Employees are essential in the Amelia WordPress Booking Plugin, as they perform services and manage appointments effectively. For the plugin to function properly, at least one employee must be created. This feature is designed to help businesses with multiple employees streamline appointment management, track availability, and oversee the services offered.
For example, in a barbershop, employees are key to delivering services to customers. They help manage bookings, ensuring that each customer has a dedicated time slot with a specific barber. If your business has only one employee and you prefer not to display them on the front-end booking form, there’s no need for concern—when only one employee is created, they will automatically be hidden from public view.
Please note that while employees are necessary for service appointments, they are not required for managing events.
Video version
Creating and Managing Employees
To create an employee, navigate to the “Employees” section in the WordPress/Amelia side menu. Click on either “+ Add Employee” in the top right corner or the round “+” button in the bottom right corner. A side menu will open where the employee’s details can be entered.
Please note that Amelia’s Lite version does not include the “Employees” menu, as it only supports a single employee whose details can be configured through Settings > Provider Settings.
The employee’s profile consists of five tabs:
- Details: This tab is where you can add and manage essential information about your employees.
- Assigned Services: This tab displays all services created in Amelia, allowing you to assign them to the employee as desired. Employees can define service capacity and pricing that differ from the default settings.
- Work Hours: Here, the employee’s availability is set. Multiple working periods can be defined for a single day, including breaks during these periods. Each period can specify the services and/or locations covered by the employee.
- Days Off: Global Days Off automatically apply to all employees. This tab is for adding specific days off for an individual employee, such as sick leave or vacation. Days Off cannot be overridden by Special Days or Work Hours.
- Special Days: This feature allows the setting of one or multiple days when the employee will have different working hours and/or provide different services. Whether adjusting hours for a single day or a specific period, or assigning different services for one day or an entire week, this option enables customization. Once set, it overrides the employee’s general working hours and service schedule, but as noted earlier, it does not override days off.
Details
Mandatory fields include the employee’s first name, last name, and email, while photo and phone number are optional. If you have multiple locations set up in the Amelia Locations menu, you must also specify the employee’s location when creating or editing an employee.
Additional optional details are the WordPress user connection, Employee Panel Password, employee’s timezone, Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar connections, Zoom user details, employee badge, description, and internal notes.
WordPress User Connection is used to link the employee to an existing (or new) WordPress user. The user must have the “Amelia Employee” role to be connected.
Note: To link the employee to an existing WordPress user, that user must have the “Amelia Employee” role. If you don’t want to change their current role, you can use plugins like “User Role Editor” to add multiple roles to the same user. Once you add the “Amelia Employee” role, the user will show up in the WordPress User drop-down menu in the employee’s profile in Amelia.
Important: Do not add extra roles to Administrator users, and avoid mixing Amelia roles. Each role has specific permissions, and mixing them may cause issues with the plugin.
Employee Panel Password can be set by the admin. Once the password is defined and the employee profile is saved, Amelia sends an email to the employee with their panel access details. Make sure the Employee Panel is enabled and the Employee Panel page is created beforehand by adding the [ameliaemployeepanel] shortcode.
Employee’s Timezone allows you to set a different time zone for the employee if they are in a different location than your business. If you leave this field empty, the employee will automatically use the time zone set in your WordPress settings.
Employee Badge highlights certain employees to make them stand out. For example, the “Exclusive” badge could mean that this employee is highly requested or offers unique services.
Description shows up in the Amelia Catalog booking form, where customers can read a short overview of the employee to help them choose.
Internal Note is for internal use only and is not visible to customers. It can include things like whether the employee uses their own equipment, prefers a specific location, or other details that help the business owner.
Google Calendar Connection: As an administrator, you can only link an employee with one of the Google accounts you have access to. This means you can’t just enter the employee’s email address and connect it to their default calendar. This setup is helpful if you have calendars for all employees under your own Google account. You can manually assign a specific calendar to each employee, and while they won’t control the calendar, it will be used as their business calendar where their Amelia appointments will be saved.
If the employee is linked to a WordPress user, they can also log into the back-end of your site with limited permissions. One of these permissions includes connecting their own Google Calendar. Alternatively, they can do this through the front-end Employee Panel.
Please note that after selecting the Google account, you (or your employee) might see the “This app isn’t verified” screen. This happens because the app you created in Google’s Cloud Console hasn’t been fully verified. Since you know the app is safe, you can inform your employees about this. To bypass the screen, simply click the “Advanced” option, then “Go to your-website (unsafe).” After this, you will be directed to the next screen where you can allow Amelia to access the calendar.
Once the Calendar is connected the Google button will change in color and offer an option to “Sign out from Google“, so you’ll know if the synchronization is working.
Outlook Calendar Connection: The connection works similarly to Google Calendar. As an admin, you can only link the employee to an Outlook account that you have access to. This is useful if you manage business calendars for all employees under one Outlook account. The employee’s appointments will be saved to their assigned business calendar, which they won’t control.
If the employee is linked to a WordPress user, they can connect their own Outlook calendar through the back-end or via the front-end Employee Panel.
Zoom User: Amelia has built-in Zoom integration for virtual sessions. To use this, you need to connect your Zoom account. Once connected, you can choose a Zoom user from the list. After selecting the Zoom user, a Zoom meeting will be automatically created when an appointment is scheduled, and both the customer and employee will receive unique links to join (given that the corresponding placeholders are added to your Notification Templates).
Please note that employees can only be linked to Zoom accounts that are set as “Users” under the main account connected to Amelia. For more details, check the Zoom Integration page.
Employee Badge highlights certain employees to make them stand out. For example, the “Exclusive” badge could mean that this employee is highly requested or offers unique services.
Description shows up in the Amelia Catalog booking form, where customers can read a short overview of the employee to help them choose.
Internal Note is for internal use only and is not visible to customers. It can include things like whether the employee uses their own equipment, prefers a specific location, or other details that help the business owner.
- Assigned Services – This is where you can check the services provided by the current employee. Each employee can have more than one assigned service and there is no limit on the number of services that can be assigned, i.e. all services can be checked. Once you check one of the services, the price and capacity inputs become available, allowing you to set a custom price and capacity for the employee. There is an edit pencil icon next to the services for which the ‘Custom duration and pricing’ option is enabled, so you can set different prices for each duration per employee here. You can read more about this option by following this link.
Please note: If you assigned a custom price and capacity for the employees, please be careful when you are changing this setting in the service. If you change the price or capacity for that service you will see a message to choose whether you want to apply this setting only for the service or for all assigned employees. If you click to change it for all employees you will override your custom employees settings.- Work Hours – This is where you set custom working hours and breaks for any employee if that employee has different working hours and breaks from those you’ve set in the company global settings. You can choose different working hours and breaks for any day, but if you want to set the same schedule for the entire week, simply set it for Monday and click on the “Apply to All Days” button, and the Monday schedule will be copied to the other days.
Click on the + button and new options will open, choose a time in the “Work Hours” option, choose services that the employee will offer in that period of time, and then choose a location. It is possible to set different locations for different periods in a day or days in a week. In the employee’s details you can still set a one default location, so if your employee works on only one location just set it in the “Details” tab and you don’t have to set it in the work hours for each period since the default location will be automatically added to all periods. However, if you have multiple locations for one employee you will be able to choose one location for each time period that you create here.
Please note: After you set these options you can experience two issues:To see a different availability on the front-end that doesn’t match your settings – If you experience this please check whether you have set your Timezone in the WordPress General Settings and whether you have enabled Show booking slots in a client time zone in General Settings. To see all dates in the calendar as unavailable – This can happen if you set service duration longer than your periods in working hours are, so the service cannot fit in the schedule.
- Days Off – As is the case with working hours and breaks you can set custom days off for every employee. Click on the Add Day Off button and you’ll see several new options. Enter a name, a date, or a range of dates, and check if you want this day off to repeat yearly. After you click Add Day Off, your Day Off will be saved, and depending on whether it is a repeating one or a one-time day off it will be colored in orange or red on the list.
- Special Days – This feature allows you to set one or multiple days in which your employee will have different working hours and/or provide different services. Whether you need to set shorter or longer working hours for just one day or a period, or set a different service for one specific day or a whole week, here you can do all of this. Once you set it, it will override the employee’s general working hours and service schedule but it will not override the days off. Click on the “Add Special Day” button and new options will appear. In the Date option choose a date or a range of dates, then set one or multiple periods of time with working hours and choose one or multiple services for each of them in the Service option, and select a specific location in the Location option. After you configure the special schedule, click on the “Save Special Day” button and this schedule will be applied.
If you have services that are only provided from time to time (not on a daily or a weekly basis), this feature is for you. You can simply delete the working hours and just use the special days, and the calendar on the front-end will show the first available appointment slot. This is useful especially for services that happen from time to time. The customers won’t need to search for a date. Instead, the month with the available date will be shown right away.
Please note: employees can also edit their information, schedule, days off and special days. For each of this action, you have an option in the Roles Settings so you can choose what they will be able to do. Of course, before that, you need to add Amelia Employee user role to each of them so they can log in and access their profile.Once you’ve set it all, click on the “Save” button and your employee will appear on the “Employees” page.
Working with the Employees list and search page
You can have one or as many employees as you need, and you can choose how to show them on the back-end of the plugin, and easily search or sort them. This is especially important for companies with a large number of employees.
On the “Employees” page you have several search options: by name, by service, by location, and two options to sort them by name: ascending and descending. These options will make your search easier in those situations where you have a large number of employees.
There are also two options to show employees on the page:
- Grid view, which is a default option, and
- List view
In both, you will see an availability status for each employee, their name, email, and phone number. In the list view, you have an additional option – to mark and delete several employees at once.
Duplicate, Hide and Delete option
Click on the employee and the “Edit Employee” dialog will appear with three new buttons in the bottom left corner: “Duplicate”, “Hide” and “Delete”. While the “Duplicate” and “Hide” options are available for both, administrator and manager, the “Delete” option is only available for the administrator.
The “Duplicate” option is the first of three and helps you configure the settings. If you have several employees with the same location, assigned services, working hours, and breaks, you can easily duplicate the first one you’ve created, and just change the name, email, and a few others if you need. In that way, you can create a list of your employees much faster. After you click to duplicate the employee and confirm this action, the copied version will open. The only difference is that this copied version will not enter email, as you cannot have two or more employees or customers with the same email address.
With the “Hide” option, you can temporarily hide an employee from the website front-end, without needed to permanently delete him/her. You will find this option right next to the “Duplicate” button in the “Edit Employee” dialog. When you hide an employee it will still be visible on the back-end of the plugin with a hidden sign, but it will not be visible on your front website.
Please note: If you hide an employee which was the only one assigned to the service and/or location, the service and/or location will automatically be hidden as well.While “Duplicate” and “Hide” options are available for managers and administrators, the “Delete” option is available only to the administrator. You can use a “Delete” option when you want to permanently delete an employee. You have two options to do so:
- By clicking on a “Trash” icon button in the bottom left corner of the “Edit Employee” dialog.
- By selecting it on the employee’s list and then clicking on a “Trash” icon in the bottom left corner of the Employees page.
Either way, you can delete employees without any appointments or with only appointments in the past, but you cannot delete employees that have appointments in the future. Once you click on a delete button you will see a message that will inform you of the number of appointments and the ability to delete.
Please note: If you delete an employee that has had appointments in the past, those appointments will be deleted as well.Employee Time Zone
The timezone set in your WordPress general settings applies to Amelia as well, but the employees can be set in a different time zone than the one set here. If this is the case, they will have their schedules set in their own time zones and they will receive notifications for appointments and events accordingly. This option is available both on the back-end in the employee profile on the Employees page, where the admin can choose the time zone for the employee and on the employee panel where employees can set it up for themselves.
By including employees’ time zones, Amelia unlocked a new possibility: being able to book past midnight!
In the past, your employees could only provide appointments within a business day, and no appointment could go past midnight into another day. From Amelia 4.6 onward, you’re able to configure your employee’s work hours from 22:00 – 24:00 (on Monday, for example), and from 00:00 – 02:00 (on Tuesday), and then create a 4-hour long Service. Your customers would then be able to book an appointment from 10 PM on Monday, until 02 AM on a Tuesday.
Employees will find this option when they login to the panel and go to the My Profile section. When the profile sections open, you need to select the time zone you are in and save the changes.
And that’s it.
* Please note that you need to click on your mail address in the panel and select the profile option and change the time zone there.
The time zone option you see in the picture below only serves as a temporary filter that can show you when your appointments will be in different time zones.
This option is useful if you travel often, but if you do not change and save the time zone on your profile, all appointments will be displayed according to the time zone that is set in WordPress.
