Overview

The Customer Signup Form allows your customers the ability to complete their waitlist signup from any device, at any time. They will not need to create an account to do this.

This feature is part of our Customer Portal which gives your customers self-service access to some activities within your waitlist including signup, confirmation, and removal.

Setup

To enable or make changes to your signup form to Go to Settings > Site Settings > Customer Signup Form. Below is an overview of what each of the fields on this settings page does.

• Active – The Active checkbox will turn this feature on. When not checked your customers will not be able to see the form.
• Get Email Notification– If checked you will be sent an email each time a new person is added to your list via this signup form.
• Go to Portal after signup – After completing the signup process would you like the customer to be sent to their portal page. The portal must be active for this to work. If not checked, they will be directed to a basic page with a generic “success” message.
• Special Instructions – Here you can enter a message that will be shown to your customers at the start of the signup process under “Waitlist Instructions”. If you leave this blank that step will be skipped.

Links to the signup form

Now that you have your signup form all set up you need to direct customers to it. The most common ways to do this are to put a link to the signup form somewhere on your website, or include the link in an email. Directly below the settings, you’ll see a section for Signup Form Links.

Depending on how your lists are setup, you may have multiple links you can use from. Pick the list link(s) that best work for you.

• Links for manual placement lists – If you have Manual Placement lists, you will have a unique link for each list. This will default to the specified list and will not allow the customer to change it.
• Link for auto placement lists (Age or Birthdate) – If you have one or more Age or Birthdate based lists, this link will default to that set of lists. When adding a person to a list, it will require a birthdate and will automatically select the correct list. The customer will not be allowed to change it.
• Link for default signup page – customer will have to select list – This link will allow the customer to select any list they like including Age or Birthdate based lists.

Questions

What fields can my customers see?

All form fields with Show on Online Form turned on will be shown in the Customer Signup Form. Of course they also need to be enabled for the person type (Child/Adult) that is currently being created.

For details on how to configure your form fields check out Customize your Form Fields

Can I embed the signup form on my website?

For the best customer experience we recommend you don’t embed the signup form in your website. With the numerous device sizes and modern browser security features, it’s not an optimal experience for your customers. If you are really sure that this is the best route for you, you could have your website developer use an iframe to do this. While this may be possible and you are welcome to try it, we do not provide support for this method.

There may be situations when you want a person to appear on multiple lists. For example, at a medical office, your patients may be interested in seeing multiple doctors and you want individual lists for each doctor. You can enable multiple lists on your account which will allow a person to be added to 1+ lists.

Limitations

A person cannot be added to more than one Age-based list. These lists do not overlap, and since it’s based on age, it’s not possible to appear in more than one list.

Setup

1. Go to Settings > Site Settings > Site Details
2. Check the Allow Multiple Lists checkbox
3. Save your changes

When checked, the user will see an Additional List button near the bottom of the form. When clicked, an additional waitlist form will appear. Depending on what fields you have visible this may include the List Name, Date Added, and Requested Start Date.

Alternatives

If you want to group people in some way but would prefer to keep them on a single list, you could use a custom field. People will select the value(s) that pertain to them, and then you can filter your list based on their selection. This is covered in detail for a scenario with Multiple Locations, but you can apply the principal to other situations as well.

Overview

If you have customers who are signing up multiple times and creating duplicate submissions, you can enable a feature to prevent this with the Prevent Duplicate Signups setting.

Setup

Go to Settings > Site Settings > Site Details and click the check box next to Prevent Duplicate Signups

How it works

When this setting is on, we will look to see if any people on your list are using the same email. If the person with the same email address is not part of the current family, and they have a family member who is actively on the list, they will see the below error.

You can give your customers access to remove themselves from your list, or confirm their interest in it.

How to Access

There are two different ways a customer can get to this confirmation page. They can click on a confirm link you have added to one of your emails, or they can visit the page from their unique customer portal Url.

Email Link

In your email content, you can add a link or button that will take them directly to the confirmation page. Adding this to your email reminder content is a great way to keep your lists updated.

Customer Portal

If you have your Customer Portal turned on and have sent customers their unique URL, they can visit that portal at any time and click on the “Remove From List” link which will take them to the confirmation page.

Confirmation Checkmark

When someone confirms their interest in the list, we record the date they did so. On your list their name will have a green checkmark icon next to it. If you hover over it, you will see the last date that they confirmed their interest.

Removal

If your customer chooses to remove themselves from the list. They will automatically be taken off the list. Their information will still be available in the system, and you can search for them by name if needed. They will also appear on your home page in the Recently Removed widget.

Overview

Email reminders are a great way to keep your customers engaged and informed, and to also keep your list updated and accurate.

When turned on, your customers will be sent an email on a periodic basis to remind them that they are still on your list. The content of this email is fully customizable, and can include links for your customers to confirm their interest, remove themselves from the list, and/or visit their portal page to see their status.

Setup

Go to Settings > Site Settings > Reminders. Below is an overview of what each of the fields on this page does.

• Active – The Active checkbox will turn this feature on and start sending emails within 24 hours.
• Frequency – The number of months between the sending of email reminders. See below for detail on when an email is sent.

Customization

As covered in the Email Content help doc, you can fully customize the Subject and Body of your email. There is one placeholder that you should be aware of for Reminder Emails, the Confirm placeholder.

The Confirm placeholder provides a link or button for your customer to click on that takes them to your portal. There they can Confirm their spot on the list, or Remove themselves from the list.

The placeholder for a button is <confirm-button>. Alternatively, if you would rather have a text link that takes them to the same place, you can use <confirm-link>.

FAQ

When are emails sent?

The first reminder email will be sent out based on the Added Date of the customer and the interval you have set. The next emails will be sent based on the send date of the previous reminder email and the interval you have specified.

Example Scenario:

In this example, we activated this feature on June 1, and set the Frequency to 3 months

Person	List Added Date	First Email Sent	Second Email Sent	Notes
Jack	January 1	June 1	September 1	Reminder sent today because this person has already been on the list for 3 months
Jill	February 4	June 1	September 1	Even though they were added at different dates. Jack and Jill will be on the same schedule. Since they both start today.
Bob	March 9	June 9	September 9	Bob will get his first email in a few days as he has not been on the list for 3 months yet
Betsy	April 11	July 11	October 11

If you have people on the list who have been on for a while they may all get an email right away when you turn this feature on. If they have been on the list for longer than your frequency, they will all get an email within 24 hours of making this feature active.

Can I set the frequency to less than 1 month?

Unfortunately not. One month is the minimum frequency. WaitlistPlus is a long-term waiting list solution and most customers are on the waitlist for many months or years. Getting frequent emails over a long period of time could be a frustrating experience for customers.

In addition to a better user experience, we also need to protect email deliverability. Sending emails too frequently can trigger SPAM complaints, and can lead to future emails being blocked.

Overview

At the heart of WaitlistPlus is the ability to collect information from your customers. We have a default form which collects basic contact information, but you have the ability to customize this form in a few ways.

• Create new fields
• Customize Fields
• Change field order

To make changes to your forms to Go to Settings > Site Settings > Form Fields.

Create New Fields

Near the bottom of the Form Fields settings page, click on the “Add Field” button. Here you can fill out all of the details for your new custom form field. For details on what each of these form field properties control, see below under Customize Fields.

Customize Fields

When adding or editing a form field, there are many properties which you can change to control the look and behavior of the field. These properties are:

Name

This will be the primary way to identify a form field. It will appear as a label next to the field on your form.

Required

When checked, this field will be required when visible. You will not be able to save the form unless this field has been filled out. Required fields will have an asterisk (*) next to the name on the form.

Show for Children/Adults

If you have a field that only applies to a child or adult, this is how you can determine which person types will see the field.

Show on Online Form

If checked, this field will show on the Customer Signup Form. All fields will show in the Admin area of WaitlistPlus regardless of this setting.

Show on List

When checked, the value input will be displayed on your list. See below: The green pills are values input for two custom form fields.

Notes

This is additional text that will appear as a popup from the blue information circle next to your field’s name. If you leave this blank, the blue icon will not be displayed.

Type

The type property controls how the field appears in the form, and what type of inputs it will accept.

For system fields, the type cannot be changed. WaitlistPlus requires that these fields stay somewhat consistent as they are used throughout the app for various purposes. e.g. we send emails using the Email system field, we depend on that field being a valid email address.

Here is a list of all available types:

Textbox

Allows the user to type in their response for this field.

Medium Textbox

Same as above, but it’s twice as long to allow for slightly longer responses.

Big Textbox – Multiline

This is a much larger text box and allows for longer responses which may be full sentences or paragraphs. It will take up the full width of the page and multiple lines. It’s also expandable by the user if they really have a lot to type.

Date

This field type will provide a popup calendar and will make sure that the user enters a valid date.

Dropdown – Select One Option

A dropdown will be presented with a list of options specified in the Dropdown Options property. The user can select at most, one option. You can add as many options here as you like. Click Enter or add a comma to separate options.

Dropdown – Select Multiple Options

Similar to the above dropdown, but the user can select as many options as they like.

File Upload

Will prompt the user to select a file from their device and upload it to WaitlistPlus.

Change Field Order

The order in which the fields appear on the form can be changed. To change, go to the Form Fields settings page, grab the three dot icon just to the left of the field name, and drag the field up or down.

This order will be used when the form is displayed on the screen. The fields will be placed on the form in a left to right, top to bottom manner.

If you already have a long list of people on your list and want to import them into WaitlistPlus, we will import the list for you.

Requirements

1. You have a file that contains your list. Typically this is a csv, xls, xlsx file, but we could process other formats as well. See below for File Layout tips
2. You have paid for a 1 year subscription.

Steps To Import a List

1. Create a WaitlistPlus account
2. Setup your lists and custom fields and test out your setup during your free trial period
3. Send us a copy of the file you’d like to import so we can review it and let you know if:
   1. It’s importable or not
   2. If there are any changes we need you to make to the file, or your account setup
4. Pay for your 1 year subscription
5. Send us a recent copy of your list with any changes made that we have requested
6. Wait. We usually are able to process imports within a few days if not the same day. It partly depends on how much we have to modify the file to do the import.

File Layout

There are a couple basic rules that if followed we will almost always be able to import your data.

• All members of a family should be on the same row. If you have two parents, and 1 child, they should all have their own columns on a single row. For example:

• Name fields should be separated into columns for each part. In the example above, there is a column for first, and one for last name.
• Each person on the list should have a DateAdded column. This is the indicator that a person should be added to a list, and is not just a family member added for additional information.
• If you have date based lists, you must include a Birthdate column that has a valid date.

Can I import my data for use during my trial period?

Unfortunately not. We require a paid 1 year subscription to help offset the cost of doing the import. Every list we get is different and usually takes a few hours by a human to review and massage the data to guarantee a successful import.

While we understand there may be benefits to having your own data for a trial, that’s not really the purpose of our 30 day trial. The purpose of the trial is to learn the features of the software, and give you a chance to configure your account to your liking. This can easily be done by entering some fake person information, and/or your own information.

If you are happy with your account setup and would like to make a purchase prior to the expiration of the 30 day trial, that is perfectly fine.

There are a few emails which can be sent automatically by WaitlistPlus. You can modify the content of these emails.

Editing Email Content

Go to Settings > Site Settings > Email Content and click Edit next to the email content you would like to edit.

The Edit page allows you to modify the Subject and Body of the email that will be sent

Change Colors

The color of your emails can be updated to match your brand colors. The colors that appear in the email are the same colors you have specified in the Customer Portal configuration. To change those colors, go to Settings > Site Settings > Customer Portal and change the Primary Color and Secondary Color options.

Adding content from your list

Within the body of the email you can add placeholders that will be replaced with information about the people on your list. In the example above, the placeholder <to-person-first> will be replaced with the first name of the recipient of the email.

Placeholders

Below is a list of placeholders and an example output for an email sent to “Marry Poppins” about her daughter “Emma” who is on the waiting list.

Placeholder	Description	Sample
<person>	The full name of the person on the waitlist	Emma Poppins
<person-first>	The first name of the person on the waitlist	Emma
<person-last>	The last name of the person on the waitlist	Poppins
<to-person>	The full name of the recipient of this email	Marry Poppins
<to-person-first>	The first name of the recipient of this email	Marry
<to-person-last>	The last name of the recipient of this email	Poppins
<confirm-button>	A button that will allow your customer to update their status
<confirm-link>	A link that will allow your customer to update their status
<portal-button>	A button to the customer portal for this person
<portal-link>	A link to the customer portal for this person

Custom Button Placeholder

If you have another url that you need to send your customers to and would like to add a styled button you can add a placeholder formatted as below.

<custom-button>https://www.google.com|Google</custom-button>

This placeholder will create a button with the text of “Google” and when clicked will take you to google.com.

Just replace the url and button text with your own and add it to your email content. Make sure to separate the url and text with a pipe “|” character.

A feature breakdown between Basic and Premium plans can be found here: Plan and Pricing info

Changing your Plan

1. Go to Settings > Site Settings > Subscription
2. Next to Current Plan click the Edit button
3. Choose the plan that you would like to change to
4. Click Save at the bottom of the page

Updating your Payment Info

Please see Updating Payment Information

Cancel your Subscription

Please see Cancel your Trial or Subscription

Our API is in beta mode. If you are interested in participating in the pilot please contact support

Overview

WaitlistPlus has a webhook API available if you would like to integrate our data in your own software. A webhook is the act of WaitlistPlus making an HTTP POST request to your application’s API when an event occurs. This way we are able to immediately notify you when an event occurs.

This is an advanced feature and will require involvement from your IT/Development team to integrate with your software. Because of the complexity and variance of software systems, we cannot assist you with the implementation of this feature.

Setup

While in beta mode, you must contact support to enable this feature. You will need to provide your web service url that you would like the webhook POST requests sent to. To ensure your data is encrypted, we require using HTTPS (ssl) for your webhook url.

Data

Data about the event will be formatted using JSON. An example of the full JSON document that would be POSTed to your webhook URL is below followed by a brief description of some of the more interesting fields.

Example Json

{
  "type": "AddPerson",
  "data": {
    "PersonId": 590879,
    "PersonGUID": "61aa3829-90f4-ec11-b47a-2818783e44b5",
    "FamilyPersonId": 590879,
    "Fields": {
      "First Name": "Jack",
      "Last Name": "Sparrow",
      "Birthdate": "8/9/2021",
      "Priority": "P2-Family of Staff",
      "Phone #": "",
      "Phone # Alternate": "",
      "Email": "",
      "Days Available": "Tuesday,Wednesday",
      "Location": "Springfiled"
    },
    "Notes": [
      {
        "LastEditDate": null,
        "LastEditBy": "online",
        "Text": "Needs to be seen soon"
      }
    ],
    "Waitlists": [
      {
        "Name": "Infants",
        "Position": 4,
        "AddedDate": "2022-06-25T14:07:35.4539461",
        "RequestedDate": "2022-06-30T05:00:00"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Field Details

• type – (AddPerson, UpdatePerson, DeletePerson) this describes the event that occurred. See Events below for more details.
• PersonId – a unique identifier for this person
• PersonGUID – an alternate unique identifier for this person, we use it in email notifications and links to portal pages
• FamilyPersonId – the PersonId of the first person created in a family. You can use it to link all members of a family together.
• Fields – a list of all custom fields you have created for your site. Since this list will change for each customer, the json above is only an example. Your list will likely differ.
• Notes – a list of notes for this person. Each note will contain the following:
  • LastEditDate – when the note was created, or last changed if it’s been updated
  • LastEditBy – full name of the person who created the note, or most recently updated it
  • Text – the actual content of the note
• Waitlists – the details of the list this person is on, if any
  • Name – name of the list
  • Position – the position that they appear in on the list. This is one of the few fields we do not track updates to. See Events below for more information.
  • Added Date – the date the person was added to the list (this may have a different name in your account)
  • Requested Date – their requested start date (this may have a different name in your account)

Events

Below is a list of events that will trigger a webhook notification to be sent to the web service url you have specified.

Person Updates

The following events within WaitlistPlus will trigger a webhook to be sent. This will be represented in the type field in the json response.

• AddPerson – person created by admin or through customer signup page
• UpdatePerson – any change to an existing person including:
  • Any of the person fields
  • All Note changes (Add/edit/delete)
  • Waitlist change or removal. This could be caused by a change manual change from the admin, a change to list settings like age range, or changed by our nightly process if they have aged out of an age based list
  • Customer portal confirmation
• DeletePerson – when a person is deleted from your site. This is not the same as removal from a list, which is included in “UpdatePerson”

Events that will not trigger a webhook

• List position update – for example, if you removed one person from a list, you’ll get a webhook for that person, but not all of the people behind them in the waitlist, that now have a position one higher than they did before.

Example of Integration

The below video provides a step by step example of using make.com and Google Sheets to integrate with the WaitlistPlus API . There are many other ways to integrate with the WaitlistPlus API, we are just providing a single example here for reference.