New Prerequisites Feature!

One of our most requested features has been for prerequisites.  We are very excited to release this new feature!  You are now able to create required services to be completed before a customer is allowed to book a certain service.  This is particularly useful for boarding and daycares that require assessments to be completed or for trainers who would like training courses to be completed before a customer moves onto the next level.

To set new prerequisites, you can do so by clicking "Settings" -> "Services" then click "prerequisites" in the top left corner of the screen.  From there you can create a new prerequisite and select from many options.  Please see this video for how to set up an "Assessment" prerequisite for boarding or daycare:

You can also set up prerequisites for your group classes as a trainer.  Here is a video of how to set up prerequisites for training classes that must be completed before the next level is reserved:

When you set up prerequisites it will limit your desired service from being reserved by them until they have met the requirements.  We do allow staff to override prerequisites, but do label them when the prerequisites have not been met for staff.  Here is a video of what your customers will see when they are booking an assessment with a prerequisite set up:

Many businesses will have groups of customers who they would like to add previously pass requirements and allow them to skip the set up prerequisite.  You are able to update a pet to have "passed" the prerequisite in two ways.  First, you can update them directly in the pet card by clicking the pet picture anywhere in Paw Partner.  In the opened pet card, you can select in the top right options menu the drop down selection of "Prereq config" and this will pull up a window that will allow you to set up a pass for that pet.  The second way for you to add a pet to "bypass" the prerequisite is a new tool.  Click "manager" -> "tools" -> "reservation prerequisites".  In here you can easily search for pets and set up bypasses for them to skip the prerequisite.  See this video on how to do this:

New Optional Feature: Require Vaccines/Agreement/Questions For A Pet To Be Checked In (No Exceptions)

We have also released a new optional requirement for pets to be up to date on Vaccines, Agreements, or Questions to be completed before the pet can be checked in.  To be clear: there are no overrides or exceptions on this feature, so this tool would best be used by businesses who absolutely require these to be complete before the customer can check in.  If the customer is missing these the system will prevent your staff from checking them in until the missing information is inputted.  The default for this is for the requirements to be off so this will only be enabled if you go an enable it.  Just remember if you enable it, the system will fully block staff from checking in a pet if it has missing information.  To enable this feature click "Settings" -> "Business" you will see "require at check in" and you can select which of the check boxes you want to absolutely require before the pet is checked in.  Here is a photo of where to enable this feature:

If this feature is not enabled, Paw Partner will continue working exactly as it was before.  Your staff will be alerted with a modal window asking for them to confirm they want to bypass the alerts that are presented to them.

Upcoming Releases

* Marketing and CRM. We are currently in an open BETA testing of our new email marketing and CRM.  We have had some great feedback from our businesses and are still working on updates as we finalize all of the features.

* Other training roster updates

*Additional reporting updates

We are excited to release some features we have been working on over the past few months.  These updates range in a wide area of the platform and should help with business operations!

Blocking A Pet Owner From Making Reservations

We now have the ability to block pet owners from making reservations.  To do this you can access the "Owner Card" by clicking on the owner icon in the customer browser or within the pet card.  In the "info" tab of the owner card if you scroll to the bottom, you can now select the check box that says "Block Reservations", then click "Save".  Note this this will block the owner from submitting any of their own reservations.  They can still message the business and see past reservations.  Your staff can also override but there are numerous flags and pop up windows warning staff about the owner being blocked.  See this video for how to use this new feature!

Blocking A Pet From Making Reservations 

We also made a new block pet feature similar to the block owner feature above.  This feature is useful if a pet fails an assessment or if you do not want to book a pet for any future reservations but the owner has dogs you want to still be able to make reservations for.  To block a pet from making future reservations, click the pet icon to access the pet card.  Click the "info" tab and scroll to the bottom and check the "Block Reservations" checkbox.  When a customer goes to make a reservation their pet will be grayed out and unelectable for them to make a reservation.  Your staff can override this but will have numerous flags and windows alerting them they are making a reservation for a blocked pet.  See this video for how to use this new feature!

Updates To The Pet And Owner Cards

In both the pet and owner card we have replaced the icons in the top right corner to a drop down select with writing.  This makes it more clear and allows us to add more actions.  In the owner card (accessed by clicking the owner icon) we added "Send Message" in that drop down menu.  This allows you to send messages to the owner in many more places throughout the platform.  In the pet card we added a "Info" tab.  You can now easily update basic pet info directly in the pet card instead of having to click into the pet profile.  This will save a lot of time when making simple updates to the pet.  See this video for how to use this new feature!

Making Multiple Classes At One Time

From some great feedback from our pet trainers we have added the ability to make multiple classes of a course at one time instead of individually.  You can access this by going to the trainer dashboard and clicking "manage courses".  If you click "Add New Start Date".  When entering in your first class information, when you scroll down you will now see "Optional: Create Multiple Class Dates".  When you click this you can enter your repeating options and it will make all of those classes at one time instead of making each individually.  See this video for how to use this new feature!

Cloning A Class And Adding Current Customers To The New Class 

We have added the ability to clone an existing course by clicking the clone icon where the course appears in the "Manage Courses" area of the trainer dashboard.  Now when you clone a course it will show a list of current customers in that course.  You can select some or all of them to add to the new cloned course.  This makes it much faster and easier for classes that are on going and the same customers continue taking the same course.  See this video for how to use this new feature!

Upcoming Release

Along with these new features we have been working on some other big features over the last couple months and they are almost ready.  Here are some of the additional new features we have built and are testing before we get them released out.

• Customer Communication and Marketing.  We are finishing testing this but have an open BETA test.  If you would like us to enable this for you and send you some training on how to use it email us at Support@pawpartner.com and we will enable it for you.
• Pre-requisites for reservations.  The ability to require assessments before booking boarding or daycare.  Also the ability to require completing one training before booking another trianing.
• Training and Roster Updates.  From feedback from some of our great trainers we are working on some updates to make it easier to operate.

As always thank you wall for your continued feedback and support!  If you have any questions about this release feel free to contact us at support@pawpartner.com 

We have been working on our email marking and Customer Relations Management update for the past couple months.  Those features are on the finishing stages of being tested and updated.  We are expecting to release that big release in the next couple of weeks.  This release has some significant changes that have been requested for a long time and they were developed in tandem with our marketing CRM changes.

Business Messaging Update

With our release today we have 2 changes in our messaging update:

Mark As Unread

In the messaging browser you can now mark messages "Unread" by either clicking the check boxes in the main messaging screen or within the individual message view as well.

Staff and Customer Messages Separated

Within the messaging system we have separated out staff messages and customer messages.  Staff messages are any messages sent to any staff within your company.  When creating a staff message you can now send a message to "All Staff", to a staff Job Type, or to an individual staff member.  You will see customer and staff inbox and sent separated out to keep those easier to manage.  See the picture below for reference.

Customer Notification History

With this new update we added a new icon in the owner card.  To access the owner card click on the owner icon.  In the top right of the owner card you will see a new icon that is an envelope and is the "notification history" icon.  Clicking this will take you to the customers notification history where you can see any emails, text messages, or push notifications that has been sent to the customer.  You can also access this in the customer list by clicking "..." next to the customer and click "notification history".  See the photos below for reference.

Package Expiration Update

We have added some new durations for package expirations.  We have added 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, and 36 month.  To access click "settings" then "pricing" then "packages".  See picture below for reference.

Business Information Sharing

When we created Paw Partner we designed it so that we would have 3 areas that businesses on our platform could help the pet community out and share some information.  In the past few months we have had some businesses use this community sharing information in a way that does not meet our standards of how businesses should interact on the platform.  This has necessitated us to make all information non sharable between businesses.  The three areas that businesses used to be able to share information with other businesses that are now changed is the pet profile pictures, pet vaccinations, and pet incidents.  All three of these areas are now completely separate per business and there is now no sharing of information between businesses unless your company has multiple locations.  See the picture below for reference of the three areas that are now separated.

As always, we really appreciate all of the feedback and continually have features we are working on, so if you have submitted feature requests we are working through our list!

Homework For Pet Training

As part of this exciting new release we have added a new 'Homework' feature.  You can now send your clients Homework for private training lessons or in group classes.  For private lessons, you can send them homework directly in the "Today" tab from the training dashboard.  For group classes, you can send your entire class homework or individual owners homework directly from the "Today" tab in the trainer's dashboard or directly within the new "Roster" section of a group class.

When a customer receives homework, they will have a new "Homework" icon pop up in their home screen options.  They can access new homework or any homework for previous lessons/classes they have taken in the past.  See the video below for details on how to use this new feature!

New Class Rosters For Group Classes

We have been developing this feature for a long time and we are really excited to release it!  You can now access training rosters for any group course you teach.  You can access all of your rosters in the "Roster" tab in the trainer's dashboard or by clicking the "Roster" button in the "Today" tab next to the course you want to see the roster for.

Within the roster you can easily message the whole class, send homework to the class, take course notes/lesson plans, view and update notes about individual pets, group check in pets, individually check pets in, group checkout pets, individually check out pets, and more.  See the video below for details of how our rosters work.

Custom QR Code And Flyer For Custom Branded Apps

A couple weeks ago we released the ability to create custom branded apps for your business!  We have had a big response to people signing up for those!  We have designed a way for Paw Partner to automatically create a custom QR code for you to use in marketing materials.  The QR code will take your customers to either the Apple App store or Google Playstore to download your new custom branded app.  We also made a simple marketing flyer if you don't want to create one yourself.  To access these materials go to "Settings" -> "Integration" -> "Mobile App Flyer& QR Code".  See the video below for more details.