Need help testing our new free Online Aircraft Booking System

[Storkeye]

Hi Ppruners,

Following the recent announcement that goboko are about to charge I felt it was my public duty to provide an alternative for pilots, schools, syndicates and clubs to use.

My aim is to keep it completely free of charge (I own an IT support company and a web design company) by sponsoring the site myself.

However, today is our first go-live date and I wonder if any one out there fancies testing the system by adding your club, aircraft and members?

The site is www.airchunk.com (http://www.airchunk.com)

I hope you like some of the awesome features we've included, but if you have any ideas, please let me know.

Thanks peeps.

[riverrock83]

As a member of a group, but not managing a group, I might have some time to do some clicking around (I'm a software engineer) but it would take some persuasion to get everyone else to move from MSN calendar which is v. simple (but it works for us at the moment).
Would you like me to / happy for me to create a dummy / test / demo group? Is there a sample login we / I could use to see what it does? How near "go live" is it?

A few things I've noticed:
1) when you straight to your login page it says "Incorrect Login" above the email address - even though I've never tried to login...
2) if you hit "forgotten password" it seems to take you into the website (with navigate section on the left) but with nothing in the middle of the screen.
3) login isn't secure (https) although I can understand that if this isn't "live" yet.
4) validation message on new club registration screen (hit new club, submit) is almost invisible (in blank on blue background near top of screen?

If you would like me to not leave these comments on this public forum - pm me and say how you would like feedback?

[Skylark58]

Is there a facility to e-mail all the group members when a booking is made/changed/cancelled, the way that Goboko does?

[Storkeye]

That would be fantastic! You've already provided fantastic feedback, thank you.

I have created a demo username [email protected] with password demo.

Any feedback would be very gratefully received. I hope that once you see how good the system is you'll abonden MSN calendar!

The SSL certificate will be live later today or by the end of the week at the latest. Depends on the certificate provider.

And we are working on fixing the other little issues now.

Thanks again.

[Storkeye]

skylark: Oh yes, have a play with the demo login I just posted.

[riverrock83]

"Maintenance Due Hours": how are you proposing that this is updated, since it will presumably change after every booking?
Could we add additional notes to the bookings? For example, in our group we normally fill the plane with fuel, ready for the next person, but if we don't want that done (for Weights and Balance reasons) we leave a note. Multiple other reasons too.
We use MSN to store some shared documents - I presume that you don't intend to add this facility?
Something I often need to lookup regarding bookings is sunset time. I can imagine that its an awkward thing to add though (being different depending on location)
I hit Edit on a booking, then hit "Edit" to save the booking. I get the following message:
Unfortunatly your booking clashes with these existing:

01/01/1970 00:33 - 01/01/1970 00:33 Demo User
01/01/1970 00:33 - 01/01/1970 00:33 Demo User
01/01/1970 00:33 - 01/01/1970 00:33 Demo User
I try to create a booking at the same time as another I get (note times are wrong and "Unfortunately" is spelt wrongly):
Unfortunatly your booking clashes with these existing:

07/03/2012 12:03 - 07/03/2012 12:03 Demo User



When multiple types of things are booked differently (eg, instructor and plane but with a time of maintenance) the times don't line up, so will be difficult to see when a slot is free for both instructor and plane.

[Storkeye]

Riverrock: that's fantastic feedback thank you. Here's what we think...

1. Maintenance Due Hours: Is a manual update but useful for other club members to note before they enter the cockpit. After maintenance the site will need to be updated. Just a simple reminder facility really.

2. Yes, we are adding the notes option asap as that is a very common request.

3. I like the document upload facility, not something I thought of previously. Are you storing PDFs and word docs? How many documents do you currently store?

4. I love the idea of sunset (and sunrise) times perhaps top right of the calendar? BUT that's got our brains working! How do we work out worldwide sunrise/sunset times? Watch this space!

5. All bugs you've spotted are being fixed now. Should be done by the end of the day.

Thanks again guys.

[Storkeye]

All bugs fixed!

[riverrock83]

We have documents that are useful to everyone in the group about our aircraft.
We have 1 aircraft in our group - if multiple aircraft, docs would need to be grouped in some way.
From memory we store copies of POH, quick reference guide, engine manual, calculated stats (fuel economy & type of flight), radio instruction manual.

Another thing I noticed, is that if data in a field isn't valid (text in a date field / invalid date in a field) then when save it pressed it says update was successful but the invalid fields are blank, without any additional feedback.

Sorry - I've got a day job - don't have time to look any more at the moment! Good job on that quick turn round!

[Skylark58]

Another question, there only seems to be a one day view. Is it possible to have a week or month view?

[Storkeye]

riverrock: I think we'll create multiple document areas. Attach to each aircraft, member and then a general club documents section in the main navigation.

Good point about field validation, we were keen to launch before the end of March! So that's on the todo list! :O

skylark: We are adding an overview by aircraft feature later this week. Again another common request.

Thanks for all your help so far Guys,

Cheers,
Abe

www.airchunk.com (http://www.airchunk.com)

[Storkeye]

Hi All,

Just a quick message to say that we have added the month view now and the site is fully live.

We also offer a member data import service if you are looking to get your data across from another system. Just PM me your club name and spreadsheet/access database/CSV file, whatever you have. We'll do it for free, but it might take a while if we get flooded with requests! :O

www.airchunk.com (http://www.airchunk.com)

Enjoy,

Abe

[fwjc]

Site looks great, I'm sure we'll be moving over to you in the next couple of weeks. I've also posted a link on my Facebook page.

Would it be possible to allow email notification to all group members who elect to receive them? We found this function to be really useful on the site that turned to the dark side.

As an aside, with the agreement of subscribers via opt in / opt out, you could email a newsletter with marketing info / offers from advertisers. Not a request, just a thought.

Cheers

Fwjc

[stuartforrest]

Hi there, looks like more than one of us has been producing a free solution. Take a look at ours and see what you think. It is and will always remain free and for the good of the community.

Here is our welcome letter:

Just to let you know that with immediate effect our new booking system for for aircraft/groups/instructors is available. You will need to login and create an account as the administrator of your group and then add all the other pilots and planes and instructors. Its a painless process and it will will send all your pilots an email along the way to tell them they have been activated.

Like many of the people who will use this system I was dissapointed when the booking system we used, GoBoKo announced a charging structure that wasnt cheap so I have invested the first couple of years of what I would have spent to write our own booking system which does all what the previous one did. In addition I am providing the service free of charge to the aviation community so nobody else has to pay. The address of the new system is Aircraft Bookings (http://www.aircraftbookingsystem.com) and you can find out more about the system at Welcome to the Free Aircraft Booking Sytem - FABS (http://www.freeaircraftbookingsystem.com)

If there are any problem with the system please let me know as it is hot off the press so we may have missed something.

It is pretty self explanatory to use.

1. register the group and main admin pilot

2. Add a plane or planes

3. Add pilots

Thats it. You are ready to go.

You can add bookings by clicking on the start time and then the end time in the calendar or you can also add them by selecting the times under the calender and you can select the end day if it later than the start day of the booking.

You can also book instructors by ticking a box while ticking a plane. We will hopefully add later today so you can book instructors without the need to book a plane for groundschool etc.

We will try to include any suggestions people make although as it is free there is no promises. Just ask nicely and we will see what we can do.

Please give me your feedback. [email protected]

Remember the only payment is that you put a link on your website if you have one back to our siste to help it get found by the search engines and so other pilots can track us down. Please link to Welcome to the Free Aircraft Booking Sytem - FABS (http://www.freeaircraftbookingsystem.com) (the website) not aircraftbookingsystem (the actual booking system)

Thanks

Stuart