We were getting a lot of reported issues with the Groundhogg Booking Calendar extension in the past month. Dropped connections to Google or Zoom, reminders not going out on time, incorrect availability, bad loading times, ugly styling…
It was time for a major update, so over the last two weeks we did a ground up rewrite of the Groundhogg Booking Calendar and we’ve even impressed ourselves!
Here’s what’s new in version 2.5 of the Groundhogg Booking Calendar! The best way to have your customers schedule with you.
All new gorgeous design language!
One of the biggest complaints was that the frontend design of the Groundhogg Booking Calendar was ugly, and to be fair it wasn’t the sexiest. It could be modified with custom CSS but no one wants to put up with that.
So we gave it a major facelift and really put some elbow grease into the design, and now we have a system that works perfectly and looks perfect!
The new date selection features a nice blue on white color scheme and an improved layout. It’s also perfectly mobile responsive.
Your site’s logo will be automatically added and resized to fit perfectly into the calendar layout and the Gravatar image for the calendar’s owner, as well as their name, will be displayed for added context for the person booking.
Once you pick a date you can now pick a redesigned slot, again featuring a blue on white color scheme.
And finally after selecting the time slot you are able to enter your information. If the contact has previously provided information the fields will be pre-filled out.
The new design will inspire confidence in your contacts ability to book with you, and create a more consistent experience.
Calendar Pretty URLs.
When accessing the calendar directly through a URL and not through a shortcode the calendar ID was shown. Now instead you can create a “slug” for the calendar so that in the URL it looks a bit nicer for visitors.
Connecting multiple Google Calendar & Zoom accounts.
The Zoom and Google Calendar integration process was an odd one before this update. You had to reconnect for each calendar which often broke the connection with any pre-connected calendars. Not good.
But now, once you connect to your Zoom or Google account, you can use the same connection across all your calendars!
Simply go through the Oauth process and then all your connected Google and Zoom accounts will show in a dropdown and you’ll be able to select which one that calendar should integrate with.
Connect to multiple Zoom accounts.
Select which Google calendar new appointments are added to.
Before, the Groundhogg Booking Calendar created a new Calendar in your account and added new appointments to that calendar. In hindsight that was a silly process, so now you can simply select which of your Google Calendars new appointments should be added to.
New appointments admin screen.
To see the appointments of a calendar, you had to open the calendar screen and look through the list view of appointments, there was no way to see all appointments from all calendars.
So instead, we created a new appointments screen where you can see all the appointments of your calendars, as well as any synced events from any connected calendars.
Click on any appointment to pull up the details in the sidebar and make any changes to the appointment.
You’ll also be able to add appointments via the admin screen in a much easier way. Select the calendar you want to add the appointment to from a dropdown instead of having to navigate to each calendar individually.
New appointments contact info card.
We’ve also added a new info card in the contact record for you to see any upcoming or past appointments of the contact.
No more “Booked/Approved” status.
One of the strangest decisions we made early on was to have a booked/approved status for appointments. We scrapped that, so that there is no admin action required for appointments.
More replacement codes!
We’ve also added many more replacement codes for you to use in your reminder emails to clients.
| Appointment Reschedule Link | {appointment_reschedule_link} | Before you had to use {appointment_actions} which has both the reschedule and cancel links, but if you only want to show reschedule now you can do so. |
| Appointment Cancel Link | {appointment_cancel_link} | Before you had to use {appointment_actions} which has both the reschedule and cancel links, but if you only want to show cancel now you can do so. |
| Calendar Link | {calender_link} | A direct link to the associated calendar of the appointment so the contact book additional meetings. |
| Calendar Name | {calendar_nmae} | The name of the associated calendar. |
| Time to Appointment | {time_to_appointment} | Shows the time to the appointment in a human friendly way, like “3 hours” or “2 days” |
Default Calendars
When you first install the Groundhogg Booking Calendar you’ll now get 3 new default calendars installed. You can edit them and delete them and add more, but if you just want a few ways for customers to book with you then it makes getting set up super easy!
A 1 Hour, 30 Minute, and 15 Minute calendar is created automatically upon installation and activation.
Already using the Groundhogg Booking Calendar?
If you are already using the Groundhogg booking calendar here’s what you need to know.
- You will have to reconnect to Google and Zoom.
- You will have to do a once over of your emails.
- You should double check your availability settings.
Major updates and changes were made to the way Groundhogg integrates with Google and Zoom, so for all your calendars you will have to update the integration in the integrations tab when editing the calendar.
You’ll only have to go through the Oauth process for each integration once, then select the account to integrate with for all your other connected calendars.
You should also double check your emails and settings as some of the database keys changed for better code readability. The automated upgrade path should take care of it, but always better to be on the safe side.
We highly recommend taking a backup before upgrading.
Not using the Groundhogg Booking Calendar yet?
Now is the time to start! Simply go to your downloads page or the extension manager in your site and install now!
