demo, but for the meantime hoping the video and documentation – check out the usage tab here too http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/appointments-plus#usage – give a pretty good overview.
It’s kinda unusual for us as we’ve really rammed this with features from the first release (usually we build up over time) so I’m hopeful that it’ll nail a lot of different contexts.
And if it doesn’t, well, we take feature requests from our members every day and build them in!!!
Looks interesting but why don’t you do a real video that explains it rather than these stupid ones with just some horrible music sorry after 30 seconds it turned me off didn’t watch the rest. When you are ready to explain the plugin better and show how it works properly then let me know
Uh… yeah. Rather than griping like a foolish old man about the video, READ the article. As well as a bundle of feature related info there are also links to the DEMO. Lazy troll…
Wow Les. I for one can easily get lost on content with bad presentation, but WPMU’s new design interface (website, WP dashboard) are stunning, easy to pick through and, for the most part, dissect usability/viability pretty well.
I’m stunned you’d rip apart their video when it is highly likely, rather than drag this project release by preparing an extensive video, they dropped this very needed plugin into our laps without delay. I love being part of a community that drops useful plugins from developers to end-users faster than we can find ways to use them.
Could this be used for bookings/rentals? Or is a version, geared towards that, in the pipeline?
That would be a real WOW! – there are so many appointment plugins and services but, for some reason, no-one seems to notice the huge demand for something that will allow people to rent things out (whether that is a room, a hall, an apartment or an Xbox) on a daily basis.
Most of the plugins that claim to offer booking/rentals either have serious problems or are missing vital features – to be useful, a booking/rentals plugin must allow you to set a different price and a different Minimum Stay length per day. For instance, most vacation rental owners don’t want to bother with anything less than a 2-day booking during the week or less than a 3-day booking if it overlaps with the weekend. Most also want a 5-day minimum during certain holiday seasons. Other rentals are available on a strictly weekly basis throughout the year. It is not just properties, you might not want to bother renting out your Xbox / lawn-mower / bicycle for less that a set amount of days.
It would also be ideal if the booking calendar for a particular item was associated with a particular post and the availability calendar could be edited from that post’s edit page. That way, different owners could use the same site, each having access only to their own properties/items.
This Appointments+ plugin seems to come closer than anything else I have seen, a Booking/Rentals version would have a much bigger market to itself.
Is WPMU working on anything like that?
+1 Ning. My interest in this plugin is high for managing individual rental properties. LOVE Ning’s idea for a post connection allowing for a dynamic community rental site.
So, we now have…
Events + http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/events-plus/
Appointments + http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/appointments-plus/
What do you reckon might be next? ;)
The alpha / beta versions of the Bookings + plugin will be released to WPMU DEV members probably a month or so before we share them with the public so my recomendation would be to join now :)
http://premium.wpmudev.org/join
Thank you, James, for answering my question and I am very happy to hear that you are working on a booking plugin, I am sure it will be one of your most popular creations.
I actually thought that I was already a member, I jumped onboard during the appsumo promotion, but I just discovered that it lapsed almost a month ago and I missed the deadline to remain a member – I wasn’t using my account enough or paying enough attention to all my WPMU emails! I am so disappointed. Please run another promotion at some point in the future that will allow ordinary, non-pro people like me to join in.
Hi James,
That bookings + plugin sounds like just what I’m looking for…
Any indication of when it will be available?
I’m not a member yet, but I’ll be joining as soon as it is! :-)
Hiya,
I’m on the team for Appointments+ and am also working on the Bookings+ plugin. Everyone’s feedback is welcome. Our intention with appointments was the idea of a traditional appointment – more of a “one on one” scenario (though it is flexible to work outside of that.
Other scenarios can be handled through Events+ – which handles limited registration for particular events, etc.
Finally, our full-fledge version of Bookings+ will be built to handle the missing piece of those folks who need to do a B&B, a Restaurant, or even a movie theater. The scope is enormous and as James mentioned we’ll be looking for member feedback throughout the development process.
Comments here are great as we really want to understand the specific needs and create real solutions for each. Thanks to everyone who’s participating here. We’re very proud of Appointments+!
Wow, this looks like a fantastic plugin! I definitely see myself making use of this one in the near future. Cheers!
Now if you really wanted to extend this plugin to make it even more awesome, it would be great to have users select their local timezone and have all calendars & appointment times redisplayed in their local time zone.
That way it could be used for making appointments with people who live in different time zones or different parts of the world.
Great feature request Phill, I’ll pass it onto the team and if you can expand on it here that’d be amazing too http://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/forum/feature-suggestions [you need to be a current member]
I have tons of clients who would use this, IF… it had the ability to book multiple people, as with classes, seminars, workshops, and so on.
Scott See
http://www.hammock.net
Absolutely, you can have multiple different ‘services’ (classes, seminars, workshops,) and ‘service providers’ (different teachers, institutions or whatever you like).
What Scott means is that he wants more than one person to book the same service, for example a yoga class.
So you would need to add the possibility to set an amount of people per appointment, for example allow up to 10 people to book for the same yoga class. It does not seem possible for the moment.
Can this app do multiple appointments at the same time? I have a client who sells second hand clothing and they have several days a week where they book appointments to buy clothing from customers. They manually book 2-4 people at a time.
Good question, I’ll ask the team to feedback on this in more detail.
Looks good. I must admit that a video and static screen shots do nothing to get me excited about your plugins. I recommend you have live demos of your plugins to avoid looking like you are hiding something,
Lol, what could we possibly be hiding? There’s exhaustive documentation, feature descriptions, videos of it in action and thousands of WPMU DEV members already using it…
Sure we’d always like to improve how we show people stuff (and that includes quality demo sites), but as I’m sure you understand doing a demo for a plugin, as opposed to a theme, is a very different kettle of fish.
If you don’t feel there’s enough information, or backup, you are welcome not to use it, or go find another WordPress plugin that does this… only thing is that you won’t, because there isn’t another one that comes close.
Any further on this? I would like to be able to make an appointment for mulitple people, but not necessarily entering their details, just a figure. Joe Bloggs wants 10 spots for this appointment.
I was really excited about this until I noticed one big thing missing which is a deal-breaker for me: time zones. This plugin looks great for local businesses but my clients are global and we meet online, so integration with some kind of auto-timezone magic is crucial. Maybe even the most crucial: in the past I canceled a paid appointment system even though it was the best service by far, just because they didn’t have great time zone integration. Add that, and I’ll buy it in a snap because I’d love to drop my $15-a-month service in favor of a plugin on my own site.
Great plugin!
Very nice plugin. Is it fully translatable into other languages? Thanks.
Hello Martin, all the plugins we develop are translation ready and the files required for translation are available in the languages folder :)
Cheers !
I have three possible applications, each slightly different but each needs the ability to use PayPal. From the lack of mention in the video and in the feature list, I gather that is not (yet) in the current version. Correct? Is it coming? When?
Here are the 3 different web site needs.
1. A massage therapy session appointment maker.
2. register students for courses.
3. rent space (rooms) in a community center by the hour or day, one at a time or weekly over a season, to civic groups wanting a meeting place, music teachers, yoga instructors, etc.
Hi Joe.
While not in the video, PayPal is listed the quick rundown as well as an entire section devoted to Paypal on this very page. Screen caps included. You might want to give this page another read. It’s actually really (really) hard to miss.
What’s your recommendation on embedding the form on the website? Do you have any examples of different options?
I have a client that runs a non-profit food pantry. They need to schedule a group of volunteers for each shift at the pantry. So they would say, for this shift of 10-3 Monday we need five people. Five people could sign up for that slot, then that shift would be full and not accept more people. Could your plugin do this?
I’m liking the plugin. Would like to see the ability to block out times as well as days.
I’m not exactly sure how this integrates within Buddypress. Here’s what I’m looking for and have been unsuccessful so far, so maybe this will do it.
NEED: (If the plugin will do this, then I’ll sign up for an account very soon)
-An appointment scheduler where users can set up appointments with eachother all through the front end.
WANT: (If the plugin will do this, then I’ll sign up today)
-Timezone adjustments
-Multiple appointments in a single time slot
But will it work on a smart phone? Is it responsive in any way for displaying the calendar? With the move towards mobile internet access, making appointments ‘on the go’ should be a vital consideration here. And the multiple appointment over the hour + timezones is very important. Perhaps clicking on a time slot could take you to the hour break down with increments set by the user.
This could evolve into something nice with everybody’s suggestions.
Dennis,
I have the appointments + plugin working on a new WordPress site that I developed using a responsive version of Twitter Bootstrap. The css is rough – not completely finished and the site it pretty basic too as I just got the css in there. But You can see it in action here: http://thesis2a.orgselect.com/make-an-appointment/
I’ve got an appointments calendar in the main content area and in the sidebar. As the screen size drops, the sidebar stacks under the content and maintains perfect column sizing and functionality.
It works perfectly down to 320 pixels. Below that I’m not sure anyone with an old blackberry is using their make phone calls anymore, let alone book appointments on the web.
I like to break the shortcodes out of the tables the plugin creates for you on the sample appointments page. I find it easier to work with my break points for responsive resolutions that way – move rows below each other at certain screen sizes. I also use the short week/day lettering, that setting is controlled by the [app_schedule] shortcode. If yours has long=1 in there, just take that out and it will read, MO, TU, WE… instead of MONDAY, TUESDAY…
Hope that helps.
Craig
Is it possible to set appointments to repeat on the backend?
Yes :)
Thanks Craig …that’s great to know for future reference. Looks like your testing Thesis 2.x on a sub-domain. I haven’t taken it out of the box yet seeing I purchased Ultimatum about two weeks before the release. Would have been nice to find out Thesis 2 was being released before I bought that framework.
Yeah, i think we were all surprised by the release of T2. It was kind of a mystery, and then it was just there.
Both good frameworks. You’re in good hands.
Is it possible to have the client select multiple timeslots? For example, as opposed to selecting a slot each time, would they be able to select a whole bunch of slots? For example, they want to signup for tutoring at 2-4, 8-9 and then 11-1230. Can they do that and send only one email to the admin or is this not possible yet? Would they have to signup for multiple slots and enter in their information repeatedly?
Good question, I’m not 100% if it is, but it’d certainly make sense.
That’s exactly the kind of feature we would build in though based off members requests… so if you do take the leap make sure to ask for it.
Two questions…
1 – Does the system handle cancellations?
2 – Is it possible to import current appointments into this system i.e. from google calender?
Yes and yes :)
We have complete google calendar sync!
It doesn’t look like this is currently a feature, but would the following be possible?
1. Treat online bookings as queries (set to pending by default)
2. Rather than a single appointment slot attached to a costing, could bookings be queried with end user defined start/finish times?
I’m looking for a system that will help me manage a portfolio career in catering/music that will allow multiple clients to check my availability and book jobs (sometimes a whole day/part of a day/evening etc).
I’m pretty sure this is do-able – if you get stuck or would like to get it built into the plugin just ask!
http://premium.wpmudev.org/qanda/
Hi there,
I am not sure if I am being useless but I have had a good surf through and haven’t figured out if what I am wanting is possible :-)
For my business I am wanting to set up an hour appointment then have a 30 minute gap between the next for setting up for the next. E.g. if someone booked an appointment for 3 the next available spot would be 4:30.
I know I could just set the time for 90 minutes but then it shows up on the confirmation section 90 where I only want it to be 60?
Thanks
Yes, absolutely possible!
Im with Ning on this one…
Need to setup a holiday home rental site but with multiple homes…
So, Im looking for a booking/reservation type plugin that will allow booking calendars site wide on different pages/posts.
Need to be able to block book, admin aprove, deposit payment, admin delete etc….
A few on the market but WAY overpriced… if this can be adapted to function this way you have something I will buy instantly.
Try the WordPress plugin called Booking Systems Pro. It’s perfect for what you need.
We’re going to be releasing a comparable booking plugin soon at WPMU DEV too :)
Hi, any news on when you will be releasing a comparable plugin? Thanks
I’m literally sold on this plugin and was about to buy it, except I noticed it’s missing one key detail that I need.
I need to be able to have the option to create a calendar with ‘classes’ so that more than one person can register for a class. So for instance, let’s say I have a calendar that has 4 different classes each week. I need it to allow a given number of people (let’s say 30 people) to be able to sign up for one class. After 30 people had signed up for that one class it would no longer show the class as available.
I suppose this isn’t going to happen anytime in the near future, is it? When it does you’ve got my money!
We’re going to be writing up a tutorial on how to use this to manage video-conferencing classes very soon that should cover all your needs just make sure you subscribe to this site (see bottom of the post)… or you could get stuck in now and give it a go, it’s totally possible!
James, is that tutorial available by chance? I just purchased the plugin and I have the same issue. We are using it to book classes that many people can signup for.
This plugin looks VERY interesting. I have a non-profit I have developed over the years and we put on 72-hour long events that volunteers sign up to pray for one hour time slots. Is this possible with plugin? Take a look at http://www.soncoastchrysalis.org/index.php?option=com_rsappt_pro2&view=bookingscreengadwiz&Itemid=286…. (sorry for the long link but my existing component does not support SEO).
I am looking for an excuse to move from Joomla to WordPress and quite frankly this is the only missing piece that is vital.
Yeh, totally this would be possible – get stuck into the plugin and then if you get stuck just ping our support team, they’ll fix you up :)
Is there any way to add pagination to widget (Appointments+ Monthly Calendar Widget) ? Like Next Month and Previous Month button at the bottom of widget calendar. So user can select the future date.
Thanks
This should be possible through regular page / widget pagination http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-paginate/
Could you ask at premium.wpmudev.org/qanda/ if you need more details.
We’d definitely consider a feature request from members too :)
It looks great! My only concern is that it looks like anyone who stumbles across my site can set up appointments. Is there a way to allow only approved members to set up appointments?
I’m pretty sure you can do that by just allowing registration via WordPress and then approving members that way.
Try this plugin for that http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/new-user-approve/
BTW, we’ve just written up a great tutorial about this too: http://wpmu.org/build-an-amazing-appointments-website/
Hi
This sounds good could this be used for a Holiday accommodation booking system?
I’ve wasted hours of my life on your wonderful plugin!
It isn’t easy to use, intuitive or the only appointments plugin you’ll ever need!
It is limited in so many ways, let me give you a wee heads up:
Setting individual dates with specific times seems to be impossible.
Setting more than 1 break per day is not possible
Having different session times that don’t divide into each other is not possible (ie 15 and 30 minutes is ok, but try to add a 20 minute session in there and it’s a no go… you have to choose between 15 or 20 minutes…)
It does do a lot of cool things, but I’ve wasted that much time on the stuff that doesn’t work that I’m not very happy about it!
In brief this is good for a therapist or clinic that doesn’t need much flexibility, has set days that don’t change much or at all, and works from 1 location…