New Features: Trip/Travel Information and more

Aug 8, 2019   Adam   Feature Updates

We hope everyone is having a great summer thus far! As always, we have a number of long-awaited features that are being released today. We've added labels to each feature:

• EVERYONE means that this is a feature that will immediately apply to your site or is available to use
• OPTIONAL means it is a feature which you need to turn on to use (either in the settings or single use on a particular page)

Trip/Travel Information for Clients

EVERYONE - Clients can now add separate travel details on the My Schedule page, which are connected to all visits during the trip.

• When adding or requesting non-ongoing visits there is a Trip/Travel Information option that has "N/A", "NEW TRIP" and then lists any existing Trips in the future already saved
• Clients can add a Name, Departure Date/Time, Return Date/Time, Itinerary, Contact Details and Additional Notes for each trip
• Visits connected to a trip have a suitcase icon that anyone (client, sitter, staff) can click on to see the Trip details - clients and staff can also update the trip information from this dialog
• Clients can edit their Trips on their My Schedule > Trips page to update the details or to mark them as Canceled (when Canceled the suitcase icon is red) and have the option to request cancellation of visits during the trip at the same time
• Any updates to a trip made by the client will trigger an email to management and the sitter(s) of future visits during the trip
• The system will automatically add or remove visits from trips when visit or trip dates are updated, or when new visits are added/requested
• After the Departure Date/Time has passed the system will automatically mark that client as "Away" in their profile and they will see an in-system "Not away right now?" notification that prompts them to update their Trip details if something has changed
• After the Return Date/Time has passed the client or staff can mark that the trip is "Concluded" (the client is home). For the client this is done using the "Home Safe?" option either in the notifications (if they are logged in) or on their journals as a button, which will mark their profile as "Home" and send an email to management

Notifications when the Expected Length of visits is exceeded

OPTIONAL - You can now setup specific service types to trigger notifications to management and the sitter if they are still In Progress when the Expected Length is reached. Additionally, you can have the system Auto-Complete the visits for the sitter. The primary purpose of this is to help prevent sitters from forgetting to complete visits.

• This is setup on the Petcare > Services & Times > Base Services page for *each* service by updating Behavior under Length & Overbooking
• Auto-Completing visits is triggered once more than an hour has passed after the Expected Length. Auto-Completed visits are backdated to 15 minutes past the Expected Length. For example, a 30 minute visit would be Auto-Completed after being In Progress for 90 minutes and set to 45 minutes total.
• Use the "No Key is needed for this Service" to prevent the system from showing "Sitter needs key" notifications for all visits of that service type

"Ghost" future ongoing visits

EVERYONE - In the Schedule tab of client profiles and for clients on their My Schedule page you will now be able to see yet-to-be-generated "ghost" visits that show the future ongoing visits that are not yet in the system. The main purpose of this is to prevent clients from requesting future visits on days that will, but don't yet, have ongoing visits.

Additional Updates

• OPTIONAL - Using the new "Sitter Week" view on the Master Schedule, each sitter has their visits and availability in separate rows, allowing you to easily see sitter workloads for the week
• OPTIONAL - Color coding for Territories: you can set colors for each Territory on the Petcare > Territories page and then a square of that color will appear next to the territory name and on each visit in that territory (within a client profile it will appear at the top next to the client's name and not on individual visits)
• OPTIONAL - Social Media Manager: set Pet Sitters as a "Social Media Manager" by editing their User account (under Permissions) to give them access to the Resources > Photos page
• EVERYONE - "Home Access" details on the Keys page: When in the Keys tab of a Client's profile you will see all of the "Home Access" information from their profile listed at the top. Sitters see this as well and will only see information that they have permissions to see.
  
• EVERYONE - When clients update their My Info and Pet Profiles, sitters for their upcoming visits in the next 2 weeks will be notified (previously only the Primary/Secondary Sitter and Management would be notified)
• EVERYONE - When management updates Client and Pet Profiles, sitters for that client's upcoming visits in the next 2 weeks and the Primary/Secondary Sitter will be notified
• EVERYONE - You will see an "Unaccepted Visit" notification if there are visits which have been assigned and not yet accepted for the current day or the next day