FAQ Q142: I need each reservation to contain additional information (answers to specific questions). How can this be done?
You can add additional information fields in
Site Settings > Reservation Form Layout. This is where you can specify and customize the fields for your reservation form. Follow these steps to modify the reservation form:
1, Go to Site Settings.
2, Select Reservation Form Layout.
From here, you can manage global or resource-specific forms, adding any specific questions or information fields you need. The form items (questions to your customers) can be of different types:
- Check box (yes/no question)
- Drop down list - where the customer selects a value from a list
- Regular text item
- Big multi-line text field
- Static HTML so you can add static text or other custom code
- Date field
- Number of persons/children/adults - these fields have a special meaning. Other than getting information about the persons in the party (including for example children of different age groups), this will also have an effect on the number of units reserved in case your resource can be shared between customers (e.g. reservation of tickets/seats)
- Agreement - terms and conditions that the visitors must absolutely agree to in order to make a reservation
- Section - grouping form items into section makes the form much more readable. You can also click on Show on separate page next to each section if you want to divide the form into multiple pages/screens. It's possible to verify the form items on each page before the customer can go on to the next page.
- Section for each participant - similar to the normal section but here the form will include this section and all items inside this section (until next section or end of form) for each person in the party (determined by a field of type: number of persons/children/adults). This is a great way if you want to get information about each participant, e.g. names, ages etc.
- Participant names - similar to the section for each participant but here only a small text field will be added for each participant
- Voucher - use this field if you accept voucher/coupon codes (more...).
- Captcha - can be used as a mechanism to avoid spam / bot submissions
- Repeat email - use this field directly after the email field if you want planyo to check that the customer entered the email address correctly, if the two values are different, planyo will show an error message
- Hidden - for special usage only. This value will be saved in reservation information and you can set it via automatic updates of form items or using javascript in advanced integration (more...)
- Google Maps Directions - this field becomes available when you use the Google Maps extension. It adds a section to the reservation form including the start and end address and by default it adds a map showing the route (note that you can move this map to any location by editing your reservation form template and using the tag $(google_directions_map)). The directions field will work only with resources using 15-min time units. The end time field will be hidden by this field and automatically set based on the calculated trip duration. In the extension UI Additional trip time can be set to gain a time margin for common operations or unpredicted delays.
You can choose each question as required (customers will then be forced to fill out these fields) or optional. The read-only setting lets you create items which cannot be modified by customer. The comments field will be shown when the customer hovers over an info icon next to each field, or if you prefer, under each field as text which is always visible.
Please note that you can also do the following:
- change ordering of the reservation fields
- hide standard reservation fields such as Reminder
- determine whether given resource has private resource-specific or global reservation form items. Global form should be used if all or a number of your resources will use an identical reservation form. In such case making changes to the reservation form is much easier, you only need to do it once. Resource-specific forms let you customize the form for each individual resource. Please note that you can also import the form either from a selected resource or from the global form.
- divide the booking form into multiple pages, this is useful if you have an especially long form
- the Automatic updates of the form items button lets you define interactions between form items, e.g. you can either hide/show other items or sections based on a selection, or you can set items' values based on another form item's value (more...).
- the Reservation form info box button lets you specify the contents of the Your rate box on the reservation page and on the additional products page. This is useful if you want to show for example the duration in days when the reservation form includes arrival/departure date. Please note that the Your rate box can be freely moved to another area of the reservation form or also outside of it, anywhere on the webpage (more...).
Once you specify the reservation form items, you can add associated rules in
Pricing Manager if you want the price quoted to the customer to depend on the options chosen in the reservation form.
Note that you can go to
Site settings > Customized translation if you want to rename the reservation form fields or translate them to other languages. Of course you can also edit the field names but if you are already using $(prop_xxx) tags in any of your templates, renaming a form field will make the old tag invalid, and so it might be easier to do a translation in
Custom translations instead.