What's new in Dojo Bookings

Send a card on file or deposit link via Email

This update allows customers to send card on file or deposit payment links to their guests for an upcoming booking.

Customers can now choose to send the link by email or SMS from the side panel whenever a booking is created from within the RMS. The defaulted option selected will be dependent on the guest details provided:

• If they have provided SMS only, it will be defaulted as a selection with the phone number pre-populated. The customer can change to email and ask for email address which will populate an email input field to replace SMS and enter the email.
• If they have provided email only, it will be defaulted as a selection with the email address entered pre-populated. The customer can change to SMS if preferred.
• If the guest provided both email and phone number, this will default to SMS. Customers can toggle between email/SMS if they need from the dropdown.

Party Tags

Party Tags is a feature where guests can enter any preferences for their reservation to inform the Customer while booking a table. Party Tags include things like occasion (Birthday, Graduation, Anniversary), to Accessibility, Seating Preferences, Dietary Preferences and Allergies. Party Tags thus help customers provide a better experience to their guests (parties) on the day of the booking as they are informed in advance about any preferences.

Marketing Tools

Dojo Booking's Marketing Tools comprise of 3 features that allow customers to track the success of their marketing campaigns, collect opt-ins and build a subscriber list, and measure the performance of their booking channels. There are 3 parts to this feature:

• Booking Tracking: Generate tracking URLs you can embed on any digital channel, and track how effective they are. 
• Marketing opt-in widget: Embed a simple opt-in form on any of your channels making it easier for you to gather customer information and grow your marketing list.
• Booking Channel: Create unique links for all of your online booking channels so you can measure and track the success of each.

For detailed instructions, please refer to our Help Centre Article here.

Booking charges notification centre

We've introduced this feature to help customers stay informed and keep up-to date on any bookings that have a card on file policy attached to them and that require an action to be taken on them. If a booking is cancelled late or is a no-show, a notification pops up informing the host to either charge the card saved or ignore the notification.

For detailed instructions on how to use this feature, please refer to our Help Centre article here.

Booking window added to booking type ⬇️

With this update, customers are now able to add a unique booking window to standard bookings & each individual experience.

The benefit of having this on each booking type means those with bookings that the restaurant team need more notice for, can be blocked from booking sooner whilst still being able to accept their standard bookings last minute - optimising capacity and keeping operations running smoothly.

This can be set up from:

Settings > Booking Types > Standard booking > Edit

OR

Settings > Booking Types > Experience > Edit X Experience

Displaying the guests preferred seating area ⬇️

With this update, customers are now able to view the guests preferred seating area at the time of booking. The preferred area is captured by the guest upon making the booking whenever the restaurant has the area-expose setting enabled.

Why are we doing this?

This is due to constant feedback from restaurants that they cannot see this valuable piece of information on the RMS and they sometimes end up manually re-allocating the guest to a table outside of their preferred area without them knowing the guest has asked to be sat at a specific area; causing confusion and guest dissatisfaction.

SMS Reminders 

A very exciting feature to continue to help customers with the problem of no-shows and late cancellations. SMS Reminders is a feature that helps customers protect against no-shows by giving them the option to set up automated reminders for upcoming bookings.

These automated reminders are sent to guests with upcoming bookings, asking them to reply by either confirming or cancelling their booking, and thus allowing the customer to free up a table and accept new bookings if necessary. The SMS reminders are fully customisable - set them up to be 12, 24, 36, or 48 hours prior to the booking.

SMS triggered —> Guest Confirms or Cancels —> Confirmation of reply sent. 

More details on this feature are available here.

Add Guest Tags to Guest Profiles 🏷️

You can now add tags to your guest profiles to help you understand guest requirements at a glance.

For detailed instructions, please refer to our Help Centre Article here.

New access roles and permissions for improved team management 👥

This release brings new team roles, giving you more control over your account. You can now set up Staff, Manager and Admin roles to assign specific access permissions to different team members. This ensures that each member has the appropriate level of access necessary for their role.

For detailed instructions on how to use this feature, please refer to our Help Centre article here.

Import guest data from other providers ⬇️

It is now possible to import guest data from other providers, ensuring you don't lose any historic guest data when switching to Dojo Bookings.

To do this, please contact our team via the in-app WebChat for further details. Please note, this is only applicable if you still have access to your previous provider's software.

More publicly available guidance will be available soon!

Additional prompt for streamlined table allocation 🔔

We've introduced an additional prompt to streamline table allocation when editing party size details in a booking.

When adjusting a booking's party size, if the existing table no longer fits the new party size, the system will automatically reallocate to a different table.
The new prompt allows you to choose to keep the original table, providing flexibility and control over table assignments.

Light and dark mode toggle for booking widget 🌓

You can now customise whether your customer booking widget displays in dark or light mode.
This enhancement allows you to better integrate the widget with the overall theme or style of your website.

Navigate to your RMS. Go to Settings > System Preferences.
Use the toggle to switch between light and dark mode.

Customise area and table priorities and close areas for bookings from Planner View 🔏

You can now customise your area and table priorities and close areas for bookings directly from the planner view.
This update aims to streamline your workflow by removing the need to navigate to the Settings area for these adjustments.

Introducing Floorplan View ⬇️

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Floorplan View, a new feature that provides a live view of your venue. This enhancement is designed to streamline your front-of-house operations, allowing you to seat guests faster and manage your venue more efficiently.

• See a real-time view of your venue's layout
• Speed up front-of-house operations
• Create and optimise your floor plan layout
• Easily manage upcoming and seated guests

For more information on creating your floor plan and using it to improve your front-of-house operations, please visit our Help Centre article here.

View your account details 📋

You can now see your personal account details for your Dojo Bookings account where you can customise the name of your account. When you name is updated, this will then also show in the left side panel as your updated user name.
You can also see which role access you have and your email address - please note: these are not editable in this view.

Customise your email communications to guests with our refreshed templates 📧

You can now customise your email communications to customers when a booking is created, edited, cancelled and deleted. These have also been updated into refreshed visual.

1. In your Dojo Bookings account, click Settings in the sidebar and select Communications

2. Navigate to the Notify tab

3. Choose the email templates that you would like to customise using the different tabs
   (Created, Edited, Cancelled and Deleted)

Learn more in our Help Centre Article here.