Overview
A booking (AKA Hailing Booking) is a request from a Customer to go to one or multiple Stops and complete Tasks. It is created either directly in MotionTools or through a third-party system like an online shop.
Bookings are managed via the dashboard by Admins or Organization managers and are usually executed by drivers on the Driver app. A booking consists of one or multiple stops and various other attributes and has a schedule attached to it.
- Services & capabilities
- Booking attributes
- Booking stops
- Booking scheduling
- Booking validation
- Booking behaviour
- Proof of delivery
- Managing custom content
- Supervised operations
- Related resources
Key features
Services & capabilities
Capabilities help tenants to offer customized booking options that fit with their business logic. Services are a wrapper around Capabilities that allow the grouping of certain capabilities together and also to avoid certain capabilities being booked at once.
Booking attributes
A booking has several attributes and features. Some of these are standard, others depend on the configuration of a Tenant. MotionTools provides an API to easily understand the current configuration.
Independently of the configuration, each booking has some required attributes, such as the requesting customer, the requested service, requested capabilities, at least one stop and a scheduled_at time. Optional attributes are e.g. order images, selected payment method and voucher code.
Booking stops
Each booking can have one or more Stops, which represent individual Locations a driver would need to drive to perform a pickup, a drop-off, or a certain task. The stops of a booking have to be located inside a Service area. Learn more about booking validation here. Stops have additional features and a certain behaviour which are fully described here.
Booking scheduling
The time at which a driver is supposed to perform a required task at a stop is defined for each booking as scheduled_at time. This time can be set to now or any moment in the future as long as it complies with the scheduling configuration of the service area in which the booking is being created.
Booking validation
A booking is being validated on creation against certain rules. Read more here.
Booking behaviour
A booking follows a defined, but configurable process which can be influenced by booking actions and leads to new booking statuses. There are three major types of bookings (instant, scheduled, pickable) that behave in different way with regards to how they are being manually or automatically matched with suitable drivers, and how they are displayed in the driver app.
Which actions and statuses are supported depends on the configuration of a tenant, the type of the booking as well as the scheduling configuration of the service area that a booking is created in. Read more about the booking statuses and transitioning events here.
Additional features
Proof of stop completion
Proof of stop completion is asked at each stop. The proof consists of at least one of the following three items: text comment, signature sign-off, or one or multiple photos. Learn more about proofs of completion here.
Managing custom content
This function will allow drivers to receive last-minute delivery instructions, and only admins will have this permission.
For example:
- A booking or a tour is created and scheduled for tomorrow. The recipient at the drop-off stop gets notified that the delivery has been scheduled.
- The recipient requests to admins to leave a package at a neighbour’s, or leave it at the front door because no one’s home at the time of delivery.
- The admin then adds a note to the booking stop to inform the driver about the last-minute instructions.
Configuration options
Supervised operations
There are two modes of operations a tenant can run on: supervised and unsupervised, which are tied to ‘Supervised operations’ setting in the configurator.
- If booking cancellation is allowed = unsupervised mode
- If booking cancellation is not allowed = supervised mode
The unsupervised mode doesn’t exclude the possibility of having a dispatcher overseeing the operations, but it makes their role less essential when it comes to booking cancellations.
