The new Bookings calendar has now been made default for everyone and we've sunset the old calendar. This allows us to put all effort into improving the new calendar.

We've taken your feedback into account and rebuilt it from the ground up to look better, have fewer issues, and give you a lot more flexibility. You can now: 

• Book times outside of normal business hours.
• Schedule odd hours and overlapping time slots.
• Customize the color of your slots based on your Services and Resources.
• Clearly show the status for your bookings (e.g. Arrived, Canceled, Delayed).
• For a full list of updates, check out this article.

-> Check out your new Bookings calendar

Never miss a guest's message again! You can now opt to receive an Email or Push Notification each time your location receives an incoming message from a guest. You’ll be notified on the chosen channels when a customer responds to a message. 

-> Start getting notifications now

Our new Notes feature will make Waitwhile a little more like a CRM, which has been a popular feature request! 

• You’ll now have a “Notes” tab in the action drawer where you can add, edit, and delete Notes for your guests.
• Each visit and customer can now have multiple Notes. You'll see the latest note directly in the waitlist.
• Notes are saved between visits so when a repeat customer is added to the waitlist or bookings, you’ll see their previous Notes.

We hope this improvement will allow you to get to know your customers and their experience better, allowing you to serve them in a more personal manner!

-> Add your first Note

While Waitwhile has continued to improve over the years, many of you have noticed that our “Settings'' haven't kept up with the times. We’ve heard your feedback and we’re excited for you to see what we’ve been working on!

Going live on March 1, we’ll be launching a streamlined version of the Settings pages 🎉 

Check out this preview:

Your new and improved settings will still allow for all the same functionalities as before, the layout will just be cleaner and more intuitive. Plus, there are some exciting new features you can now use like:

• User Roles & Permissions: You now have the ability to create and modify User Roles in your Waitwhile Account, giving the right amount of access to the right employees.
• Saved Replies: You’ll be able to speed up your response times by creating ‘Saved Replies’ for your most common SMS communications with customers. 
• Team Notifications: You can now change the notifications that is sent to your team to stay informed when there are changed in your waitlist or bookings
  
• New Status Tags: You can now view and manage what Status tags you use to tag your customers with.
• Improved Arrivals: Want to give your Guests the ability to check themselves in when they arrive? You’ll be able to give them this ability both on a kiosk/tablet as well as general webpage.

Have questions about this change? We’re here to support you as you get used to the new Settings. Please reach out at any time with questions or visit help.waitwhile.com (updated articles launching 3/1).

-> Chat with support at support@waitwhile.com 

Waitwhile lets your customers wait from anywhere using their smart device. Keeping it old school with pen and paper for now? We've diversified our product offering for you. Now you can design, customize, and print a Waitwhile waitlist for free.

Ready to try it out? Just visit waitwhile.com/tools/waitlist-template and you can either start from scratch and create a brand new waitlist with up to 10 custom fields, or choose an existing template that fits your industry. 

Next, make your waitlist look like your business by choosing colors and adding your logo. Preview, print, and start waitlisting! In a more organized fashion 😎

->Customize and print your waitlist

We have a new feature update you're going to love! Your locations are an important part of your public profile, allowing your customers flexibility and convenience. Now with more robust metrics and insights per location under the Locations Overview, you'll more easily be able to gain important knowledge into how your customers are interacting with your different locations. 

You will now be able to easily view:

• The number of locations a user has access to 
• If location is open 
• If location is full 
• When location was last active 
• The number of bookings today
• If the capacity is full 

Your new Messages inbox is a great place to view all your customer messages in one place. At a glance, you can see how many of the messages are unread by your staff in the left-hand Unread Counter. However, if you’ve received a lot of messages and you want to reset your Unread Counter, you can now mark all the messages as “read” with a click of a button!

-> Check out your messages

We have an exciting new improvement you're going to love! You may recognize this screen grab of how your messages in the Waitwhile app have looked to date:

Outgoing and incoming messages were all shown in one place, which while effective, was not optimal. You now have the option to toggle between "Incoming," "Outgoing," and "All" so you can more successfully communicate with your customers.

Effective communication can set your business apart from the competition, and we're committed to continuously improving so you can too.

-> Manage your messages

Many that use Waitwhile to manage both their waitlist and appointments love our feature to sync bookings into the waitlist. Enabling this will move upcoming bookings into the waitlist to "merge" them with the walk-in guests on the waitlist. This way your staff always know who to serve next!

We've now added more options for how early you want your bookings to show up in your waitlist. For example, you can set it to sync 2 hours before the booking time so that a booking at 2pm will show up in the waitlist at noon. Or set it to dynamically show up in the waitlist based on the current wait time. Choice is yours!

-> Enable and configure this under Booking Settings > Waitlist Sync

Need a more precise picture of your business' wait times? You got it! We've updated your Analytics section to display minutes and seconds so you can get the clearest possible picture of your customer experience. We have a feeling that wait time is only going to improve from here on out.