The Corona crisis is hitting service providers in Germany hard. Digital tools and solutions can help to get through the Corona pandemic as safely as possible. In this tutorial series “Creative out of the crisis” I show technologies or tools that can be useful for small businesses.Today I show “Easyappointments”, a “click and meet” booking tool for services, for example hairdressers or stores. Easyappointments consists of two areas:
Area 1: Backend
A “backend” for managing service and appointments.
Area 2: Frontend
An end user tool for booking appointments. All already booked appointments are locked afterwards and cannot be booked twice.
Installation
I have installed easyappointments several times using docker-compose and can highly recommend this installation method. I create a new directory named “easyappointments” on my server:
$ mkdir easyappointments
$ cd easyappointments
version: '2'
services:
db:
image: mysql
environment:
- MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=root
- MYSQL_DATABASE=easyappointments
- MYSQL_USER=easyappointments
- MYSQL_PASSWORD=easyappointments
command: mysqld --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
volumes:
- ./easy-appointments-data:/var/lib/mysql
expose:
- 3306
networks:
- easyappointments-network
restart: always
application:
image: jamrizzi/easyappointments
volumes:
- ./easy-appointments:/app/www
depends_on:
- db
ports:
- 8089:8888
environment:
- DB_HOST=db
- DB_USERNAME=easyappointments
- DB_NAME=easyappointments
- DB_PASSWORD=easyappointments
- TZ=Europe/Berlin
- BASE_URL=http://192.168.178.50:8089
networks:
- easyappointments-network
restart: always
networks:
easyappointments-network:
This file is started via Docker Compose. After that, the installation is accessible under the designated domain/port.
$ docker-compose -f easyappointments.yml up
Create a service
Services can be created under “Services”. Each new service must then be assigned to a service provider/user. This means that I can book specialized employees or service providers.
The end user can also choose the service and the preferred service provider.
Working hours and breaks
General duty times can be set under “Settings” > “Business Logic”. But also the duty times of service providers/users can be changed in the “Working plan” of the user.
Booking overview and diary
The appointment calendar makes all bookings visible. Of course, bookings can also be created or edited there.
Color or logical adjustments
If you copy out the “/app/www” directory and include it as a “volume”, then you can customize the stylesheets and logic as you like.