The new in-app push notifications feature allows push notifications for team members to be displayed inside the Employee command center. It lets you to stay informed about actions taken by other team members on the platform. These notifications are displayed as pop-ups across any page, ensuring you can react promptly to important updates. 

In short, this update provides:

• Improved visibility: Push notifications now appear directly in the app, making it easier to track key updates without relying solely on external push channels.
• Actionable updates: Clicking on a notification takes you directly to the relevant visit, saving time and effort.
• Customizable preferences: Enable or disable in-app notifications via User settings > Notifications or the bell icon in the sidebar.
• Seamless experience: Notifications stay visible for 8 seconds or until interacted with, allowing you to decide how and when to engage.

Availability details

• Default status: In order to not be disruptive, it will be disabled by default; you’ll need to enable it in the settings.
• Where to enable: Go to User settings > Notifications or use the bell icon in the sidebar. Notifications are currently based on your selections for the “Push” channel.

We’re thrilled to announce the latest improvements in Waitwhile 3.0, bringing you a reimagined experience with brand-new Account and Location settings! While many settings you know and love remain intact, we’ve reorganized and expanded certain areas for greater customization, ease of navigation, and efficiency.

What's new?

• Redesigned interface: More intuitive design, with enhanced functionality for seamless navigation.
• Flexible management: Improved tools for handling locations and accounts, all in one place.
• New customization and automation options: Tailor settings to fit your business workflow.

Let's dive into the details! 

Quickly find and manage settings with ease

With a streamlined layout and global search, finding the settings you need has never been easier. Additionally, the new breadcrumb navigation in the header enables quick back-and-forth movement between pages, so you can seamlessly configure your account without extra clicks.

Work faster with an intuitive design

Our upgraded design lets you edit, compare, and adjust settings in a more visually appealing and practical interface. The updated layout, with features like previews and save prompts when existing, makes managing your account settings both faster and more enjoyable.

Centralize all your customer messaging

Now, managing all waitlist and booking messages is simpler, as you find all messages in one unified location. And, we've made sure to update the editor while also adding a number of new featres!

• Message editor: Preview messages with ease, or use the new code editor for advanced customization.
• Custom sender ID: Brand your SMS messages with a unique sender name.
• Message usage report: Track and monitor sent messages to better manage your communication budget.

Boost team communication with improved notifications

Keep your team informed with flexible, customizable notification options, whether it’s via email, SMS, or now push notifications.

• More templates: Choose from a broader range of notification templates to meet specific needs.
• Additional placeholders: Personalize notifications using new placeholder options, just like for customer messages.
• Push notifications: Manage push notifications alongside SMS and email for a more comprehensive communication strategy.

Streamline configuration of your resources and services

Organize and customize your resources and services more effectively with improved layouts and added search functionality.

• Dedicated pages and search options: Access everything quickly with dedicated pages for resources and services, search bars, and additional configurations behind the Options button.
• Service metadata fields: Create up to 20 custom fields for more advanced service configurations and linking.
• New resource permissions:“Allow resources to only view guests they’re eligible to serve” is now a permission.

Added flexibility to resource categories

With the latest resource management settings, businesses can better streamline how they allocate and monitor resources. 

• Include in restricted resource mode: Choose to make a resource category visible even when acting as a resource from another category.
• Exclude from wait time estimation: Opt to include or exclude resources from affecting client wait time estimates, allowing for more accurate wait times.
• Pre-select "first/longest available": A convenient option that automatically selects a resource when creating new visits, speeding up the process.

Track and capture revenue at your locations

Introducing a new way to monitor financials with revenue tracking under Location settings. Assign revenue values to services or set fallback amounts in your currency, all viewable within the new Financials tab in Analytics. More guidance is available in our Help center.

Customize display settings across locations

Following the recent addition of separate display settings for Board view and Table view on the Visits and Calendar pages, which allow for customized layouts per view, we’re now introducing new display controls at multiple levels: Account, Location, and User.

• Account-wide settings: Apply globally across locations.
• Location-specific overrides: Adjust for unique needs at each location.
• User-specific views: Allow individual users to further refine their personal displays.

Additionally, there is now a new permission set to manage who has access to Display settings. Access it from Account settings > Roles & Permissions.

Manage your customer-facing settings easily

In the Customer journey section, you can now access and manage all public links, bookings, waitlist configurations, and custom design elements. This area also contains all registration and arrival settings, along with bot protection configurations for enhanced security.

Centralize automation settings for hands-off efficiency

All automation rules—such as syncing bookings to waitlists, setting expiration rules, and managing waitlist prioritization—are now located in one place, reducing manual effort and enabling more focus on direct customer interactions.

And there’s more to come - stay tuned!

Easily translate services, resources, and input fields

A much-requested feature, we are now introducing the ability to super easily localize the names of your services, resources, and custom input fields! This lets you translate the name, display name, descriptions, options, default values, and placeholders for each.

Access account-wide settings in Account overview

Account settings like billing, permissions, and security have been moved from Location settings to the Account overview section. Now, you’ll have a clearer view of these settings and access everything from one place.

• Public page settings: Manage location directory and waitlist overview.
• Display settings defaults: Set account-wide default values.
• Expanded security options: IP safelisting and data anonymization controls have been added under Security.

Add theming to account-wide public pages

We’ve implemented the ability to customize your Location directory (previously Public locations) and Waitlist overview (previously Public waitlists). Update header, colors, background, buttons and much more! 

Additionally, it is now possible to apply account level theme settings to individual locations.

We’re committed to continually improving your experience with even more updates on the way!

These enhancements introduce a "Visit type" filter in both the Analytics and Completed views, each designed for specific use cases. In Analytics, the filter helps users analyze visit data by various types (Booking, Waitlist, Waitlisted Booking, and more) to uncover insights across visit categories. In Completed views, the filter simplifies daily operations by allowing staff to quickly sort visits by their current type—Bookings, Waitlist, or Any—making it easier to perform tailored follow-up actions.

Why this matters:

• In-depth insights in Analytics: Filter by specific visit types (like Booking, Waitlist, or Direct Completed) to analyze trends, identify popular visit types, and make data-driven decisions based on visit type categories.
• Real-time management of Completed visits: Simplify day-to-day operations by filtering visits based on their active status (Waitlist or Bookings) to streamline follow-ups and improve service management.
• Enhanced customization: Each filter is tailored to the needs of its view, ensuring analytics insights and operational tasks are easy to access and act upon.

This new feature provides a seamless way for guests to convert their waitlist position into a booking. It ensures that guests who may find the wait too long can schedule an appointment instead of leaving, thus minimizing the risk of losing potential customers. 

It lets you:

• Easily convert waitlisted visits to bookings directly from the waitlist status page, retaining all previously entered information.
• Show a popup modal that appears when guests try to leave the waitlist, offering them the option to schedule an appointment, reducing unnecessary walkaways.

This feature is available for users who have both waitlist and booking services activated, ensuring a seamless experience across different functionalities.

It is available to users on all plans, and you can activate it by going to Settings > Public > Registration > Customization > Waitlist > Status page.

To read more about it, check out Convert a waitlisted visit to a booking.

The new "Connecting invited users to resources" feature introduces a searchable dropdown list in the "Invite new user" form, allowing easy connection of users to specific resources. It will make it simpler for administrators to assign resources and appropriate locations to new users. 

This means that you can:

• Connect a new user to a resource directly during the invitation process, ensuring they have access to the necessary resources immediately.
• Automatically assign appropriate locations to users when connected to a resource, reducing manual steps and potential error.
• Future updates will include the ability to connect resources when editing existing users, enhancing flexibility in user management.

This feature is available to users on all plans (with Account overview enabled), and you can use it by going to the Account overview > Users > Invite and selecting "Connect to Resource."

The improved visit notification banners provide clearer and more detailed information for new visits, waitlist additions, and no-shows. This enhancement benefits staff by making it easier to manage and relay visit information. 

With the updated banners, you can:

• Clearly see when a new visit is created, now with the visitor's name displayed.
• Access visit details directly through a hyperlink, which is especially useful for managing long lists of visits.
• Understand when a visit is marked as a no-show with a specific message, instead of a generic completion message.

The new filtering feature on the Users page in Account overview simplifies the process with a single dropdown menu for selecting roles, labels, or locations. It will make it easier for administrators to manage users efficiently. 

This means that you can:

• Easily leverage our new Labels feature, selecting a label name and multiple label values to filter users precisely.
• Filter by roles to manage specific groups of users, choosing one or multiple roles as needed.
• Filter by locations to see users in specific areas, selecting one or multiple locations.

This enhanced functionality allows for granular filtering and targeted bulk actions, such as assigning roles or locations, providing a streamlined and efficient user management experience.

It is available to all users on Account overview, and you can try it by going to the Users page in Account overview.

Account overview is an added hierarchical layer in the Waitwhile platform, allowing you to oversee thousands of locations, including their data and users, quickly and effortlessly. 

With Account overview, you can: 

• Manage thousands of locations from a single dashboard, available on both desktop and mobile, reducing the need for multiple accounts.
• Gain critical insights across locations or regions with analytics and reports, enabling informed decision-making to enhance operational effectiveness across your locations.
• Ensure user-specific access to appropriate tools and information, clarifying the differentiation between admin and staff experiences and enhancing overall productivity.

Account overview is being rolled out to current users during the summer of 2024. 

Account overview includes Locations, a page designed to quicken and refine your management of multiple locations. 

Within Locations, you can: 

• View real-time key metrics for each location at a glance, helping to quickly identify performance trends and operational bottlenecks.
• Add new locations effortlessly with intuitive controls, designed for efficiency.
• Customize views with robust filtering and sorting options, tailoring the dashboard to meet your specific management needs.

To see more about Locations in Account overview, see Locations page overview.

The custom labels feature in Account overview improves how you manage your locations by allowing flexible tagging and grouping. 

This means that you can:

• Label and categorize locations by regions, districts, use cases, or any other organizational criteria, making it easy to manage locations in a way that fits your business structure.
• Filter, sort, and group locations based on labels, closely aligning with your business’s organizational hierarchy and enhancing the efficiency of accessing and analyzing location-specific information.
• Improve analytics and user management functions by applying these custom labels, optimizing your administrative workflow.

To learn more about how to set up and leverage labels, see Managing labels.