For serving customers more effectively, Waitlist Me has a set of features for managing tables across a couple main views.  The floorplan view displays tables as they would appear spatially across one or more rooms with the basic table sizes, shapes, and positioning.  The grid view gives a flexible way to sort and view tables by different dimensions such as section, size, and status.  The views can be used together or independently, depending on business preferences, to track availability and easily know where to seat the next customer.

Previously, the phone versions of our apps only offered a list view of tables, optimized for smaller phone interfaces.  To provide more flexibility in managing customer visits across devices, we have recently added the floorplan view and features to our apps for iPhones and Android phones.  While detailed floorplans can often be more efficiently managed on larger devices like iPads or Android tablets, the phone versions are great for managers that may want to zoom in on a particular area or servers wanting to keep tabs on their sections from their phones.   

Features for setting up and managing sections and layouts are also now available on the phone applications, along with the tools for placing tables, lines, and data elements in the floorplan edit mode.  Check out this page for more information on setting up floorplans.

For businesses looking to automate more of the reservation acceptance process, Waitlist Me has new ways to restrict how many reservations you accept by day and by hour. With a Waitlist Me Proo subscription, you can set reservation limits on the number of groups and people that you’d like on an hourly and daily basis. For example, if you don’t want any more than 4 groups to schedule themselves per hour, you can quickly set up that rule.

Simply press the gear icon in the app and head to Add Yourself > Scheduling Rules. Choose a day and you will be able to set the maximum number of people and groups you’ll allow by day and by hour.  There are four different options, but you can pick and choose the ones that work for your goals in managing capacity at your business. You can avoid having too many people schedule at the same time without all the work of tracking the usage of every single table at your restaurant or resource at your business. You can use the Copy Rules button at the bottom to apply these rules to every day, or set up each day separately.

That’s it! Your rules will apply to self scheduling done through the Web Widget and Kiosk, where customers will see a message when there isn’t availability for a particular time or day.  They wouldn’t be able to book that time, but could still check other times.

The rules will also trigger warnings within the Waitlist Me app if you try to schedule above the limit to make it easier to know when you might be overbooked.  Though it won’t block you from scheduling above the limits for cases where you know you can handle the booking.