Main Page
This wiki is mainly used to describe usage and development issues related to the Uniwits Online Reservation System, which is issued by Uniwits System.
Contents |
Download
The following link will redirect you to the download page on SourceForge.
| Download Current Release 1.0.3 |
You need a web host, which supports Apache2, PHP5 and MySQL5, to install and run the reservation system. If you do not want to maintain a web host by yourself, you can simply access http://reserv.uniwits.com, register an account, fill in business information and start accepting on-line reservations.
Introduction
Synopsis
"UORS" (Uniwits Online Reservation System) is a highly automated system that facilitates your business in customer experience, schedule management and so on.
UORS helps your business providing customers convenient methods of reservations that improve customer experiences and business efficiency, so that it is expected that no customers will ever be lost due to long waiting time for responses from business side. Furthermore, by providing a reservation window that everyone can easily use, besides the facet that provides customers convenience and high freedom, it also simplifies processes of reservation managements.
Due to its flexible design, UORS supports reservations over a wide range of industries, such as classrooms, salons, beauty salons, consultant offices, clinics, event spaces, restaurants, etc. As long as you put your creativity into full play, the system will serve you over even more industries.
UORS can be used for free. Please enjoy it!
How it Works
First of all, you need a web webserver to host your website. If don't have one, you can either rent one, or simply publish your service on http://reserv.uniwits.com . If you have a website of your own, you probably have some descriptions on what services you are providing. On that site you install UORS, and importantly make a link to it. See Installation for details.
Overview
As an overview, Fig. 1 gives an illustration. Customers view your service, which is published on your web server, using their PC through the Internet. You also manage your services on the web server through the Internet. When a customer completes a reservation process, you will receive an email notification. A customer may also cancel reservation without your intervention. Everything is automated. You can limit customers' freedom by setting reservation deadlines.
Concepts
There are 7 key concepts in UORS. They are service, worker, room, seat, time, schedule, and reservation. The service is the business that you want to sell. There must be a worker who delivers the service, a room where the service is delivered, a seat to which a customer can be assigned. A schedule is a period of reserved time and the associated worker. A reservation is a combined record of a worker, a service, a seat and a time period. (Though it is possible to assign more workers to a schedule, but this would be a manual process and not supported in the single user version.)
Basic Rule
When a reservation is to be created, a schedule must exist. If not it will be created automatically. The reservation will be created as a component of the schedule. For example, Peter tries to reserve a lecture seat. There must be a lecture that can be reserved, or a lecture must be created when Peter reserves. So, as Peter completes the reservation process, a lecture (as a schedule) has been made existent, and Peter's reservation of a seat is a component of the lecture. Based on this thought, a reservation can be made through UORS only if all the following conditions are satisfied.
- There is a worker who has enough available time to deliver the service;
- There is a usable room being vacant at the specified time, or the room will be used for the same service at the same time period;
- There is a vacant seat in the room to be assigned to a customer.
In addition,
- A customer cannot join a schedule multiple times;
- The business cannot reserve his own service.
Illustration
As one of your customers browses your site, he probably will seek for a link on the menu (Fig. 2) or a button on the page that lets him reserve a time, so that he can go to you and enjoy your service. This menu item should redirect or guide the customer to the reservation system, e.g., http://yourdomain/reserv/ . Then your customer will probably see something like the one in Fig. 3. Two blocks are shown in Fig. 3, your service may look like that. Such a service block contains a thumbnail image, a service name, an address, a price, and some buttons. A customer may click into your service detail page to view the details.
When a customer clicks the Reserve button, he will see a screen (Fig. 4) on which he can select a time range to insert a reservation. There are two types of time ranges, one are the vacant time intervals, the other are the time intervals of existing reservations that still has vacant seats.
As a customer click to make a new schedule or join an existing schedule, he will see a screen like Fig. 5. There will be 2 or more such screens, depending on your configuration on the service, such as options and questionnaires.
If the information is complete, the customer will see a screen either requesting login/signing-up or a providing a "Reserve" button. If the customer has not logged in, he can log in and he will be redirected back to the last step. If the customer is still not a registered user, he can register now and be redirected back to the last step. Depending on your setting, the system may ask you customer to complete their personal information. (As we are on the Internet, a business wants to be sure who is reserving the service.)
After the reservation is accepted by the system, the customer will be redirected to a page showing details of the reservation. At the same time, you, the business, will receive an email notification that one of your customers has sent a message (being the event of reservation) to you.
Both you and your customers can confirm reservation through a reservation list, which looks like Fig. 5. You may found that coloring of Fig. 5 is different from the figures above. Yes, you are right. UORS can easily change display styles, we call themes. Fig. 5 was taken on another theme.
Some Functions
In the following text, let's have a brief review of parts of the functions of UORS.
1, Service Publish You can freely write service description in plain text or HTML. By publishing exciting introduction text, customers' eyes can be attracted. Contents of open services will be automatically submitted to popular search engines.
2, Automatic Vacant Time Conventional reservation systems require user inputing reservable time intervals one by one. In contrast, UORS can automatically filter out available vacant time after every reservation, and prompt them to customers. Customers can freely set starting time of reservations. This feature greatly facilitates coexistence of services with different lengths.
3, Deadline If you run a business, and you want to know schedule of a day in advance, you can set deadlines. Deadline of every specific reservation is automatically computed, you do not need to enter them separately.
4, Schedule Auto Arrange Whenever a reservation is added or deleted or modified by a customer or business runner, the schedule table automatically reflects the change. All reservations can be viewed as a list. Especially, for "Auto-confirm"ed reservations, the business runner need not make any operation, the reservation automatically completes, very convenient.
5, Questionnaire A business can set a questionnaire to be filled whenever a customer tries to reserve a service.
6, Restricted Open Scope and Circles For every service of your business, there is a circle of members. A business can set the service to be open to only members of the circle. If your business wishes to provide service to specific groups of customers only, this would be a convenient function.
7, Email Notification Whenever a reservation happens or is cancelled, an email notification will be sent to the mailbox that is specified by the business.
8, Memo Along with each reservation, you can write memo for each customer. It facilitates your business providing customized featured services for every customer. On the other hand, staff can conveniently check service history that a customer enjoyed. Help your business keep customer relations.
9. Plugins. Now it starts supporting plugins. Users can use plugin to modify behaviors of UORS without editing core codes of UORS.
10. Auto Upgrade. As of version 1.0.0, automated upgrades are supported. You only need to keep your files writable, and no longer need to do any more manual downloads/unpacks/uploads.
Besides the functions above, UORS still has many more functions. Have fun!
License
Uniwits Online Reservation System is distributed under GPLv3. See the LICENSE file in the package for details.
