BridalLive's Special Events feature will give you the ability to customize and control your appointment and fitting room block arrangement by date range and a recurring day of the week for a specific time period. Your regular Fitting Room setup will be your base setup and how you usually run your Fitting Rooms, then you can use the Special Events Fitting Room setup to override any of your existing setup. Special Events is available starting on the Standard Plan subscription. Special Events will work with all schedulers and when the appointment request form is set to use blocks.
Video guide below and scroll down for a written guide!
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Enable Special Events
If you do not see Special Events enabled when you go to Settings > Fitting Rooms > Special Events, you can enable this by going to Settings > Activities > Preferences and checking the box next to 'Special Events Scheduler Enabled'. If you have Special Events setup, then uncheck this box, the Smart Book algorithm will not show any events you have created and will only use your base fitting room setup.
Special Event Types
Replace - Override the selected fitting room(s) on the Smart Book and website forms with new appointment blocks for the Special Event date range or recurring day. You will need to create a new block setup to replace the existing fitting room block setup. If no blocks are added to your replace special event type, no blocks can be replaced.
Black Out - Override the selected fitting room(s) to allow no appointment blocks on the Smart Book and website forms for the Special Event date range or recurring day. You can use a Black Out Special Event to allow no appointments in one or more Fitting Rooms. If you are going to black out all Fitting Rooms, you can also use a Calendar Black Out Date.
Special Event Date Types
Date Range - You can select a date range to replace or black out your selected fitting room(s) and appointment types. The special event date range will cover all days during that date range with either the replaced block setup or the blackout.
Recurring - The recurring date type will replace or black out ONLY the day that is selected for the set time period. The start and end date must be the same day of the week and BridalLive will default to that day of the week for the recurring day.
Special Event Setup
Navigate to Settings > Fitting Rooms > Special Events > select Add Special Event.
Fill in all information about your special event and select the Type (Replace or Black Out), select which Fitting Rooms you want to replace or black out, select the Date Type (Date Range or Recurring), set your Start Date and End Date to let BridalLive know when your special event will begin and end, then add any notes you may need as a reference.
Example:
If you chose the Replace type for your Special Event, you will need to create your block setup to replace your existing fitting room setup for the time period. Go to More to the right of your Special Event and select Setup. This will open the modal to add your blocks for the specified fitting room(s). You can select to replace more fitting rooms than you add blocks to, and only the fitting rooms you add blocks to will be available during your special event.
I am replacing my current fitting room setup to remove bridal appointments while some of my staff is out of the office and replace with more bridesmaid, tuxedo and alterations appointments for all four days starting at 11 am. BridalLive will default your block to the duration for the longest appointment type. You can always adjust the length of your block to be longer, but you would not want to make the block shorter than any appointment durations in the block.
Once you have your Special Event created and set up, you can review this on your Smart Book and website form. You can locate your Smart Book easily on the Special Event page, or you can locate your Smart Book on any Calendar view.
You will also want to review your online website form to make sure your fitting rooms and special events are being displayed exactly as you would like your customers to see them. This will be the best way to review your setup. If a Fitting Room is set to not book online, then no Special Events for that fitting room will be bookable online.
Special Event Examples
Trunk Show Special Event - Replace and Date Range
In the example below we have a trunk show from 6/2-6/5. My shop has decided to create a new appointment type for this trunk show, as they want the appointment duration to be two hours long. The Special Event type is Replace since there will be a new block setup from 6/2-6/5.
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Special Event Setup |
Example Block Setup |
The trunk show will show in the Smart Book only available during 6/2 - 6/5. You will also see a star notifying you this is a special event block. The star will only be available inside the BridalLive Smart Book and not on the website forms.
*If you create a new appointment type for your Special Event, you will need to make sure you have employees available on the Work Schedule able to handle the appointment type. If when you click on the Special Event day and nothing is available, see if you have employees on the Associates tab. If you do and none are highlighted green, then this means that no employees can handle this appointment type, and you will need to add to their settings. You can update this by going to Settings > Users & Security > Users > select the small arrow to the right of Manage: Work Schedule for the user you'd like to update and select Appointment Types. Add the new appointment type.
*If your employees are able to handle all appointments, then you will not need to make any updates here.
Trunk Show on Smart Book
Trunk Show on Custom Appointment Scheduler
Black Out Recurring
In this example, our fitting room Tuxedo and Alterations will be completely closed for no appointments on Fridays in October.
Our Smart Book below shows no availabilities during Fridays in October.
If you have any questions, please contact your Account Manager by clicking the ? in the top right of your BridalLive account and selecting Contact Us!