SMS "OK" to Confirm Bookings

Created by Martin Parkinson, Modified on Fri, 12 Apr at 9:09 AM by Graeme Orchard

A new feature has been added to allow workers to confirm their acceptance of a booking by SMS. If the message "OK#" is received in an SMS reply, then the system will set the status of a booking to a specific value (e.g. 'Accepted'). It is also possible to send "NO#" to reject a booking, which will set it to a different status (e.g. Rejected)

# is the Day which is being accepted. (e.g. OK12 would indicate accepting a booking on 12th of the month.)

Note: When sending the reply, if the day specified is prior to the day on which the reply is received, then the date is treated as being the following month.

IMPORTANT - This feature only allows users to accept a SINGLE DAY. If they are booked for a 3-day booking (Mon, Tue, Wed) then they would need to send 3 texts back, 1 for each day

SETUP

Parameters involved in this feature:

PARAMETER	DECRIPTION
TEMPS, Text(14)	This is used to specify the words used to reply to an SMS text to accept or reject a booking. Usually set to OK/NO
TEMPS, Integer (12)	Used to tell the system ho many days ahead to check (e.g. If set to 1 the system ill check for a booking tomorrow - IE 1 day ahead) - if no booking i found it will then also check 'today'.

Go to Maintenance > Setup > Parameters.

Select Parameter TEMPS, Text(14) and set the Statuses to which bookings will be set for OK/NO. (Valid values are Z1, Z2....Z9)

Example: Setting the parameter to Z3/Z8 would set the status to Z3 for "OK" and Z8 for "NO"

i.e. When a temp sends back the word "OK" or "NO" to a booking text, the system will set the relevant booking to the status specified by this parameter. (If the parameter is left as <blank> then the feature is not active.)

NOTE: From v1.00.21.199 or later a new parameter has been introduced TEMPS, Integer(12) - this controls how many days ahead the system looks.

USAGE

You can send an SMS message to a worker with details of their booking for a particular day. In the message you can ask them to reply with OK# if they accept this booking. (Where # is the date of the Booking/Shift)
(e.g. OK12 to accept a booking for 12th)

When the reply containing the text 'OK12' is received, the system will look for a bookings for that worker which occurs on the day specified by the number and update the status.

If there are multiple bookings on the same day, the reply will update the one which occurs first. (A second message of OK# for the same day would update the second booking.)

IF a worker sends a reply of simply "OK" (i.e. With no the day specified) the system will first check for a booking 'Tomorrow' (i.e. The day after the reply is received). If there are no bookings tomorrow, then it will look on the day the reply is received, and will set the status of that booking to whatever was specified in TEMPS,Text(14).

EXAMPLE 1

Doris Orchard is booked to work on Thur 4th March.
She is sent an SMS on Wed 3rd March asking if she wishes to work on Thur 4th.

If Doris sends a reply of OK on 3rd March, then the system will set the status of the booking on 4th March to "Z1" (which in this case has been set to mean 'OK'd by Text')

EXAMPLE 2

It is the 18th Feb and Mark Wilkins sends an SMS reply of "OK10"
Since it is already past 10th Feb, the system looks for bookings dated 10th March and will set the status to Confirmed (Z1), if one is found.

EXAMPLE 3

On 7th Jan Julie Smith sends an SMS reply of "OK16"
On 16th Jan Julie has two bookings - One from 09:00-13:00 and ABC Supplies, and another at XYZ Products from 15:30-17:30

The system will update the first of these bookings (i.e. ABC Supplies 09:00-13:00) to show it has been accepted/confirmed.

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