Detailed Video Tutorials Coming Soon!

Brindle Booking Overview: For a quick overview on how to book appointmenst for WordPress sites, this is the video for you:

Congrats on grabbing your copy of Brindle Booking, hands down the best Booking plugin for WordPress if we say so ourselves 🙂 Let’s dig right in and install the plugin, which is the exact same process as any other WordPress plugin:

1. Download your copy of Brindle Booking from the API DOWNLOADS section of your account. You’ll then click the download link, as shown here:

***Important: Many operating systems will automatically unzip this file. However you will be uploading this exact .zip file so it needs to remain zipped. If your OS unzips files automatically, you will need to compress the file into a .zip in order to proceed.

***Important: You must not change the title of this file. The title formatting is critical in ensuring you can activate your plugin’s API key.

2. In your site’s WordPress admin area, navigate to the Plugins tab. There, you will see a button titled “Add New” at the top of the page:

Click this button, and then click “Upload Plugin” button found in the same location. Finally, select the plugin file from your computer by clicking the “Choose File” button, which will allow you to locate your .zip plugin file from your computer.

3. After selecting the correct file, you will then click “Upload”. After the upload is compelte, click the “Activate Plugin” button, and you’re done!

On completing the above steps, the plugin has now been correctly installed. However in order to receive updates and ongoing support, you’ll need activate the API key assigned to you based on the license you chose when making the purchase. Activating your API Key is covered in the next section of this documentation.

Each Brindle plugin must be activated via a unique API key in order to receive updates and notifications of new releases in the WP Dashboard. These keys are automatically assigned to your product, and found in the API Keys tab in the account area. Activating your product is an ultra-quick process that only takes a few moments to complete, so let’s dig in:

1. In your account area you will notice a section titled “API KEYS” in the left-hand sidebar. Go ahead an click that link to see your API keys, each categorized by their corresponding product. Locate the correct API Key, and copy it to your clipboard for later use.

2. Now armed with the power of a copied API Key, return to WP-ADMIN. If you completed the installation of a Brindle plugin, you will notice that a new tab has been added to your sidebar, cleverly titled “My Brindle”. However the API Activation is found in the core “Settings” tab. Hover your cursor over that tab and you’ll see a sub-section titled “Brindle Booking Activation”, which you’ll want to click.:

3. On this screen you’ll see the field where you’ll want to paste the API Key that you copied form your account area, and select “Activate”.

4. JK there is no 4th step, you’re done! If succesfully activated, you will see the status changed to “ACTIVATED: alongside the number of active and remaining uses of the key. You should feel pretty good about this.

Important Notes on API Key Activation:

• There is a glitch that sometimes causes the plugin to be set to inactive by default. This setting is in the “Deactive API Key” tab. You may need to navigate to this tab ans ensure the “Deactivate API Key” checkbox is NOT selected. Then, click “update” and try activating the API Key again on the other tab.

 

• The most common cause for API activation to not work is site caching. Site caching can cause your site to not communicate with our API validation server. Be sure to disable caching temporarily until you succesfully activate your plugins. Note this can also be cause by third party “optimization” services such as Cloudflare.

After installing and activating Brindle Booking, you will see a new section added to your WordPress admin’s sidebar title “My Brindle” and beneath that you will see the core Brindle Booking sub-sections: Booking, and Appointments. The Booking tab is where you’ll want to click to begin setup, and an overview of what you’ll find there is shown below.

After clicking the “Booking” tab, here’s what you’ll see (note you can open this image in a new window for a closer view of each detail:

Now that you’re familiar with the general components that makeup the plugin’s admin area, we’ll now dig into each tab in detail, starting with the “Services” tab.

The Services tab is where you’ll organize all of the services you would like to add that can be booked by customers/clients of your site. brindle booking allows an endless range of possible services, including the ability to book Zoom meetings via calendar, book phone meetings based on your schedule, offer items for a scheduled in-store pickup, appointments for services like salon and barber bookings, and more. With the ability to categorize your services, customers will be able to pick whether they’d like to book a service, or simply want to schedule a phone call. Due to its modular nature, Brindle Booking can be adapted to multiple tasks to help you run your business.

Below you will find an in depth overview of the Services tab, which is a great place to start when setting up your booking interface:

As you can see above, you have the optional ability to charge for any service you like. This lets customers securely pay for the service during the booking process. Note that you must have a Stripe account to accept payments, and a secure site (https: via a SSL certificate). Please contact your host for more details on ensuring your site has an SSL certificate installed, otherwise let’s move on to a quick overview of how the pricing is added along with other details when adding a new service:

Adding a New Bookable Service

To add a new service, simply click the “Add New Service” button found on the Services tab page. This will bring up the following popup, which allows you to enter the details of the service you’d like customers to be able to book:

The popup is very straight forward, but here are a few clarifications of each field that needs to be entered before adding the service:

Service Title: This is of course the title of the service that can be booked.

Category: This will only apply if you have multiple service “types” such as phone calls vs. paid appointments. If you have already added categories, you can assign this service as needed via this dropdown. On the front end, users will select the category in a dropdown, which will then dynamically update the services shown in the “Services” dropdown.

Price: This is optional for each service you offer, and allows you to specify how much will be collected if this service is selected. Note you can let customers pay during the booking process, via invoice, or on location. Each of these options can be displayed to customers, allowing them to choose their payment method, or you can specify/require a certain payment method. It’s all up to you. Please see the “Settings” tab section for more details on how to enable various payment methods, including the ability to accept online payments via Stripe.

Note: Since version 1.0.4, Brindle Booking now supports multiple currencies, which can be set in the Settings Tab. Once set, the proper Currency symbol will display in the Services section as well as on the front end interface, and visitors will be charged according to the currency you’ve set.

***As noted in the “Add Service” popup, you’ll want to account for all taxes and fees when entering this price, as this will be the full amount that is collected. No taxes or other fees will be generated beyond what you enter in this field.

Once you’ve entered the details for this specific service, click “Add Service” and you’re all set! This service is ready to be booked by your site visitors.

Brindle Booking is designed with minimalism in mind, and a clean, simple look that is crafted to ensure your customers/clients can quickly book an appointment in a matter of seconds. Despite the nearly universal design, Brindle Booking allows you to customize the colors of your booking interface to match your site and brand. Check out an overview of the Design tab below to see how you can easily alter the colors of your booking interface in a few clicks. Note that we have color coded the admin setting and matched it to the area effected on the front end portion. Feel free to open this image in a new tab for a closer view:

As with all tabs, once your colors are in place, click the “Save” button in the right sidebar to apply your changes.

The settings tab is where you’ll decide which feature to include/exclude on your front-end booking interface. Content that can be added or omitted includes form fields for collecting customer information, the ability to accept online payments, the option to categorize multiple services (or simply have a single service), and more. In short, you’ll be able to craft the perfect booking process that only collects what you need from customers. It can be as simple or as robust as you need, from a simple meeting booking plugin, or a booking plugin for multiple services and purposes. For example, maybe you’d like to offer online counseling sessions that can be paid for online during the booking process, but also want the ability for clients to schedule free phone calls? Brindle Booking can take care of that in a single interface, ensuring that your schedule is organized with no conflicts amongst appointments.

Below you’ll find an in-depth overview of each feature, though note the Settings tab also contains inline help text to clarify exactly what is being added when you select each option. This help text is found by clicking the small “?” icons next to each option. Note: as of version 1.1.4 the Google Calendar settings have been moved to the new “Integrations” tab.

As with all tabs, once your settings are in place, click the “Save” button in the right sidebar to apply your changes.

With Brindle Booking, you specify each time slot that can be booked. This can be divided into increments of 15, 30, and 60 minutes, allowing you to be as granular as you like. By default, your availability will be blank. To add slots, simply select the increment, then click each time slot you’d like to make available. This will automatically add them to the front-end booking interface for customers/clients.

Here is a detailed overview of the Schedule tab to showcase how simple it is to set your weekly/daily availability:

Note: When selecting “00:” it will be for the first portion of the hour, ie “00:” in a 30 minute time slot next to “2:00 PM” will book the 2:00-2:30 time slot. Selecting “30:” will book from 2:30-3:00 and so on.

As with all tabs, once your available schedule in place, click the “Save” button in the right sidebar to apply your changes.

Version 1.0.2 update: Staff Member Support! You can now manage the schedule of multiple staff members here on the Schedule tab. Please see the next section for instrucitons on how that works.

Since version 1.0.7, Brindle Booking now allows you to specify the message that is sent both to the visitor who makes the appointment, and the admin/staff member who the appointment has been booked with. These two messages are contained in the new “Notifications” tab, as shown here:

As you’ll see, a series of shortcodes can be combined to enhance your message with specific details about the appointment. A default message will be entered automatically, but change these as needed for a fully custom message to your staff and clients/customers so they stay informed.

Since version 1.1.4, Brindle Booking now includes a dedicate “Integrations” tab. This is where we store any settings related to 3rd party services, such as Google Calendar, Payment accounts, and connecting to a Zoom account. It’ll look like this:

Stripe API Keys

This allows you to enter credentials from your Stripe account in order to receive payments when a user books an appointment/service.

Google Calendar:

This is where you’ll enable Google Calendar, which allows users to add any appointments directly to their Google Calendar while booking an appointment. Note that you’ll need to follow Google’s Documentation in order to generate an oAuth Code. NOTE: As of July 2021, We are currently overhauling this feature to make it MUCH simpler to integrate.

Zoom Account:

As of version 1.1.6, Brindle Booking now fully integrates with Zoom. This means that users booking an appointment will automatically generate a Zoom meeting link, which will then be sent to all parties involved in the meeting. We cover this in the next section of this documentation.

Using Zoom with Brindle Booking: As of version 1.1.6, Brindle Booking supports full Zoom integration. This means that user who book an appointment will automatically generate a Zoom meeting link, which will then be emailed to all parties involved in the meeting. After you’ve setup a Zoom account, connecting your account is literally the click of a button, and we’ll cover the setup process below.

Prerequisites: You will need a Zoom account in order to use this feature, and will need to be logged in. You will also need Brindle Booking version 1.1.6 and higher.

Zoom Setup:

1. Navigate to the Integrations tab

As shown in the previous step of this documentation, you’ll find the Zoom account settings in the “Integrations” tab of Brindle Booking’s admin area. Once there, you’ll see a section at the bottom titled Zoom Account.

2. Connect Zoom Account

You guessed it, simply click that button. You’ll then be taken to your Zoom account login page 9if not logged in already). Once logged into Zoom, Zoom will ask you to Authorize the app for use via a screen that looks like this: 

Click Authorize, and you’re all set to automatically let all of your users generate Zoom meeting links for any service you like, which takes us to the final step. 

3. Enable Zoom Meeting Setting for Services

You have the option to include/exclude the Zoom functionality for any service you like. Simply navigate to the Services tab of the Brindle Booking admin, and select any service you’ve created (or add a new one). In the popup that appears – which include the service details – you’ll now see a checkbox at the bottom titled “Generate Zoom link when service is booked”. It will look like this:

When that option is enabled, this specifiuc service will create and email a Zoom link to the person booking the service as well as the admin and/or staff member who was booked.

And with that, you’ve now enabled Zoom funcitonality for your services!

Note: Brindle Booking does not store any personal information in regards to any Zoom meeting. Zoom functionality is stored on a secure server and protected by transport layer security (TLS) 1.3. Feel free to review our privacy policy for more details.

Deactivating / Uninstalling Zoom

To deactivate Zoom from your account, simply click the same button you clicked to enable it:

On clicking the “Disconnect Zoom Account” your copy of Brindle Booking will no longer be linked to your Zoom account, and the functionality will be disabled.

Since version 1.0.2 Brindle Booking now supports multiple Staff Member support! This means your clients/customers can book a specfic staff member from your team, each with their own booking schedule. Here are the key features:

Staff members will be assigned their own account, and when they log in they will be able to edit/review their availability schedule.

While logged in, staff members can also review any appointments made with them from customers.

The admin can assign new staff members by creating a new user, and applying the new “Staff Member” role. This is doen in the User panel of WP-admin

Admin can alter the schedule of any staff member, review appointments for all members, and also choose which members to inclide/exclude in the booking interface.

You can also choose to omit Staff member support by choosing the “Global Schedule” in the schedule tab. This will revert to a single booking schedule on the front-end interface.

You’ll find detailed instructions on setting up this feature in the next section of this documentation.

 

To add a new staff member, there are 2 steps.

1. Create a new user:

Navigate to the “Users” tab in admin, and click “Add New”.

On the next screen, you’ll add the member details such as name, email, and so on. Important: In the Role dropdown. a new role type has been added. Be sure to assign the role of Staff Member to this user, or they will not be added to Brindle Booking. See below for reference:

After you have assigned all details, click “Add New User” and the staff member has now been added to your site.

Note: The staff member will receive login details via the email you’ve set up here. They will also receive notifications of new appointments via this email, so be sure to confirm all info is correct before adding the user.

2. Add Staff Member to Schedule

Now that you’ve added the staff member, you will need to set up their schedule, in addition to including them on the Briondle Booking front-end interface. To do so, navigate to Brindle Booking (My Brindle > Booking).

Once you’re in the Brindle Booking Section, navigate to the Schedule tab. By default, this will be set to display a “global schedule,” meaning it will have a single booking schedule and will ignore the Staff Members. To enable staff member support, be sure this box is deselected.

Also note that all staff members have been added to the dropdown seen on this page. You can select your staff members from this dropdown (after they have each been added as users) to add them to the booking interface, and edit their schedules:

You’ll need to be sure each staff member has been added to your schedule by ensuring each has the “Include this staff member on front-end” option selected, and that their schedule is properly set. After you’ve ensured this, click “Save” and the Staff Member will now be bookable!

What Staff Members see when logged in:

Note: Staff Members can now login to your site with their own login details, and will be limited to what they see. They will ONLY have access to their schedule, and appointments made specifically with them only. They cannot see your site settings, cannot change Brindle Booking settings other than their own schedule, nor see other Staff Member appointments / schedules.

The admin of the site will continue to see all settings however, in addition to being able to see all appointments made with any staff member.

Congrats, you’ve now added the Staff Member feature to your booking interface, and customers are free to book on your staff member’s unique schedule. To add more members, simply repeat the above steps for each staff member, though we recommend adding all staff members as users first, then setting their schedule per the above instructions. Enjoy, you team player you!

The help tab contains all instructions needed to add the booking interface anywhere on your site. You can use the supplied shortcode to generate a custom button (which will automatically add the booking interface), or you can use a CSS class to add functionality to an existing link or button (see next section of this documentation for instructions on that method).

Here is a detailed overview of the Help tab that provides details on how it all works, though the help tab itself of course contains everything you need to quickly deploy your booking functionality:

For quick reference, here is the same content found in the help tab, including the shortcode and CSS class needed to place your booking interface on your site:

Shortcodes

1. (bracket) bb-popup-trigger (close bracket) – renders a button that triggers the booking popup on click.

Possible attributes for this shortcode are:

content – defines the text content inside the button, defaults to “Book Our Service”
id – adds an ID attribute to the button element
class – adds a class attribute to the button element

An example using all of the possible attributes:
(bracket) bb-popup-trigger id=”example-id” class=”example-class-name” content=”Make An Appointment” (close bracket)

Classes

bb-js-trigger-popup – adding this class to an existing element will turn the element into a trigger ( on click ) for the booking popup

For more details on adding Brindle Booking functionality to your site, please see the next two sections of this documentation.

Since version 1.0.6, Brindle Booking now offers 100% translation support via .po file integration. This means third party pluigns like WPML and Loco Translate are fully supported.

We highly recommend Loco Translate, a free plugin that we feel offers a much better, lighter experience than WPML. You can get Loco Translate Here.

We are adding .mo files on a regular basis, so there’s a good chance the translation to your language is already implemented. However, if you need to translate, you’ll find it to be a very simple, quick process. Due to each translation plugin handling things differently however, you’ll need to follow the guides specific to the service you’re using to translate Brindle Booking.

Since version 1.1.0, Brindle Booking now lets you specify the pages where its code should be loaded. This will increase overall site speed in comparison to previous versions.

To do so, navigate to the Settings tab in Brindle Booking’s admin section. On that page, scroll to the bottom and you’ll find the section titled “Other Settings” which looks like this:

As you can see, you can choose to load the necessary code on all pages (required if you have the booking interface placed in a site-wise menu for example) or you can choose to add it ONLY to the page where you’ve implemented the booking interface.

To load on specific pages, select “Load on Specifi Pages Only”, and choose the pages in the selector that appears beneath. Simple as that, and faster than ever 🙂

With Brindle Booking, you can add a button which is generate via a shortcode, or assign the booking functionality to a pre-existing button (such as those used in Divi Builder, or buttons you’ve already added to your site).

Add Brindle Booking Via Popup (New Button)

To render a new button, simply enter the following shortcode on any page of your site:

(open bracket) bb-popup-trigger (close bracket)

This will render a new button that, when clicked, will allow visitors to book appointments via Brindle Booking’s sleek front-end interface. Note you may also alter the button’s content by editing the shortcode, as described in the “Help” tab of the admin. We’ve included those details here for quick reference: 

1. (open bracket) bb-popup-trigger (close bracket) – renders a button that triggers the booking popup on click

Possible attributes for this shortcode are:

• content – defines the text content inside the button, defaults to “Book Our Service”
• id – adds an ID attribute to the button element
• class – adds a class attribute to the button element

Example (click to open the Brindle Booking interface):
Make An Appointment

With Brindle Booking, you can add a button which is generate via a shortcode, or assign the booking functionality to a pre-existing button (such as those used in Divi Builder, or buttons you’ve already added to your site).

Add Brindle Booking to an Existing Button

As described on the “Help” tab of Brindle Booking’s admin, you can add a CSS class to any button that already exists on your site. This allows you to add full functionality to any button without worrying about the buttons style and such. We’ve included the class here for quick reference:

bb-js-trigger-popup – adding this class to an existing element will turn the element into a trigger ( on click ) for the booking popup

DIVI USERS: You can add the above class in the “Advamced” tab of any button, simply placing the shortcode in the “CSS Class” field. For other page builders, you will need to locate the eqivelant field.

With Brindle Booking, you can embed the full booking interface directly onto any page throughout your site

This is done by pasting the shortcode provided in the Help tab, or you can copy and paste it from here (note you’ll need to add brackets): bb-booking-module
You’ll want to paste that code directly in the “Text” section of the page content (if on classic view) or use a “Shortcode” block in WordPress block builder. After you’ve published the page, the embedded version of Brindle Booking will appear, just as shown here.

We’ve also created a helpful video on this new feature, which you can check out below:

Now that booked appointments are rolling in, you’re going to want to know each detail. In addition to an email notification (which is sent automatically each time a booking is submitted) each appointment will be collected in the “Appointments” section of the Brindle Booking sidebar in wp-admin. This link is found just under the “My Brindle > Booking” tabs in the left sidebar:

After clicking the Appointments link, you’ll see a familiar list of items, which are organized just like other WordPress posts and pages. These will be grouped in titles that include the name of the individual who booked the appointment, and time/date of the appointment. This allows a quick glance of upcoming appointments, but also includes the ability to search/filter appointments, and to create appointments manually:

For full details, you’ll want to click on an entry from the list. This detailed view will show every of the appointment, and is covered in detail in the following image:

Note that you can change the time and date of each appointment as needed on this page, along with all other details pertaining to the appointment itself. If you have collected payment for any specific service, you’ll also be able to see these details in the “Payments” tab, which we cover in the next section.

Appointments > Payment Details

If the service you selected has a payment attached to it, and if customers paid for the service during the booking process, you can see details on the payment by clicking the “Payments” tab, which is found in each detailed view of an appointment under the “Appointments” section of the plugin. Note that Brindle Booking does not collect any sensitive payment details from customers, and this info is simply aggregated from your Stripe account. To refund customers for any reason, you will need to do so via your Stripe account as well. Check out the image below for a detailed overview of payment details:

Appointment Email Notifications

In addition to collecting all appointment details in the Appointments section of admin, the site admin will also receive an email notification each time an appointment has been booked on the site. This same email is also sent to the customer who booked the appointment, and the email looks something like this:

You can also allow the ability for customers to sync with Google Calendar, allowing you both to share notifications of upcoming appointments. These elements ensure that you’ll never have a scheduling conflict again, and lets your site do the work for you instead of worrying about incoming meetings.

After you’ve setup your services, and included everything you need when setting up the plugin in admin, your booking interface is ready to launch! The booking process was designed in a similar manner to a store checkout process, and consists of 3 main steps, followed by a confirmation. This streamlined process is designed to boost customer/client bookings due not only to its quick and easy process, but also its sleek and professional design. Below is a detailed overview of each step of the front end customer experience. For each step, you can easily see how each element you’ve setup in admin has carried over to the front end, but when in doubt feel free to refer to earlier sections of this documentation.

Don’t Forget: Brindle Booking is 100% Responsive! Note that every step of the process is 100% responsive, meaning it will display perfectly from any device, allowing your visitors to book from there desktop PC, or on the go!

That covers it! As you can see, setting up and deploying Brindle Booking makes it one of the easiest booking plugins for WordPress available. We hope that this documentation has come in handy, and wish you the best of luck in boosting your business by using a Brindle plugin. If you need further assistance, please see the next section.

Still need help? Feel free to submit a ticket here to our 24/7 support system. We typically respond within a few hours, though note we are on EST and sometimes sleep. Sometimes.

Sales Question or Need a Custom Solution?

Feel free to contact us directly with any questions not relating to support, such as sales inquiries, or if you require a customized solution to your website: Contact Brindle Here.