Work from your phone
Three things make HappierBiz useful away from the counter: the app on your home screen, notifications, and your work in the calendar you already use. They live together in My work → Work from your phone, and each one tells you whether you have done it yet.
They are numbered because the order matters. On an iPhone or iPad, notifications do not work at all until the app is on the home screen.
1. Put HappierBiz on your phone
Adding it gives you an icon that opens straight into your workspace, stays signed in, and fills the screen like any other app.
On an iPhone or iPad, this only works in Safari. Open your workspace there, tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, scroll down to Add to Home Screen, then Add. Open it again from the new icon.
On Android, the section shows an Add to my phone button. Tap it and confirm.
On a computer, your browser's address bar usually has an install icon, or the menu has Install. It is optional there; everything works in a normal tab.
The step says "You are in the app now" once it is done on that device, so you never have to work out whether you did it.
2. Get told when something needs you
Notifications reach you the moment something happens, even with the app closed: a failed safety check, a customer cancelling, a card declined.
This is per device, not per person. A phone and a tablet are switched on separately, and each shows in Your other devices so you can stop notifying one you no longer use.
What your business sends to each role is set in Settings. What buzzes on your own phone is yours, and nobody else can change it.
3. See your work in your own calendar
Your HappierBiz work, shown in Outlook, Google Calendar, your iPhone calendar or anything else that takes a calendar address, beside everything else in your day.
You get a private address, you add it once, and it keeps itself up to date.
It is a view only copy
HappierBiz stays the one place anything changes. Move a booking here and the entry moves. Cancel it and the entry disappears. Nothing you type in your calendar app can reach back, and there is nothing to connect or sign in to.
How quickly it updates
Your calendar app decides how often it re-reads the address, and none of them are quick. Apple lets you choose. Outlook checks every few hours. Google can take most of a day.
So treat it as the overview, not the alert. Anything you need to know right now still reaches you as a notification and is still on the roster. When you want one thing in your calendar immediately, use the Add to calendar button on that job, which lands straight away.
What goes on it
Tick boxes, and you can change them whenever you like:
| Layer | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Bookings | What was booked, who with, how many, the room |
| Jobs | Work you are going out to, with the address and who to ring. It sits at the time the job is booked for; a job with only a rough window ("morning") sits at the top of the day with the window written in it |
| Roster shifts | When you are on |
| Time off | Approved leave |
| Days you are closed | Closures on the business calendar |
A layer whose tool your business does not use simply does not appear.
Owners and managers see the whole diary. Everyone else sees only their own work: their shifts, bookings made with them, and jobs assigned to them.
What an entry carries
The customer and their phone number, what they booked, how many people, the room, everything they answered when they booked (including priced options and extras), allergies, whether a deposit or the full amount has been paid, and a link back into HappierBiz.
Phone numbers and prices are each a switch the business can turn off.
Site access notes are never included. Gate codes, alarm codes and where the key safe is stay in HappierBiz, behind your login. A calendar entry copies itself to a phone, works offline and needs no password, which is not where a code to get into somebody's house belongs.
Adding it to your calendar
In My work → Work from your phone → step 3 there are two buttons. Use them on the device you want the calendar on.
Open in my calendar hands the address straight to the calendar app on that device, which asks whether you want to subscribe. Say yes and it is done. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is saved. This is the one to use on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, and on Windows if you use the Outlook app.
Open in Google Calendar opens Google with the address already filled in, for anyone who uses Google Calendar in a browser.
If neither suits, Copy the address and add it by hand:
- Outlook: Calendar, then Add calendar, then Subscribe from web.
- Google Calendar: Other calendars, the +, then From URL.
- iPhone or iPad: Settings, Calendar, Accounts, Add account, Other, Add Subscribed Calendar.
Do not just open the address in a browser. That downloads a one off copy of today's bookings, and a calendar built from it never updates again. It looks exactly like a live one, which is what makes it worth saying.
If you lose your phone, and keeping the address yours
The address is a key. Anyone holding it can read that calendar without signing in, so treat it like a password: do not post it anywhere or put it on a shared screen.
- It is yours alone. Nobody, including an owner, can look up somebody else's.
- New address replaces it, which stops the old one working everywhere it has been added. Do this if a phone with it on has been lost, then paste the new one into your calendar.
- It stops working the moment somebody leaves the business.
- The step tells you when your calendar app last read it, so you can see it is working.
Turning it on for the business
An owner or manager switches it on first, under Settings → Connections → Your calendar:
| Switch | What it does |
|---|---|
| Let this diary be added to a calendar app | Off by default. Nothing is available until this is on. |
| Let the team have their own | Whether staff get their own address. Off means owners and managers only. |
| Include customer phone numbers | So a number can be dialled from the entry. |
| Include prices | What was added, what it came to, and whether it is paid. |
Everyone then sets up their own phone from My work. There is nothing to hand out.
If something is not right
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| The calendar step says it is not switched on | The business has not turned it on yet, under Settings → Connections. |
| It says owners and managers only | The business has it on but has not allowed team links. |
| Nothing has appeared in Outlook yet | Give it a few hours. Outlook re-reads on its own schedule and there is no way to hurry it. Use Add to calendar on the one you need now. |
| A booking you cancelled is still showing | Your calendar has not re-read the address yet. It goes on the next read. |
| An entry cannot be dragged or edited | Correct. It is a view only copy. Change the booking in HappierBiz and your calendar follows. |
| Entries have stopped updating | Somebody replaced the address, or that person has left the business. Copy the current address again from My work. |
| It went in once and never changed again | The address was opened in a browser and the downloaded file imported, which is a one off copy. Delete that calendar and use Open in my calendar instead. |
| Open in my calendar does nothing | That device has no calendar app registered for it. Use Open in Google Calendar, or copy the address and add it by hand. |
| Notifications will not switch on, on an iPhone | Step 1 is not done. Notifications need the app on the home screen first. |