4.22 How to book Campaigns with our Booking Calendar Lightning?

Owned by Nicole Jünger, created
Last updated: 2024-11-14
4 min read

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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