Tutorial: Configuring the presentation of your offer and the reservation process (4 / 5)

Tutorial Table of Contents

part 1: Resource presentation in advanced integration
part 2: Two ways of presenting your resources
part 3: The planyo plugin
part 4: Adding widgets
part 5: Customizing the look of the resource listing and details

Once you have the plugin integrated, you will often want to add the availability preview (calendar) widget so that the customer can quickly check through the available times without the need to do availability search. The calendar previews can be (and often are by default) added to the different pages shown by the plugin (such as the resource list, resource details and reservation form). Still, you may want to add the availability preview to a different page or pages on your website. This is what the widgets are for. They are simple objects which are always connected to the plugin. You do this connection when you get the HTML code for the widget to be copied/pasted on your page. In the widget options, you need to specify the full URL of the page where you added the planyo plugin. This way the widget knows where to send the visitor so they can continue with the reservation process.

There are many types of calendar previews, some will work better for your specific needs than others. Some can include multiple resources, others only show availability for a single resource. All calendar previews are also highly customizable, including the possibility to use your own CSS stylesheet (which is needed because calendar preview, unlike the plugin itself, is embedded into an IFRAME). Please see Q173 for the details.

Planyo also lets you easily embed a number of other useful widgets:

• Simple 'make reservation' link -- so you can easily get the URL of the reservation page for any resource
• Availability search box -- this is a small search box which can be customized by you with search criteria etc. Note that even if your plugin is configured to show the resource list as the default view, when the search box widget is submitted, the visitor sees the search results on your plugin page instead of the resource listing.
• Show location on map -- you can show all your resources or a single one on a google map. Please note that you also can customize the templates so that clicking on a marker shows the resource content specified by you (e.g. images/description)
• Reservation details form -- this is a form which lets your customers fill out their reservation ID and email address in order to open the reservation details on the plugin page. This will show updated reservation status and, if you decide to add such options in your template, can include links to modify the reservation or cancel it.

Continue to part 5 (Customizing the look of the resource listing and details) >>