RecChat: Rental Quantity Items in the SuperGrid - 03/18/2021
Table of Contents
Episode Summary
In this episode, our host Zach Malloch is joined by Learning Product Designer, Bret Alarcon, Product Owner, Jordan Tipson, and Director of Customer Services, Cullen Barber to discuss using the SuperGrid to track rental quantity items. The group walks through new features available to the rental SuperGrid, SuperGrid profile settings, and how daily processing rental items will look in the SuperGrid.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:10
well, we have some friends together. So I think it's a good time for some rec chat, joined by Cullen Barber and Bret Alarcon is often and Jordan as rarely of late. But welcome, Jordan, product owner and rec chat. SuperGrid presenter extraordinaire. How's everybody doing today?
Cullen Barber 0:31
Good. How about you, Zack?
Zach Malloch 0:32
Not too bad, not too bad. All right, well, we can go ahead and get started. And we've got a lot of people here waiting to hear about Rental quantity on the SuperGrid. So Jordan, over to you.
Jordan Tipson 0:44
Alright, cool. Yeah. So today, we're gonna obviously talk about quantity items on the Rental SuperGrid. So this is new for the upcoming RecTrac release, which is 3.1.10.07.00, and that should be released, hopefully sometime next week. We're just finishing up the final testing on it this week. And looking to get it out the door next week, and then following the hosted schedule of when those are released. So what I will do is share my Screen out. And we'll pop in here. So let me go to my Screen one. And let me know if you guys can see that or not,
Zach Malloch 1:27
We can indeed see that.
Jordan Tipson 1:29
Alright, perfect. So I'm gonna kind of go in reverse order here. So I'm gonna kind of show all the fun and cool stuff. And then I'm gonna hop into the the Profile and just show you what I did to set it up. And kind of a spoiler there's there's not really much to set up. So as there's a lot of people on this, this RecChat, I'm sure some of you, you know, obviously currently use the Rental SuperGrid. And when it comes to rentals, it's kind of not really usable, to be honest, you can't really see the quantities of items. So like, in this example, I have like 1520 10. But part of the problem is is on the SuperGrid today, you know, you go to rent something out and you kind of get through the processing prompts and everything to the point where you don't have the right quantity or the quantity is not available, which is kind of frustrating. Because again, you take some of those steps to do a reservation, and then you just get told that the quantity is not available and you need to start over, maybe you have another tab open to look at the quantity, you know, you're doing a couple of things. So obviously, what we did is we incorporated that all into the SuperGrid now. I will say and like I said, I'll go into the Profile in a little bit. But for this change, so in 07, we made this change just be automatic. So there's really no configuration that you need to do besides maybe update some of your colors in here. And I'll get into explain why that's important. And the reason why we just made it automatic for customers is kinda like because of what I just said is that it's really unusable in the state that it is today. So we felt that this would be a change that all customers would use. And it's just something that improves the SuperGrid completely.
Jordan Tipson 3:01
One thing to note here is that if you have Rental SuperGrid items that are a quantity of one, so it is not multiple items, you'll notice my top line here, nothing's going to change for you. So hopefully I didn't freak some people out and say, oh my gosh, now I'm gonna have a bunch of ones or zeros across the board here, when we just have one item that we're renting out. So if you do have an item on your SuperGrid that has a quantity of one. So in this case here, my my BPP Chair, I just have one quantity that I rent out, you'll notice that has not changed at all that line, this is still my Rental items, these are all Rental items. But this hasn't changed a single bit, you'll notice I can still view my existing reservations see things as I normally would. So that's not going to change. So again, all those people out there on this rec chat today, if you have just quantity items of one setup, don't worry, nothing's going to change for you, everything's going to remain the same. But for those people that have multiple items, and you can kind of see here I staged this obviously to show you what I mean is I've got these kayaks, paddle boards and these umbrellas. And you'll notice now based off of my time slot, so I have a 10am to 4pm time block here on the hour, you'll notice that it shows me for that time slot how many items I have available. So this is basically telling me you know, if I haven't rented out any kayaks, we have 15 you know on hand to book out. And in this case, you'll notice that for this block, I've already rented one out, I can still do a reservation for that block, you'll notice it's not going to stop me because I have still 14 items to rent out. I could make it longer I could make it shorter I could do I could do quite a few things with that. One thing to keep in mind here too is one thing to notice is that you know for here with my single item if I hover over it I see the details I can see in the block the details. You'll notice for these items, we don't show those details. And the reason for that is because like these these are good examples right here if I have 14 Well, let's say all of these are booked out. If I hover over this time slot like I due for here, you're gonna have potentially 15 different people's information. So that pop up is really going to be unreadable at that point. So what we do here is, I'm just gonna pop out and go back in.
Jordan Tipson 5:15
So what we do here is we still tie it to your household. So again, the the way you book a reservation or Rental item is still the same. But you'll notice like these here, if I pop into my household, again, I did a reservation already. So if I choose my household, you'll notice now that I'm in my household, I have the same details that I had before. So it's going to show me my reservations, this is a different household reservation here. But you'll notice this is my reservation, I can still move my reservation, I can drag it to a new spot, you can do all the same functions that you had before. But I'm only going to get the detail of my rest of the reservation if I'm in that specific household. So that's certainly important to know. You'll notice same thing like if I choose just hop over to pets household. So if I grab pets household, you'll notice that top line now is going to show me the details of pets reservation because again, I'm in that household, whereas this, it doesn't tell me that it's the tips and household. But again, this one is going to remain the same, that's going to remain intact, because this BP chair only has a single item that can be booked out. So that's always going to give us that information. But again, doing things is still the same as I mentioned before, kind of the colors, it's important because you'll notice like this, it is kind of helpful to see behind the scenes, if I'm not hovered over, if I had like a really dark color here, you'll notice it would be tough to see that there's 14 available. So if if Pat called and said, hey, you know, I have a friend, whatever can I book two kayaks? Well, obviously, if I had a really dark color, it'd be a little bit tough to see if there's one available or not. So that's why I just mentioned with the colors to try to make things you know, work for you. But again, there's really not much else to it. If I just go back, let's maybe choose just my daily household again. So again, I'm back to no household selected. So I'll just choose a different time block for now.
Jordan Tipson 7:04
So let me grab that same process as before I choose my Add to Cart. We'll just grab a random Smith household in my database. Again, same processing prompts, and none of this has changed. It's all kind of on the front end of how it looks. But if I continue here, I've got my reservation probably want to change the color on that. But again, same process, if I go through and make my payments. This is just your dollars for me. So I close out here my receipt. And then you'll notice now for those time slots, now I have a yellow setup for partial again, all these colors can be customized to whatever you want. But now I have a partial block in here, I'm back as the guest household. So maybe my friend came in as well. And I want the same exact reservation. Again, I can Click the same exact times to add to cart. And this time, let's choose the fuller household here. Continue through. Again, that's my kind of pending reservation status as you can see there. And then let's process that one out. And we'll preview this receipt, again, nothing's changed with the receipt, nothing's changed with the actual processing and receipt still remains the same. You again, I would go into my household and obviously, you know go through and actually start the reservation with the Rental module, you can start the Rental, these are obviously future dates out there. So it's still same process with that. But again, now you'll notice my time slots now have dropped down a little bit. So again, this, this happens automatically with the oh seven update, again, prior to this change, you would just see kind of these all being white, you'd have no idea what's available, what's not available, you know, you'd go to kind of start your booking process. And then at the point of, you know, kind of trying to confirm that reservation, at that point. Now you're gonna get told that oh, there's none available or the quantity doesn't doesn't fit the criteria.
Zach Malloch 8:59
So there was a quick question that came in Jordan. So Edie was curious if he understands the the concern about the pop up not showing you enough information. But he was curious, like, even if it was a really limited, like the household last name, and then the number the quantity that was reserved in this particular slot, like something consolidated but could still be useful. I'm, I'm assuming it like in some sort of like a checking validation process potentially.
Jordan Tipson 9:25
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely not available in this release, it's something we are looking into, you know, because I can certainly see, like, you know, maybe you have a quantity of three or something like that, where yeah, it would be super helpful to be able to hover over that and see, it's definitely something we need to take a look into. I think part of the problem is, is you know, it's kind of like okay, to what point is it going to be too much, you know, like, it's a great question like, hey, maybe just first name and last name, but then now somebody also wants to add the start time and somebody now also wants to add this and this and at that point, you know, with these like 15 here, if these are all booked out, you know, just imagine This kind of being this big long list, like is it actually helpful at that point? So it's certainly something we're looking into. But but definitely not part of this kind of initial release of this where, you know, we're, we're definitely looking for customers feedback once this is out there, and certainly something we're gonna prioritize on the product side to, to make some changes once customers have it in their hands and start using it.
Zach Malloch 10:22
All right, and then there's another. And I apologize, this was my oversight, I didn't ask people to use the q&a section down at the bottom for questions to come up. It's a little bit easier for us to keep track of those and make sure that we answer everything but I saw Lamera asked, Will the times be displayed now as well, we do not have items, we do receive facilities on a time block. So I'm guessing that it's probably just a display issue on your SuperGrid. Or sometimes when you have too much information displaying you don't actually see the times I get kind of compressed. But so this, this change, regardless wouldn't have changed. Any other display functions on the SuperGrid from what I understand Jordan,
Jordan Tipson 11:06
correct. Yep. And that kind of brings another good point that I did want to mention, is obviously with this display here, it is kind of important, you know, it's going to be different for every customers to kind of find that sweet spot of what looks good, and what doesn't look good, the intent of this is to not have like a whole month, you know, 8am, to 11pm, all these little blocks, I mean, as you see here, it kind of the more you kind of display on your SuperGrid, the more it's going to start to really shrink down for me, like, you know, if I go to like four days, you know, I'm sewing four days, now, it still looks pretty good. You know, five days, still looks pretty good as well. But as soon as I start to happen to maybe like a week's timeframe, you'll notice it's gonna really start to start to get a little bit confusing in here. You know, you know, obviously, if you know, I'm doing a 10 to five time block as well. So I've got, you know, seven hours for the day. So it's definitely going to be you know, there's, there's certainly not something we can say this is the breaking point, because someone could have, you know, it's maybe just a day Rental, like a boat Rental, you have 10 boats that you rent, and it's by the day, well, in that case, yeah, you could probably go out maybe a week or two and still be good, because your time blocks aren't so small. But it's going to take kind of everybody to just find what that sweet spot is for you. You know, obviously, you can still use these next block of dates, hopefully, everybody knows that. So I might be just displaying three at a time now. But it's really easy for me to just pop in here. And now I'm on my next three days, and my next three days, and so on. So again, it's just going to take a little bit of time for people to find what that sweet spot is. And then you can set the defaults and your SuperGrid of what you want. And then definitely utilize utilize these time grids, you know, it's more important to have something that looks clean, and it's able to read versus trying to just cram, you know, a week, and you know, half hour time blocks, and they're all across the board. So like I said, it'll take a little bit of time to just find that sweet spot. But but certainly once you do find that sweet spot, I think it's going to be a lot more helpful for people.
Zach Malloch 13:03
And as you're talking about the sweet spot would also pertain to the colors, I think you're gonna show a little bit.
Jordan Tipson 13:09
Yeah, I'm gonna, yeah, so I'm gonna hop into into Profile Management at this point. This is a little bit of a side thing and kind of a sneak peek for everybody. For me, this is super helpful. But another change that we made in 07.00, that's going to be released is for all you folks out there that do a lot of Profile, updating, checking, searching, the biggest gripe I had is I couldn't filter these in a good manner. So again, kind of a hot off the Press here before the release is out. You'll notice now in this Profile Type when I hit this Button, we've got this kind of filter option in here. Yeah, which is, which is really, really awesome. So for me, now I can just do SuperGrid. And now I'm down to a vs in here before you maybe had to search by the description or the code, or do you know your classic scrolling? So this is definitely, definitely an awesome one that goes wild is super helpful. Yeah. So I can just filter down to my SuperGrid here. And then I'm gonna pop into my SuperGrid.
Zach Malloch 14:07
Thank you, Jordan, that might have been a topic for discussion.
Jordan Tipson 14:11
So you can and I'll go back to that a second. But you can multi select and there doesn't have to be just a single item, you can you can multi select. So again, as I kind of mentioned at the beginning of this, there are no changes today that you need to absolutely make to get this to work and 07, kind of in our process of getting this out there. But at first we had a Toggle in here to kind of activate it to show quantities on the SuperGrid. But then as I kind of tested it more and more, I just went back to the fact that you know, today the SuperGrid with quantities for Rental items is just it can't it doesn't really work very well at all. It's not very intuitive. So again, we thought this was a change that that anybody that's using a quantity really have more than one would certainly utilize. So again, nothing's changed in here, but I do want to just call out the SuperGrid display stuff. So again, these in here you'll notice it tried to use a lot of lighter colors in here, you know, these are all my fonts here so that I have a black font. So it looks nice on the green background. But again, I would just try to recommend, you know, especially for this to try to use some lighter colors, so that way that the background, you can really see, even this might be a little bit bit too light or too dark. Obviously, if I hover over it, it's going to make it bold, so you can see. But if I had a lighter one on this, this kind of bottom one here, you'll notice that I see 19 Right now, but if I even had that lighter, then you know, it'd be a little bit easier to see on the backside too. So again, there's not really any other options that changed in here, there's nothing that changed in the SuperGrid Profile, specific to Rental quantity items. So once you install oh seven, oh, it will just start working, which is kind of nice. But yeah, that's that's kind of it, you know, obviously, hopefully, the shows the you know, the the showstopper wasn't this one here with with the new filter options, but it's definitely something to call out. That's really nice for for filtering, you know, especially for these profiles is if you do a lot of Profile work, I'm sure you'll appreciate that.
Zach Malloch 16:09
Every single time I Click on that drop down, I need to feel to this,
Jordan Tipson 16:13
I know are like you get the class, like just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. So also, I mean, again, we kind of started with that one here, but look for that, you know, throughout other places, too, are gonna continue to grow on to that, but but profiles was certainly the big one that we started with.
Zach Malloch 16:31
That's excellent.
Jordan Tipson 16:32
Yeah.
Zach Malloch 16:32
So we did have a quick question. And it's basically were there any other changes to the Rental module, Dad was specifically asking you about being able to link comments at a higher point in the hierarchy. But just generally a blanket statement? I guess not really anything else was done just this functionality piece?
Jordan Tipson 16:48
Yeah, I mean, specific to this task, you know, this initiative was to really just, you know, there was a lot of customer feedback, you know, I'm sure a lot of those people are on this, you know, this rec chat now is just the ability, you know, with Rental items on the SuperGrid was just kind of unusable in the state it's in today. So we definitely took that feedback. And this was the primary focus, you know, I won't say that, this is going to be the last thing that we do for the SuperGrid for Rental items, I think this is kind of just a trigger for that, as you know, now, maybe some of our customers out there that use Rental, but don't really use the SuperGrid, maybe now this pushes them to use the SuperGrid more, and then we start to get some of that feedback of maybe other things of how we can improve that Rental Rental module. So it's kind of a two step approach where, you know, we got to allow you to use it and be comfortable using it. And then now once you're using it, you know, shoot those those, those feedback to us. And we'll see what we can do to make some some other enhancements for
Zach Malloch 17:46
awesome. Sounds great. All right. So that's, we don't have any open questions up here. We just came one, is there a way to Click and drag for multiple areas, for instance, five bookings several locations for one person like to Click and drag rather than enter each location and timeframe for each building? So I guess, trying to do a pattern reservation for multiple things on the same date and time rather than the same thing and multiple dates and time?
Jordan Tipson 18:16
The same? Say one more time, sorry?
Zach Malloch 18:19
So can you make a pattern reservation for multiple items. So like, let's say on the 14th? I want to reserve you know, the kayaks the paddleboard and the the BPP. Chair, and I just want to do that without selecting each thing individually.
Jordan Tipson 18:36
Yeah, I don't think there's a way to do that. I guess I'm not positive. I mean, I just obviously clicked all three of them. And then it's going to go through kind of each each individual one here for me, but but that's that's a good a good thing that I'll certainly write down. This is obviously going through each one. I'm not booking them, I'm canceling them. I guess I'm not positive. I think there's a way to I think I can set it up to prompt for patterns within here. So that might be an option as well. And I can do that with facility. I guess I'd have to double check for for Rental.
Zach Malloch 19:08
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. I think you can, but I think it is also just for the item and then multiple dates. Same item. Sure. It's almost reminding me Jordan, if you're like for an enhancement thing of the event processing stuff that was started in three. Yep. Being able to copy a group of things from one date to another date filter list and just apply that to multiple dates or whatever. Yeah, that makes sense. And then Todd was wondering for the the overview, like you kind of have your last name is blocking some of the numbers of availability. I don't know if there is I don't think there's a blank line are anything that we can add to the SuperGrid display options that overlay pieces.
Jordan Tipson 19:53
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, obviously I can determine what I want to display in that overlay. That's within my SuperGrid Profile here. If I scroll down my label and tooltip setting, so I've got these here. Let's just as a guess of as a quick test, maybe I could remove some of these here. Let's just do like last name for now. That's good for now. Yeah, that's a good point is maybe in that list, we allow for like a blank line, kind of like on the reports, when you make a custom report, you can kind of just have that blank line set up, to refer to show through. Yeah, yeah. So let me just process this one out.
Jordan Tipson 20:47
And then let's it's kind of weird. Didn't take my changes, I guess I'd have to take a look at that. But yeah, I mean, that that SuperGrid Profile should should determine all that. And like I said, that's a good idea to have, you know, a couple of blank lines in there if you want to move things down. So that so that it does does see that obviously, as you start to add more items to your SuperGrid, the boxes kind of like get a little bit smaller as well. But yeah, that's that's a great, great feedback. That's something we can we can definitely take a look at.
Zach Malloch 21:15
Nice. Very good.
Jordan Tipson 21:20
Any other questions out there?
Zach Malloch 21:21
Nothing coming in right now? I actually while you're in here, do you have that allow pattern reservations for Rental was going to open it on my side? But then I saw the other questions.
Jordan Tipson 21:35
I thought we did. Maybe not. And maybe we don't for for Rental, but that's certainly a good a good option to take a look at as well. But yeah, it doesn't look like because I think it's up in here for facility.
Zach Malloch 22:00
Yeah, it's right under the controls to hide area.
Jordan Tipson 22:04
Okay, so yeah, that's, that's certainly something we can take a look at. Yeah, that's, that's definitely something, something that I think would be good
Zach Malloch 22:15
benefits of attending RecChat, you get to see the product evolve live in Person.
Jordan Tipson 22:19
That's right. So yeah, I mean, that's it. That's what I had to display here. I mean, again, we're pretty, pretty excited about this. This is going to be coming out hopefully next week, I think we're wrapping up the the final pieces of the release this week, internally, and then looking to get this out in public on the FTP site. hopefully sometime early next week. I think this is maybe a good segue, hopefully a lot of you are out there are not completely in awe by my Screen, and my new look to my Screen. So obviously, this is the new RecTrac UI that's been out for quite a while. Just want to, you know, give a reminder to everybody that this is the old UI will be going away soon. Cullen, do we have a release on that?
Cullen Barber 23:07
It's so the 3.1.07 0 3.1.10.07 is the last Build to support the legacy RecTrac UI. So the following one, which is probably you know, whatever, whatever, whenever it comes out probably late April, early May, would probably be the one that would require the new RecTrac UI be used. So again, all those that are self hosting have their own servers, they kind of control when you know when you load your builds. So you kind of control that a bit. The the hosted folks will we'll get that Build when it comes out. So probably late April, early May, is the target I think is what we're shooting for.
Jordan Tipson 23:52
Great. Yeah, so if you're out there, and you haven't switched to the new UI yet, obviously, what you saw there in the Profile, you know, area where I can do that filter, in Profile Management, this filter here, that's obviously a new UI thing, which is nice. And if you know, that kind of stuff. Oh, man, that's really cool. Again, I think the best the best thing with the new UI is just kind of the global search at the top here. So you know, if I'm looking to do you know, activity section inquiry, and I can't remember where it lives, I can just search for it here and filter down to my results. So that's, that's definitely my favorite thing with the new UI is definitely this global global search at the top here. It's super helpful in trying to find programs. I'm sure we've all been in that stage at some point in the old UI where we're, you know, we know what the program is. We just can't remember where it lives. So this is this is definitely a really nice one for the new UI amongst a lot of other things as well.
Zach Malloch 24:52
Absolutely. And I've got a I did have a question come in here. It's not specifically Rental, Todd. I'm trying to decode this a little bit. So is there a way to change the darkness of the background when you clone an item?
Jordan Tipson 25:07
The darknessof the black background when you clone an item?
Zach Malloch 25:10
Now, it sounds almost poetic in some ways. Todd, if you have any clarifying details to that question, we might be able to do a little bit more with it. Not sure if you're talking about this, like cloning the SuperGrid itself, and then the color settings that you have there. Darkness, you can't see the other codes. Still not exactly sure what you're referring to Todd, I apologize and DataGrid Gray's out and you only see that oh. Okay, so. So, Jordan, right, right from there, if you just hit the clone Button, from here. Yeah. To bring up the pop up. The maybe you're talking about the darkness and like the gradiation between the pop up and the background Window. Okay, that's what he's talking about. So this darkness in the back are not as dark. I think that that actually doesn't look as dark as it typically has been. Has that been a recent change?
Jordan Tipson 26:20
I don't think so. Maybe in the old UI? We're definitely in the new UI for this one, right?
Zach Malloch 26:27
Yeah, just look looks darker on my Screen, and then like an a three, one,
Jordan Tipson 26:35
because I assume I assume that the issue is like you want to maybe name this instead of Rental quantity. You want to name it Rental quantity one or follow like a coding scheme that you've already had in there. Right, that makes it that kind of still see what you need. We can certainly follow up on that. And I can double check, but I don't I don't think we made any new changes to this. And 07.
Zach Malloch 26:56
Yeah, a lot of support for that idea coming up Jordan to be able to adjust the darkness the
Jordan Tipson 27:02
darkness on my Screen. I don't know if there's like a thumbs up that we can like, is this. Okay? I mean, this seems to be pretty easy to see. You know, whatever I need to see.
Cullen Barber 27:11
That's okay. Yours looks lighter than some that I've seen Jordan. Maybe it could be like, monitor specific, but I was actually just before I hopped on a RecChat. We were I was working with a customer. They said the same exact thing we were trying to read. Like, like, Oh, we're all squinting at the Screen. It was kind of funny.
Jordan Tipson 27:27
Okay. Okay. Yeah, we can, we can certainly take a look at that for sure, though. Because yeah, if it's, I can totally see. You know, again, that's my assumption is you're trying to clone and you want to keep it pretty similar to whatever coding scheme that you have. So yeah, we can we can certainly take a look at that.
Zach Malloch 27:43
Yeah, a lot of positive support for that idea.
Jordan Tipson 27:46
Cool.
Zach Malloch 27:47
Absolutely. Just go ahead and clear some of these. out lots of support. So if you need to add any extra customer names to the request list, Jordan
Jordan Tipson 28:04
perfect. We like that when a lot of customers are in agreement on a single enhancement. We like that.
Zach Malloch 28:16
See when? All right. Well, we have a couple more minutes. So if there are any last minute questions to come in, we can certainly address those won't make it a free for all enhancement brainstorming session. could get interesting, though. At some point, Jordan, if you ever run out of questions, we'll do a special or ideas. We'll do a special edition here.
Jordan Tipson 28:39
All right. Sounds like a plan.
Zach Malloch 28:41
Yeah. But go ahead and start wrapping up though. Thanks to everybody who participated chimed in had some ideas for us. I'll turn it over to Jordan and, Cullen, any last words for us as we're parting parting ways this afternoon.
Cullen Barber 28:58
Thats it for me, thanks for joining.
Jordan Tipson 29:00
Yeah, and just again, if you start to utilize this in oh seven, when it comes out, you know, feel free to send over some comments, suggestions, we would definitely like that. You know, we're always trying to improve. And this was, like I said, kind of the first step to get people to use their SuperGrid more for Rental because it's kind of unusable today. So we're hopeful that once people start using it more, some of the ideas and thoughts will start pulling back in.
Zach Malloch 29:25
Yeah. Interesting new functionality for the SuperGrid also just really love that filter in the selection list. dropdowns nice stuff.
Jordan Tipson 29:34
Good stuff.
Zach Malloch 29:36
That's just for us. Yeah, well, thanks, everybody for participating. Thanks for all the information. Cullen. Bret, thanks for your assistance as always, and we'll catch you guys in two weeks for the next RecChat
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