Openings notifications

What clients can do

While the event's Openings notifications switch (Notifications section) is on, its page offers Get automatic notifications for this calendar — a bell at the calendar's bottom right. (Under the bell, Join the mailing list is a different thing: what the client wants to hear from you about in general; see Contacts, client groups, perks and blocking.) The dialog lists how it works before it asks for anything:

• One email each time a new time opens in the client's chosen time window.
• Times that are already available don't trigger an email.
• To stop, the client uses the unsubscribe link in any email.
• To change the time window, the client signs up again with new dates or times.

Then it asks for an email, an optional Time window (dates and times; a blank field is no limit) and a Notification period: one week to one year, a date and time the client picks, or until they unsubscribe. There is no daily cap. No account is needed. With the switch off, the page offers no bell and nobody is emailed.

Notifications tell a client that times opened; they hold nothing. A client who wants one exact time waits for it on the waitlist instead (see The waitlist for a time), and gets it when it opens if they are first in line.

What happens when a time frees

A client on the waitlist for that exact time gets it first. Only a time still open after that reaches the notifications list, and nothing is held for anyone on it.

Under the switch you choose how notifications go out: sent automatically when a new time opens, or only when you send a notification from the event card. With the automatic choice, everyone signed up hears as soon as a time opens inside their own window, whatever freed it — a cancellation or a change of hours.

When you cancel a booking yourself nothing is sent automatically; the row offers Send new openings notification. When clients of yours are on the waitlist for that time, it goes to the first of them who can still book it, and no notification is offered.

Telling the list about new openings

From an event's menu or after a cancellation, Send new openings notification previews what has opened since the list last heard, how many people would be emailed, and sends when you say so. On an event with several hosts it lists every host's open times, each time once. Openings notifications never mail a time outside a subscriber's window.

The same send also reaches the people on your mailing list who chose Openings and last-minute times (see Contacts, client groups, perks and blocking): each gets every new time, once, with a link to change what they hear about, and someone already waiting for this event hears once. The preview counts them, and a checkbox leaves them out of that send.

The email app's own Unsubscribe button works on openings emails too, where the app shows one: it stops that client's notifications for the event, or, on an email that came through the mailing list, removes that one choice and keeps their others.

The day hold is retired

A full day used to offer clients a place in line for that day, and the first time to free up on it was held for the first person in line. The waitlist for a time, where a client waits for one exact time, replaced it:

• Everyone who was in line for a day now gets openings notifications for that date, until they unsubscribe or their notifications end.
• A link from an old held-time email opens the booking page, which says the time held for them has ended and links the open times.
• A booking page opened before the change that still asks for a day is refused with a sentence asking the client to reload the page and sign up for notifications instead.

A link to this article's old address, ending in openings-alerts-and-waitlists, still opens it.

Who is signed up

Contacts → Notifications lists everyone who signed up for notifications, one row per person and event: the time window they asked about, when their notifications end, when they signed up, and when they were last notified. A name opens the person's contact page. Email writes to them from your own mail app. Stop notifications asks first, then takes them off the list. The event card counts them, for example 2 people getting notifications. Contacts → Waitlist is the waitlist for a time, a separate list.