As we previously mentioned on our blog in Pinpoint’s 2019 Roadmap article, the newest plugin version comes with a collection of articles with useful information about version 3.0 features. Each article will describe the calendar’s new concepts, functionalities, extensions, and updates.


In today's article, we will talk about how easy it is to set Availability or Schedule time periods in Pinpoint Booking System.


This functionality can be applied to any component in the plugin (calendar extensions, custom prices, conditions, etc) with very few exceptions.



What’s the difference between Availability & Schedule time periods?


Let’s take this example:


A Summer music festival offers ”early bird tickets” in January.

This means that in January you can buy a reduced ticket for a time period in the Summer. To accomplish this, the festival owner can set a custom price for the availability period in the Summer, and will schedule it to apply only to tickets bought in January.


Based on the booking request:


  • A component that has Availability set, can be applied if the booking request is made for the specified time frame.
  • A component that has Schedule set, can be applied if the booking request is made during the schedule’s time frame.


What are the benefits of this feature?


With the Availability & Schedule features you create simple or complex customizations and will help you to create a long term plan for your business, automate the transition between configured options or simply limit or grant access over time.



Setting up Availability & Schedule


The interface is very easy to use and intuitive. The new modern and responsive design offers a clear visualization of your configuration.


In order to set Availability or Schedule for a component you need to create a time period. You can add days or hours intervals to each time period. You can have multiple time periods where you can combine different days intervals with different hours intervals.



Setting up days intervals


Setting up days intervalsSetting up days intervals

When you create a new time period, the days are unavailable by default. This is deliberate, to force you to set the custom intervals.


To make this process easier, we added a new modern and user-friendly calendar tool for days intervals. When you want to create days intervals, the calendar will open and will give you the option to pick the dates.


We tried to make it really easy to use so we divided it into the following sections:


  1. The filters - let you choose what months or years you want to view (or clear any existing filters already selected).
  2. The months list - it is used for selection. You can select an entire month, all the days of the same kind from a month (for instance all Sundays) or each day individually.

The time intervals can be set for up to 5 years. After you make a selection, the months and years that have at least one day available will be highlighted with green. If you want to edit the days intervals, when you return, the filters will display the previous selected dates.



Setting up hours intervals


Setting up hours intervalsSetting up hours intervals

Setting hours intervals will be effortless as you won't have to manually introduce each one of them.


After you add your first hours interval, a default interval from 00:00 to 23:59 will be created. 23:59 is the end of the day.


If you want to add more hours intervals, they will be set in chronological order. Select the start and the end hour to change it. By default, the next interval you create starts at the end of the last interval created.


The hours will be available only for the days that are selected.



We hope you enjoy these new features and our article will help you in preparing to work with the new plugin version. To stay updated to our new features subscribe to our newsletter. If you have any questions you can contact us here.