Can I assign Customers to Staff Members?
Pricing Tier: All
Appointment Version: Single & Multiple
Depending on how you manage the Customers of your business, you may find the need to specifically assign a Customer to a Staff Member. Using the DaySmart Appointments scheduling system, you are able to configure your account to support this scheduling rule that is enforced when booking future Appointments for Customers.
Note: The terms used to describe "Customers" and "Staff Members" might be different in your account. For example, you might need to assign Patients to Doctors, Students to Instructors, or Carriers to Docks.
How to Enable the Assigned To Field
From Settings > Customer Fields/Terms, locate the rep_id field, and review the settings in the Customer View Registration, Customer Profile, and Appointment Page options.
For each of these options, choose the visibility/required status for each column separately. The options are: "H" for Hidden, "R" for Required, "O" for Optional, or "V" for View Only. You may also choose to label this field differently for your users. You may edit the text in the Display Name field.
These three settings represent the three areas of the scheduling application where you can choose the Staff Member to which they should be assigned:
Viewing Customer Records in Site Administration (Customer Profile)
Adding or updating Appointments in Site Administration (Appointment Page)
Registering Customers through the Customer View (Customer View Registration)
For example, if you only need to set the Assigned To option within each Customer record in Site Administration, set the middle (Customer Profile) column to be Required or Optional, then set the left and right (Customer View Registration and Appointment Page) columns to Hidden.
How to Set the Assigned To Field
Assigning from the Customer's Profile
Your Customer profiles are located within the Customers tab. Once you click into this tab and search for the desired Customer, click on their name to view their profile details. On the profile page, locate the Assigned To field (or the display name you set in the Settings area) and click the dropdown. This list will display active Staff Members to which the Customer may be assigned. Once you have completed this and/or other updates to the profile information, click Update to save the information to the system.
Assigning when Booking an Appointment
On the Customer's tab of the Make Appointment Window, after you have selected an existing Customer or added information into the fields to create a new Customer, you'll see the Assigned To field, based on the order by which the fields are displayed. Click the dropdown and select an Active Staff Member from the list.
Allow Customers to Choose their Staff Member
While not a common configuration, you may allow your Customer's to assign themselves to a Staff Member. In this case, you'll set the Customer View Registration to either Optional or Required. Then, when a Customer self-registers from the Customer View, they will see the option to see current and active Staff Members in a drop-down field. |
Booking Future Appointments with Assigned Staff Members
When you are using this feature, future Appointments will default the Staff Member selection based on the Customer selected in the Appointment. You may find this helpful in your business if you offer very personalized Services to your Customers. Additionally, this may help your Customer from being booked with another Staff Member that doesn't have an established relationship with the Customer.
Additional Features and Preferences
Assigning a Customer record to a Staff Member profile alone has little significance other than restricting access to the Customer record. When you assign a Customer record to a specific Staff Member, only that Staff Member will have access to view the Customer record.
Since it is not possible to schedule an Appointment without selecting a Customer, only the Staff Member assigned will be able to schedule with the Customer. However, this assignment takes on more significance when combined with one or more of the following preferences:
Staff Members Preference #1 - Allow Staff Members to see Customers assigned to other Staff Members
CLICK: Settings tab > Staff Members > Preference #1
Setting this preference to "No" means any Staff Member with an access type of "Location User" will only be able to access Customers assigned to them. Users with other access types, such as "Location Administrator" & "Headquarters Administrator", will still be able to access all Customers.
Staff Members Preference #2 - Allow Staff Members to see unassigned Customers
CLICK: Settings tab > Staff Members > Preference #2
Setting this preference to "No" will prevent Staff Members with an access type of "Location User" from accessing Customers that have not yet been assigned to a Staff Member.
Customer View Preference #11 - Only allow Customers to schedule with the Staff Member to whom they are assigned
CLICK: Settings tab > Customer View > Preference #11
If this is set to "yes", it means that when a Customer logs into the Customer View, they will only be able to view and schedule for the Staff Member they have been assigned to.