API's, Websites and adding a button for customers to book collections

mattyg

mattyg

mattyg

Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2007
Posts
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Hello, You clever lot!

We've been asked by one of our contracts to add a electronic booking option to our system. We currently use a call centre to make 600 calls a day to our customers which then gets collated and sent via sms to 50+ drivers and they want this streamlining.
We've been looking at other systems as well (new tracking, Planning + ePOD systems)

We dont have an IT dept (apart from myself and I'll **** this up if I try)

How hard?
Whats needed?
One of the systems we are looking at has an open API. We just really need a button that the customer can click to order a collection that then adds the job to our system.

Any ideas guys?

Matt
 
mattyg said:
Hello, You clever lot!

We've been asked by one of our contracts to add a electronic booking option to our system. We currently use a call centre to make 600 calls a day to our customers which then gets collated and sent via sms to 50+ drivers and they want this streamlining.
We've been looking at other systems as well (new tracking, Planning + ePOD systems)

We dont have an IT dept (apart from myself and I'll **** this up if I try)

How hard?
Whats needed?
One of the systems we are looking at has an open API. We just really need a button that the customer can click to order a collection that then adds the job to our system.

Any ideas guys?

Matt
Click to expand...
Can you link to the API documentation? Hard to tell without seeing what is required.
 
Honestly sounds like a liability without an IT department or anyone to support it.

Is there not a company offering a white label solution?
 
Without really knowing that much about "your system" ...

The answer is, you've either got to custom develop it, or you've got to adapt an off the shelf product.

Either option is quite hard. They'll be people that say "oh that's simple", but the reality is that nothing ever is.

Development - You need to write a detailed spec, find a coding team, develop it, test it, and implement it. A lot of work, and quite hard.

Adapt an Off the Shelf Product - Takes a lot of searching and trialling, and then you'll probably be left with something that has issues, and you can't easily improve upon.
 
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As above really. But I'd look into your system and see if it has any existing integrations you can use. Most website forms can connect to an API and put the information in if your system has one.
 
Ok, So revisiting this.
Looking at what a competitor does. They have a Form Field on their site. Customers use that to book collections.
So, Whats the easiest way to get the info from the Form field into an excel file for importing onto our system.
We'll create a website specifically for the booking of collections. hopefully only need a landing page with the form
 
As above, the best way would be your system having an API, and the form using the API to submit data into your system. If your system doesn't have an API then it needs one.

Excel isn't a web technology, so getting data into it and out of it into your system automatically would be cumbersome, and maybe not automatic.
 
radderfire said:
As above, the best way would be your system having an API, and the form using the API to submit data into your system. If your system doesn't have an API then it needs one.

Excel isn't a web technology, so getting data into it and out of it into your system automatically would be cumbersome, and maybe not automatic.
Click to expand...
Thanks.

So the Courier management system (routing etc) holds the database of clients and has an API.

I've tested a web form field (JotForm) and have managed (with my very limited experience) to get the form onto out testing website

Jotform can send an email with the details But as pointed out by you guys an email or excel sheet is not really what we need.

However My website has a Form that can be modified.


I dont really know anything about API's other that its name. So i'm trying to catch up.
 
Dup said:
It's possible to send data to a Google Sheet via your own form on your website. Have a look at this guide: https://github.com/levinunnink/html-form-to-google-sheet

I haven't looked at it closely, I just know it's possible and pulled that up as a potential guide, there may be better out there. You'll certainly want to make sure the users gets feedback of successful/failed submissions.
Click to expand...
The Courier software will send a booking confirmation once it allocates to a route.
We've a zoom meeting with them tomorrow which will shed light on it. It'll probably be a simple solution at their end and i've been panicking about this for nothing..
 
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