Schedules

Schedules can be contained within content items. There are macros for displaying all O3 things within content items - so you can format them however you like. This means you can put text and formatting around a schedule, like we've done on the demo website with the 'Audio-Room Bookings' example.

You can define a set of Opening Hours for your business in the Settings. If these are defined, and the schedule is set the 'Use Opening Hours', then an additional parameter is available to your container: 'isopen' - which takes the values 'Y' or 'N'. You can use this to display different things if the store is open or closed using the O3IF macro.

O3 does not restrict placing events outside opening hours - it just gives you the mechanism to not give the option (i.e. you don't show the 'Book' button).

Settings

The settings are listed under 'Scheduler'. The sections are:

1. Displaying Schedules - Text / Headings and Containers.
2. Updating Schedules - Create, Update and Delete forms for Schedules & Events. Event Approve form. Schedule Add permissions. Default Schedule Status.
3. Default View - This defines the default start & end times, & the interval duration for displaying schedules.
4. Opening Hours - This info can be used to restrict when events may be placed - i.e. only when the business is open.

Creating Schedules

You can create schedules in the Schedules manager, or from the front end using a Create Schedule form.

In addition, schedules can be created automatically when a product is purchased - if the appropriate Create Options are set in the product definition. This is how you create booking schedules for premium list items. In this case the schedule can be copied from a template - so you can set the correct defaults, permissions etc on the schedule prior to your customer getting their hands on it.

Updating Schedules

Schedules can be updated from the front end using an Update Schedule form. You can opt to give your users access to as many of the fields as you want - you just include them in the update form. If fields aren't included in the form, they don't get updated. Note, it's not possible to blank any fields from the front-end!

Commonly, access to the Schedule Start & End times, and the Interval are required by users, although you can define a type for the schedule, and hence add any type-data fields that you want to a schedule.

Schedules can be deleted and approved, just like items and event, from the front-end - using the forms defined in the settings.

Events

Events must belong to schedules. They can be added and deleted from schedules, and they can be updated, and approved. You can define the default Status for events in the settings & if set to 'Pending' you can then have an 'Approval' step to confirm the event. This approval can be done by whoever has the permission to do it - as defined in the Schedule.

Events can be added from the front end using a Create Event form. This is defined in the settings, and can be overridden in the CREATE-EVENT# macro you use to show the form. This macro appears in the Interval section of the Schedule container and is replaced by the Create Event form...

If the schedule is set to allow 'Multiple Bookings in the same interval - the Create Event form is always displayed by the CREATE-EVENT# macro, else nothing is displayed if the interval already contains an event.

When events are added to a schedule, or changed, you can opt to send out notification emails to the schedule and event creators. This is set up in the Schedules Manager.

Important Note: When admins change events and schedules - no emails are sent out!

When updating, you can opt to give your users access to as many of the fields as you want - you just include them in the update form. If fields aren't included in the form, they don't get updated. Note, it's not possible to blank any fields from the front-end! See Appendix C for more info on actions.

Schedule Options

There are quite a few options for schedules:

Functions

• show_schedule(schedule, container). Container is optional.
• show_schedules(namelike, categorylike, type, starttime, endtime, ownerlike, container, statuslike, incols).
  • All parameters are optional
  • namelike - A case-insensitive regular expression matching the item name (i.e. 'exactname' or 'part' or 'item1|item2|item3' etc)
  • categorylike - A case-insensitive regular expression matching the item category.
  • ownerlike - A regular expression matching the item creator.
  • type - A single type, or a list of pipe-delimited types (i.e. 'type1|type2...').
  • starttime - A Select schedules which start after this date/time.
  • endtime - A Select schedules which end before this date/time.
  • order - a list of columns to order the results by. Can include columns for the item's Type! (i.e. 'it_type ASC, it_type DESC, size')
  • typedata - an SQL expression to be included in the WHERE clause specifying Type data. (i.e. 'AND size>100 AND color=`blue`')
  • container - the container the results should be displayed in.
  • incols - the number of columns to show the list in (overrides the default set for the container)

Container

The schedule container is the most complex of O3's containers because it has to handle lines of intervals - with lines of events within them.

To do this it uses 3 special delimiters...

• #LINE# - delimits the INTERVAL part of the container - i.e. the bit which must be repeated for each interval
• #EVENT# - delimits the EVENTs - i.e. the bit which must be repeated for each event
• #EVTITLE# - delimits the event titles. This is then displayed once in each interval as the titles for the events list. It's only shown in intervals with events.

Macros which are relevant to the EVENT are only processed within the #EVENT# delimiters. If you put macros outside their area of context - they will not be parsed. This applies to INTERVALS as well.

This is an example schedule container:

DATE-FORMAT%M-%d %Y %H:%i:%s#
<!-- Bookings Schedule -->
<table width='100%'>
<tr><th colspan=3>
  <h2>Schedule For O3VARit_title#<br>
    <span style='font-size:xx-small'>
    <a href='catalog.php?iitm=O3VARit_name#'>(O3VARit_name#)</a><br>
    Displaying: INT-VISIBLEs (PG-START-PG-END)<br>
    UPDATE-SCHEDULE
    </span>
  </h2>
</th></tr>
<tr class=heading>
  <th style='background:#EEF; text-align:center'>Start Date</th>
  <th style='background:#EEF; text-align:center'>End Date</th>
  <th style='background:#EEF; text-align:center'>Bookings</th>
</tr>
#LINE#
<tr style='background:ROWCOLOR'>
  <th style='font-size:xx-small'>INT-START</th><th style='font-size:xx-small'>INT-END</th>
  <td>CREATE-EVENTCreateBooking#
    <table width='100%'>
#EVENT#
      <tr>
        <th style='font-size:xx-small' colspan=2>
UPDATE-EVENT#
        </th>
        
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td class='eventO3VARev_status#'>Status: EV-STATUS</td>
        <td class='eventO3VARev_status#'>Booked By: EV-CREATOR</td>
       </tr>
      <tr>
        <td colspan=2 class='eventO3VARev_status#' style='text-align:right'>
 DELETE-EVENT# APPROVE-EVENT#
        </td>
       </tr>
      <tr>
#EVENT#
    </table>
  </td>
</tr>
#LINE#
</table>

Schedule Macros

MySQL Date Format Specifiers

You can use any of these symbols in the DATE-FORMAT macro to customise your schedules' display...