TIMIFY App: Reserve with Meta on a global and local level
The TIMIFY Marketplace App Reserve with Meta is designed to provide a seamless integration between TIMIFY and Facebook, allowing you to synchronise your local and global services with a Facebook Catalog. The app also supports synchronising services with Instagram and allowing you to add a “Book now“ button in your Instagram account.
Here is what you need to know:
What you need: a Facebook account with a Facebook Page to it, Facebook Pay, and a Facebook Business account.
Only available for TIMIFY Premium and Enterprise
ℹ️ NEW: Reserve with Meta allows you to connect on BranchManager level so you could also use a storelocator or connect it to Meta on local level as until now.
As part of the Meta platform, you can also use our app to sync TIMIFY services to your Instagram. Nevertheless, the first thing is to check this article’s steps and set up your Facebook Business account. After that you can take a look at this article and easily configure Instagram.
Here is how the article is structured:
1. Reserve with Meta in the BranchManager
The Branch Manager App consists of two tabs:
A. Global Authentication: This tab provides a call-to-action (CTA) to connect to your Meta Facebook account. After the authentication, relevant information about the account is displayed, including the name of the page. A component for service selection is also included, where you can specify which service should be synced or left blank in which case all service are being synchronised.
In this case you can connect to a single Facebook page. You can synchronize your global services to a Facebook Catalog. The end-consumers booking an appointment on Facebook will be able to select the location first, where they want to book the selected service.
After installing the app, click on the App in you App Marketplace in your Branch Manager. Please start with clicking on the red button "Authenticate your account".
As the next step, you will be asked to login on Facebook.
On the Facebook side, you can connect it directly to TIMIFY by choosing your Facebook Page, the Catalogue (services you would like to link to Facebook) and optionally already your Instagram Profile.
Please follow the next steps to complete the connection.
Once completed, you can find here the information that the connection was successful.
When it is completed, you can find your Catalog on the left-hand bottom in the section "shortcuts" on your Facebook page.
To see how it looks like for your customer, just click on the Catalog (shortcut) you want to visit, you will see the "Book now"-button on the top and the booking widget will open, which will show the available locations. After choosing the location your customers can choose the service from the branch they selected.
Back in the "Reserve with Meta" App in your TIMIFY Branch Manager, you can modify the Catalog to select the services you would like to offer on Facebook - if no service is selected, all your services will be available.
B. Local Authentication: In this tab, the app displays all branches within the Enterprise, categorised into two sections based on whether the account has authenticated locally with a Facebook Meta Account or not yet. The list of branches also displays the name of the page with which the account's local services are being synchronised in a Facebook Catalog. How you can configure the connection to the individual local branch, you can read directly here.
2. Important to know
Global Services and External IDs: In the Branch Manager version of the app, global services must have external IDs assigned to them. Without external IDs, it will not be possible to preselect the services in the booking widget, and all services will be visible.
Installation and Setup Conflict: If you install and set up the global app connecting to a specific Facebook Page (e.g., FB Page X), and then locally connect the local app to the same Facebook Page (e.g., FB Page 1), a conflict can arise. The global services will be overwritten by the local ones. Additionally, any updates or changes made to the global services will overwrite the local ones. To avoid these conflicts, it is recommended that you do not connect both the global and local app to the same Facebook Page. If you want to see both local and global services of a TIMIFY company on the same Facebook Page, you should only install the app locally, as it includes the global services as well. As a workaround, the BranchManager and the local version of the app can be synced with the same FB page but with different FB catalogues.
Booking Visibility and Statistics: Bookings made via Facebook should be visible in the calendar with a green circle, similar to online bookings made via the booking widget. These bookings should also be displayed in the "Statistics" section. However, it is important to note that these bookings may not be present if there is insufficient data available.
Currency Transfer: To ensure proper currency transferring between the Enterprise, Facebook Catalogue, and Facebook Page, the following conditions must be met:
The Branch Manager and all its branches must have the same locale.
After choosing a currency during the authentication step, which should correspond to the locale (e.g., choose "GBP" for the "UK" locale), the selected currency should be assigned to the services and synced to the Facebook Catalogue.
If you want to change the currency you need to uninstall and install again the app in order to choose the desired currency on the authentication step.
Service syncing to Facebook Catalogue: If no services are selected in the app, then the app will sync all services in the designated FB Catalogue. Alternatively, you can select (filter) in the Service Selection component which specific services you would like to sync.
Removal of Reordering Option: The reordering option for services has been removed during development as it was not functioning correctly. Therefore, if you would like to reorder the selected services that have already been synced, you must remove it inside the app, wait for the action to sync for five minutes, and then choose the services again in the desired order. After you clicked on "save", please wait for the changes to be synced.
3. Activating Reserve with Meta on a local level and Instagram
If you would like to know, how to install the application Reserve with Meta on a local level simply, please read this article here .