[thelist] Online Schedule of Appointments?

[Gina K. Anderson]

Hi all,

I have a client inquiring about the possibility of an online schedule of
appointments. I've never done anything like this, so I need some general input.

Say there's a carpet cleaning business, with four locations spread out over the
city. They want their employees to be able to log in from a laptop or from home
and see the times and specifics of that day's (or any other day's) appointments,
not all the employee's appointments, just the person logging in can see their
own appointments. They also want to allow appointments to be made online by
homeowners, business-owners, etc, for their services. They also take
appointments by phone at all four locations.

Now, they use a computer to hold all the appointment data at *each* location.
That's all I know right now--I don't know if it's in a database, they use a
special software, or even if the data is hooked up to a server or what. I'm
pretty sure that each location has no record or access to the other locations
appointment data, however I don't think it would be needed since it is rare for
an employee of one location to have an appointment scheduled by the other three
locations.

We just kind of threw it in the air one day, and I want to be ready to discuss
it if/when it gets serious. I'm just trying to get a general gist of how this
could be accomplished.

Anyone have any experience with this? If so, how'd you do it ;)?

Gina