Confirm web bookings on WhatsApp

A booking made on your page used to be confirmed by email or not at all. Now it can land in WhatsApp too — if you say so.

What's new

• A new tick-box: "Also confirm bookings taken outside WhatsApp" — in Settings → Appointments → Notifications. It covers a booking made on your booking page, one you entered from the diary yourself, and one taken through the API.
• It is off to begin with, on purpose. Someone who filled in a form on your page has not messaged you, so WhatsApp will not carry an ordinary message to them — only your approved confirmation template will reach them, and that is a paid send. It is your money, so it is your choice.
• A customer who did message you today still gets the free message. The 24-hour rule decides the shape, exactly as it does for a booking made in a chat. Nothing extra to pay for that one.
• Two things still have to be set for anything to go out: the number at the top of the step, and a confirmation template with all its boxes filled.

A "view or cancel" button on the message

There is a new value you can drop into either of the diary's templates — the link to view or cancel this booking.

• In the message text it is the whole link, ready to tap.
• On a URL button it fills in the tail. WhatsApp approves a button's opening once and the message supplies only what follows it, so approve the button's link as https://<your-subdomain>.wa.cr/book/manage?t= with the variable at the end, then pick the value for the box.

One value, right in either place — you do not have to think about which.

One thing that used to go wrong

If a service asks you to approve bookings first, an out-of-hours request could be sent your "your booking is confirmed" template — telling the customer they were booked before you had agreed to anything. That no longer happens: a request waiting on you is never sent a template. The email still tells them it is a request, and your answer is its own message.