General Settings ⚙️

General Settings are designed so you can configure basic settings that will be applied throughout the whole application. Currently, these settings are divided into four sections:

1. Appointment Settings (section 1)
   
2. Customer Settings
3. Appointment Settings (section 2)
4. Global Settings

Appointment Settings (section 1)

At the top, there’s the first section of Appointment Settings, and there, you can configure the default time slot step and choose the logic of the time slot step that will be applied to all appointments:

Default Time Slot Step – This is the time slot that will be applied to all durations in the application (employee’s working hours and special days, service duration, buffer time duration, extras duration). It’s set to 30 minutes by default, but you can change it, of course.

The important thing to note about the Default Time Slot Step is that all durations you want to create in Trafft need to be dividable by this number. For example, if you want a service that will last 2 hours, but create buffer times that will last 5 minutes, the Default Time Slot Step needs to be set to “5 minutes”.

Use service duration as booking time slot – If this option is disabled, the Default Time Slot Step will offer your customers the possibility to book an appointment in the defined increments. For example, if you configure the default time slot step to be 5 minutes, and your service lasts 1 hour, the offered time slots will be 09:00 – 10:00; 09:05 – 10:05; 09:10 – 10:10, and so on. Once a customer books an appointment, the duration of the service will block the surrounding times so if a customer books an appointment at 09:55, the slots before and one hour after this time slot will be blocked because there’s a 1-hour-long service blocking them.

If this option is enabled, regardless of the Default Time Slot Step, the duration of the appointment (service duration + extra durations) will determine available time slots. For example, if the service lasts 1 hour, and the extra lasts 30 minutes, the appointment duration will be 1.5 hours. If the employee works from 09:00 – 17:00, the offered time slots will be from 09:00 – 10:30, from 10:30 – 12:00, and so on – so the duration of the appointment will define offered time slots on the front-end. With this option enabled, you’ll also be able to check the “Add buffer time to the duration of the service when showing time slots” option, which will add the buffer times (if you configured them) to the duration mentioned above. So, if there’s a buffer time of 30 minutes added to the example above, the duration won’t be 1.5 hours, but 2 hours instead. This means that the offered time slots will be from 09:00 – 11:00, from 11:00 – 13:00, and so on.

Customer Settings

In Customer Settings, you can define if the users will see (or need to enter) their email and their phone number. On top of that, you can also ask them why they are canceling the appointment.

Show Email field on the booking form – Enabling this option, your customers will be able to leave their email addresses while they are booking an appointment.

Show Phone Number field on the booking form – If this option is enabled, your customers will be able to enter their phone number while booking an appointment.

Ask customer about reason when cancelling an appointment – Your customers can cancel their appointments, and it’s up to you to choose whether they’ll need to provide the cancelation reason while they are doing that. Enabling this option allows you to collect feedback on why an appointment has been canceled.

Each of these options has the Mandatory checkbox, so you can configure the form in a way that customers can’t complete the booking process unless they enter their email and/or phone number. Also, if you enable the Mandatory option for the reason for cancelation – they won’t be able to cancel the appointment unless they provide the reason.

Appointment Settings (section 2)

The following options will apply to all appointments in Trafft.

Default Appointment Status – This is the status in which all appointments will be scheduled. By default, it is set to Approved, which means that all appointments will be made with the approved status. If you configure email/sms/WhatsApp notifications, this status will automatically trigger the “Appointment Approved” notification for both customers and employees. Changing the status to Pending will require all appointments to be approved manually by the site admin/superadmin or the employee assigned to the appointment.

Minimum time required before booking – You can configure a time before the appointment during which customers will not be able to book. If, for example, you set it to be “1 day“, your customers will not be able to schedule an appointment within the next 24 hours (from the time they are viewing your Booking Website). By default, this is set to “Disabled”, which means that customers will be able to book the appointment at any time, even 5 minutes before it’s scheduled to start.

Minimum time required before canceling – Sometimes we just can’t allow customers to cancel at short notice and this option allows you to set a time before an appointment in which customers will not be able to cancel the appointment. If, for example, you set it to be “2 hours“, your customers will not be able to cancel an appointment that is scheduled to start within the next 2 hours. By default, this is set to “Disabled”, which means that customers will be able to cancel the appointment at any time, even 5 minutes before it’s scheduled to start.

Minimum time required before rescheduling – Similar to not being able to cancel on short notice, you may want to prevent your customers from being able to reschedule on short notice. This option allows you to set a time before an appointment in which customers will not be able to reschedule the appointment. If, for example, you set it to be “1 hour“, your customers will not be able to reschedule an appointment scheduled within the next hour. By default, this is set to “Disabled”, which means that customers will be able to reschedule the appointment at any time, even 5 minutes before it’s scheduled to start.

Period available for booking in advance – This option allows you to set the number of days in the future when a customer will be able to book. By default, it is set to 365 days which means that customers will be able to book appointments in the next 365 days. If you don’t want to allow them to book so long in the future from today’s date simply change it to a smaller number that suits your needs.

Global Settings

These settings refer to the formats you’re accustomed to using and the time zone your business is in.

Date Format – Trafft offers a few date formats used across the globe, so simply choose the format that’s most suitable for you and your customers.

Time Format – Similar to the date format, we’ve added a few options to configure the time format, so whether you’re using a 12-hour format or a 24-hour format, just select your preferred one from the drop-down.

Time Zone – Here, you need to select the time zone in which your business is. This time zone will be applied to all your employees and it helps businesses that operate in a single time zone to allow bookings at proper times.

Your customers can see the time slots in their time zone, but this is configured in the Customize section, so we’ll cover that in a different article.

First Day of Week – This option allows you to configure the first working day in the week. By default, it is set to Monday but you can easily select any day of the week. If you change this, the calendar will be shown according to this setting, showing that day as the first day of the week.

Default Phone Country Code – Here, you can set the default phone country code used in your country. The code that you choose will be applied throughout the application.