 Mark Demicoli | Mark Demicoli 15 March 2010 07:51:24 PMThe recent SMS outage to North American destinations proved to be a major inconvenience to many customers. In this post, I wish to explain what happened and what we've now done to prevent such a long outage from happening again. What happened? Some two weeks ago, a small minority of Clickatell's customers engaged in sending thousands of inappropriate SMS messages, resulting in Clickatell being banned from many major telecommunications networks. The nature of the problem was so severe, that they are still struggling to reconnect to all major networks. This has taught them a lesson, and us likewise. High in our awareness is the importance of the trouble-free availability of ClickBook.net to our customers. In our online help, we make it clear that there are always risks associated with using any technology, however some basic diligence goes long to outweigh the risks with the many benefits. A serious problem with your internet connection, for example, would mean that you could not access your schedule in a timely manner. Being fully aware of this, we have a feature that sends you a daily email with your forthcoming appointments. This is one measure that helps to mitigate such outages. In addition, we always recommend that customers download their appointments on a regular basis, via the Account tab. However, even these two measures could not have prevented the SMS outage which was completely out of our control. What we've done. While we never expected such a long outage from our SMS provider, the experience has been an important one, and we have taken steps to increase reliability in future. As a result of this event, we have now engaged the services of a second SMS provider, to whom we can switch in a moment's notice, should this sort of thing happen ever again. In addition, we are now working on an automatic detection system which will inform customers by email when SMS messages are not delivered. That way, the system will give you the opportunity to contact customers manually (by phone or SMS) to remind them of their appointments. Details of this measure will be announced shortly. To reimburse the costs of undelivered messages, we have also stopped deducting SMS credits from all accounts for a two week period from March 18. Mark Demicoli 16 February 2010 05:17:00 AMIn his article "Online booking systems the sleeping giant for SMEs" Craig Reardon admits that his 6-year-old prediction of an Online Scheduling boom was 'wrong'. With contemporary focus largely on the darlings of IT that seem to sprout overnight like rare mushrooms, we think his prediction was a little premature, but hardly wrong. Since ClickBook's inception, quite a number of new startups have smelt the distant aroma of high-tech coffee and jumped on the bandwagon. To date, the fungi don't seem to have really sprouted. Many funded startups have been left scratching their heads and dusting off their business plans. As many of you reading this now probably realise, there is indeed a revolutionary change to day-to-day business for those who embrace the technology fully, but to date, the revolution itself has been rather subdued. Why hasn't online scheduling really hit the streets? We think there are number of key factors which will drive more of an evolutionary shift rather than one of a revolutionary nature. Key to this shift is the change in mentality that is to a great extent the domain of the always-online, privacy-shirking Gen-Y youngsters who are just now starting to become professionals. This generation and their progeny do and will demand absolute convenience in the years to come. Just like booking flights and internet banking, a human interaction is generally unnecessary and time consuming for many appointment-based services. A key factor in this mentality is the 'cloud' of information they now maintain and rely upon which is accessible all the time and from anywhere. Since email's heyday, there has been a progressive shift into 'the cloud' as people throw away physical records such as the appointment diary. We have no doubt that this trend will become permanent and accelerate in the next few years. So where is ClickBook now? The last 6 months have seen the first confirmed trend toward the real grass-roots takeup that we've been working toward. A real traction that is driven entirely by word-of-mouth, that Holy Grail of product marketing. According to Alexa.com, the important "Reach" measurement for ClickBook.net shows a beautiful trend developing:
 Evolution or Revolution? In Hindsight, that good old reliable foe of great visions, we see a revolution evolving. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen! Mark Demicoli 1 February 2010 09:48:27 PMWell, here we are well into the beginning of 2010, can you believe it? According to Arthur C. Clarke ( 2001), we were supposed to be running around in space eating faux caviar about 9 years ago. Unfortunately, most of us are still here on mother earth cutting hair, analysing peoples heads, training dogs, writing amazing online booking systems (!) and every other service under the sun. That's exactly why here at ClickBook, we're not building space capsules, but the most advanced online booking system in the world, Mars and even Jupiter (feel free to dispute that in the comments). As you may have noticed if you are a regular user, we've been quietly introducing new features to make appointment management a little easier. The Status box (normally the green "Confirmed" box) is now a context-sensitive entry-point to important tools available for that appointment (sorry about the geek-speak). Wherever you see the appointment status, you can click and perform key functions. These include: - Re-assigning appointments or TimeBlocks to other staff or resources - Copying TimeBlocks to other staff or resources - Cancelling appointments - Updating custom statuses Have we missed anything important? Let us know!  Mark Demicoli 23 December 2009 11:10:06 PMFirst of all, seasons greetings and we hope you've all had a stellar year, as we most certainly have. As usual, we've been quietly beavering away back here coming up with new features, and this year we've got a Christmas treat for our loyal fans. For years, ClickBook has provided your business with an effective booking system that provides many many benefits to your day-to-day operations. One of the less tangible benefits is the impression of professionalism it gives to your customers. However, the missing link that seamlessly ties ClickBook to your website and directory listings has long been missing, and we're pleased to say that it's finally here. The Book Now button or link will now open a mini window over the top of your website, so that appointments can be made without ever leaving your site. A recent forum post from Paul De Roo spurred us into action. A sense of humor goes a long way around here. Thanks Paul, and you don't have to look like a "tight @rse" any longer! To make it happen on your site, you will need to update the code that you had previously added to your pages. The How To on this follows. While signed-in to your ClickBook Booking Center, click on the Help tab and locate the instructions at the very bottom. There are two options, the Book Now button or a "Schedule an appointment" link. If you opt for the latter, you can alter the link text to your liking by modifying the part of the code after "title=" Here's what it looks like. Best wishes for the festive season from the growing ClickBook Team!  Mark Demicoli 4 December 2009 12:01:54 AM The all new Board admiring the Constitution at their first board meeting. From left :- Yours Truly, Reno Demicoli (32 years banking & risk management) and Michael Gaylard (35 years commercial law). Behind the camera is Adrian Cran of Corporate Outcomes Group - 'chief whip' of all things corporate and not a bad cameraman either. Mark Demicoli 15 November 2009 06:30:19 AMUPDATE: 4 New Icons Added  Thanks Steve for the contribution.
You asked for it! ClickBook now allows you to create custom statuses with icons, and mark appointments directly from the main view by clicking on the status..  By default there are three statuses - Paid, Not Paid and No Show. You can select as many as you like for each booking. These statuses do not affect the main status, they are for your record only. To add or change statuses, visit your Settings tab and locate the Custom Statuses section.  Also included in this update, the Appointment report now includes two new columns for each appointment: Location and Custom Statuses. Mark Demicoli 11 November 2009 11:23:14 AMClickBook now collects customer address details for services that are marked as being "Client Site / Mobile". The Client Address for such bookings is included in all notifications, reminders and calendar feeds (iCal). Custom location can also be marked to collect the Client Address. This feature allows more flexibility for service providers that offer mobile services in different districts depending on the day. In order to achieve this, you must create multiple custom locations with names that are appropriate to the district (eg. "Melbourne Metropolitan Area" and "Mornington Peninsula"). Then, instead of selecting "Customer Site/Mobile" in the service locations, you select the appropriate custom locations. As with other details in Client Files, when Clients update address details in their profiles, address details are also updated in your Client Files.
Tip: In the Weekly Availability preferences, it's important to select the "+Mobile" tickbox on days that you wish to provide Mobile services. Mark Demicoli 28 September 2009 09:53:09 AM ClickBook now supports Google Calendar for calendar subscription. Google Calendar does not support password authentication for calendar subscriptions, which is why we have thus far held off on this feature, given the inherent risks. To overcome the problem, the address given to you holds a special key which must not ever be shared, except with the Google Calendar interface as follows:
1. From your Account tab, select the address located in the Google Calendar section and copy. 
2. Open your Google Calendar window and select Add by URL after selecting "Add" from the Other calendars section. 
3. In the URL box (stands for Universal Resource Locator), paste your copied URL, then click Add Calendar. DO NOT select "Make the calendar publicly available". 
4. Refresh your screen, and you should see your ClickBook calendar appear in Google Calendar.
TIP: This new method allows you to add multiple ClickBook calendars to your Google Calendar, and other programs including Microsoft Outlook. For example, if you have multiple staff, you can access each staff member's profile from the Staff tab and copy their URL, then add each one to Google Calendar using the procedure outlined above! For Outlook users, a special link is provided in the same section called "Subscribe with Microsoft Outlook 2007 (no password protection)". Mark Demicoli 25 August 2009 07:02:15 PM Imagine changing your name just for a competition? You don't have to imagine far when you're a ClickBook service provider. One thing we've noticed about personal service providers is that they like having cute business names. Here at ClickBook, we're as guilty of the cute business movement as anyone else, with our Demo Site business "All Hands Massage" - with all hands on deck! While no one ever did a study on how a business name effects the clientelle (or maybe they did?), we're sure that customers smile when they have to say something silly. This is definitely a boon for business, we think. So here is your chance to win 1000 SMS Credits and countless invitations to speak at cute business conferences around the world. All you need to do is submit your entry via the Contact Us form. We want to know when and how you came up with the name!  Monkey Business Grooming: Amazon Office |
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