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4.22 How to book Campaigns with our Booking Calendar Lightning?

4.22 How to book Campaigns with our Booking Calendar Lightning?

Available with Version:

2.166 and up

Available with Version:

2.166 and up

Role

Sales Representatives, Inventory Managers

ADvendio Edition

Campaigns

Before implementing the new Booking Calendar Lightning in production we recommend testing your user flows and use cases in a sandbox environment. Although we have incorporated many features from the old Booking Calendar, it may be possible that some of the features you need or customized may not work yet. In case you find any missing features, please let us know and provide your feedback.

Challenge

As a Sales Representative, I need to get a quick overview of which inventory I can sell to the client. As an Inventory Manager, I need to be able to quickly find overbooked and bad-selling products to take immediate action.

Solution

The Booking Calendar Lightning is a powerful tool that allows you to discover in several clicks what products are available for a specific time period. Sales Representatives can use the Booking Calendar Lightning to create advertising campaigns quickly and easily. Inventory Managers can use the Calendar to identify which products are in high demand and which are not selling well, so they can adjust their incentives and promotions accordingly. Booking Calendar Lightning provides a comprehensive view of inventory levels and helps both Sales Representatives and Inventory Managers make informed decisions to maximize sales.

How to work with the Booking Calendar Lightning

The Booking Calendar consists of three main parts: The Template and Filter, the Calendar Table and the Basket.

Template and Filter

Templates (Chart Types) are predefined Filter sets that you would like to work with. Certain Inventory parameters can be pre-selected as well as the time unit that you need to look for. In the template, there are also settings about the table setup that you will view when hitting the “Show” button as well as the details for each cell to be shown.

Comma-Separated Input for Inventory Filters

The inventory filter lookups (Site, Placement, Ad Type) support pasting comma-separated values for quick bulk selection. Instead of selecting values one by one, you can copy and paste a comma-separated list (e.g., ADvendio.com, Airport Banner, news.com, Newsweek) into any of these lookup fields.

How it works:

  • Paste a comma-separated list of values into a Site, Placement, or Ad Type filter field.

  • The system automatically identifies valid values and adds them as selected filter pills.

  • Invalid values (not found or already selected) remain in the text field so you can review and correct them. An error toast is shown.

  • A maximum of 100 values can be added at once via comma-separated input. If more than 100 values are pasted, an error toast is displayed.

  • When there are no commas in the input, the standard lookup behavior (showing matching suggestions) is used.

Status Filters

The status filters can be applied before loading but also while the table is loaded without the need to reload.

Available status filters are:

  • Show available

  • Show offered

  • Show booked

  • Show overbooked

The filters always apply to a full row. Usually multiple statuses are represented in one result row. This means that unchecking “Show offered” will not hide a row with one cell with offered units when the other cells are still available or have other statuses.

If the filters are updated to filter out all rows you might see “No results.”

Calendar

The calendar is the most important part of the Component. It gives you great insights into your inventory occupancy. Please take note that based on the template setup you will see very different views of the calendar:

Cell numbers and colours

In most of the views, each cell consists of 3 or 4 numbers (depending on if reservations are set up or not).

When 4 numbers are shown the meaning is the following:

  1. Booked Units

  2. Reserved Units

  3. Offered Units

  4. Available Units left

Booking Calendar Units Behavior Based on Media Campaign Probability derived from the Stage field

  • Offered Units: If the Probability of a media campaign is between 1% and 99%, the units are displayed as Offered on the Booking Calendar.

  • Booked Units: If the Probability is 100%, the units are displayed as Booked.

  • Reserved Units: For information on reserving inventory exclusively for certain clients, refer tohttps://advendio.atlassian.net/wiki/x/DgCxtQ

  • Hidden Units: If the media campaign has a 0% probability or no probability assigned, the units will not appear on the Booking Calendar.

If you have custom stages make sure that the probabilities are configured correctly https://advendio.atlassian.net/wiki/x/GoDWN

When 3 numbers are shown the meaning is the following:

  1. Booked Units

  2. Offered Units

  3. Available Units left

If you use our default colours for the cells then the following legend explains all the possible colours of cells. Please take note that the Content Aggregation mode is only working with “Available” and “Not Available”:

Cell detail

The details of a cell can be opened by hitting the icon in the cell.

Depending on which details apply you can see Contending items, Publication Dates that apply to the cell or Available Contents.

Publication Date view

Print and Out of Home products usually have certain dates when they are being published. This means that multiple dates might not even be offered for booking. These dates will be shown as greyed out to show that something can not be booked.

Ad Price validity view

From version 2.171, when the requested timeframe extends beyond an Ad Price's validity period (defined by the Valid From and Valid Until fields on the Ad Price), the Booking Calendar will still include that Ad Price in the results. However, the time units that fall outside the Ad Price's validity range are shown as greyed out (not available), similar to how non-applicable Publication Dates are displayed.

Note: If your organization uses the DisableAdPriceValidationFrom or DisableAdPriceValidationUntil feature settings (see 7.2.2.9 Feature Setting to disable Ad Price Validation), the corresponding validity date will be ignored and the Ad Price will be treated as valid for the full requested timeframe.

Weekly View

The weekly view is very flexible and the time period set in the filters defines the starting day of your week.

Content aggregation

The Content aggregation mode allows you to get an overview of all Content available with at least 1 unit in a specific cell without getting overloaded with the details of each. In the details of each cell, you can find more information.

 

Content with Ad Price Assignments on Booking Calendar

Once you finished creating/editing the Booking Calendar Template with an assigned Media Campaign and Rate Card, if you choose the Template on Booking Calendar (Lightning), the fields will be filled automatically. You can also fill them on the fly so that Fields like Site, Placement, Ad Type and Contents will be automatically filtered based on the relation to an assigned Rate Card.

Note: If the Filter for active records admin setting is enabled, only Content records with the Active checkbox set to true will appear in the Content filter and Advanced Search. Inactive Content records are excluded from all tabs (Tree, Search, and Input).

Sorting columns

You can sort the Inventory columns with a click on the header. The first click will initiate ascending sorting, the second click will initiate descending sorting and the third click will disable sorting.

Please note that the sorting is always bound to merged cells and might therefore not sort the whole column but only selected merged rows in a sorted order.

Export view (Beta)

You can use the Export view button to download a csv file of your current view for further reporting. Please note that this feature is in Beta mode. The Csv file will contain information about availability per date/inventory combination as you can see it in the Booking Calendar cells.

The exported view will not show you contending item information.

Basket

Clicking on cells will add them to the basket of your selected campaign or ask you to create or select a campaign. You can also pull over multiple cells to add basket items. “Show Basket” will show you the basket as required.

Package Component Only Items

From version 2.173, when adding an Ad Price to the basket that has the "Packet Component Only" checkbox set to true on its Packet Component, the Booking Calendar will not add it as a standalone item. Instead, the related Package Header Ad Price will be added. The behavior depends on how many packages the component belongs to:

  • One package: The Package Header Ad Price is added directly to the basket. A toast notification confirms: "The Package Ad Price for this item was added to the basket."

  • Multiple packages: A selection modal appears showing the available Package Headers with their Ad Spec Name and Ad Price No. The modal displays the message: "The selected Ad Price can only be added as part of a package. Please select the Package to be added to the basket." Select the desired package and click "Add to basket."

  • No valid package: If the Ad Price is marked as Packet Component Only but does not belong to any valid package, it will not be added to the basket. An error toast is shown: "The selected price was not added to the basket because it is defined as Package component only but does not belong to a valid package."

Note: To enable this behavior for a specific Ad Price, the "Packet Component Only" checkbox must be set to true on the related Packet Component record. No additional Booking Calendar feature settings are required.

Basket options

In the Booking Calendar basket, you have two options to proceed:

  1. If you have added all the necessary products, you can directly proceed to the Campaign Builder by clicking on “Start Campaign Builder”.

  2. If you need to add more products, such as from digital channels, you can access the Media Search option from your Media Basket.

Aggregated Time units

When you are working with daily inventory then you can see it also in an aggregated weekly or monthly mode. Please take note that we can not aggregate other inventory.

Setup