What is the Visitor Portal and how do I create and use it?

Allow visitors of your organisation to book their own parking spots in your parking.

Content: 

This article includes the following sections:

1. What is the purpose of a Visitor Portal?
2. How do i create a Visitor Portal and how can i set it?
   1. With Payment
   2. Without Payment
3. How to invite a visitor to make a reservation?
4. FAQs

1. What is the purpose of a Visitor Portal?

The Visitor Portal is a parking reservation site dedicated to your organisation's visitors and customised to your needs. The branded portal allows you to provide your visitors with a smooth and modern registration process without additional involvement of your administration staff or cumbersome exchanges with the visitor about their arrival details.

If desired, the Visitor Portal can be a pay-per-use portal: this means that visitors are obliged to pay for their parking space for their visit, directly on this Visitor Portal. As an organisation, you will be able to configure all the relevant parameters for payment on the Visitor Portal.

2. How do I create a Visitor Portal?

From the parking management interface go to -> Access -> Visitor Portal:

It is possible to have multiple Visitor Portals for different parking lots. All Visitor Portals will appear on the overview.

Prerequisites for the Visitor Portal:

• Existing visitor access policy (with or without defined payment policy)
• Timetable of the visitor access policy must match the desired slots for visitors to choose from

a. Without Payment

There are two main sections to complete in order to configure your Visitor Portal: Visitor Portal details and your branding (configuration UI). Each element will have an impact on the options available for and displayed to your visitors. The below section explains each element and impact.

Visitor Portal details: 

Naming: Choose a representative name. This name will appear in the URL you transfer to your visitors.

Date restriction: Allow your visitors to only book for specific dates by ticking the box "by date". The date available to the visitor will be defined as part of the creation of the invitation at a later stage. If not selected, your Visitor Portal will not have any date restriction and visitors are free to pick a date. 

Authorise payment: If visitors should pay for the use of your parking, this option must be selected. Please note that the first time use of the payment option requires additional validation from your Account Manager. Take a look at the relevant information in the section ‘With Payment’ below. 

Language: Choose between French, English and/or Dutch. The visitor will be able to switch languages based on their preference once connected. It is recommended to enable all available languages in order to allow the visitor to select the preferred one and to configure the invitation in any available language.

Branding: 

• Logo: Max Weight: 300ko, Format: PNG or SVG, Width: 200px, Height: 120px,
  • Recommendation: The logo will be displayed in the Visitor Portal list on a white background (#fff). We do not recommend bright colours.
• Banner: Max weight: 1mo, Format: JPG or PNG, Width: 1280px, Height: 647px 
  
  • Recommendation: Choose a colour that makes the logo readable.
• Brand colour: Specified in hexadecimal number, remove the hashtag sign.
  • Recommendation: This color will be used as background with white text (#fff) and should have a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1. Use https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ for the ideal contrast.

Number of spots: In case of groups, you can allow your visitor to book multiple spots on behalf of other visitors. The selected spots will be part of the same transaction and reservation order. Choose only one spot if each visitor books for themselves. 

Access policies: Choose the relevant visitor policy/policies. We strongly recommend using one access policy and defining different time slots for improved user experience if possible. If you plan on having separate Visitor Portals for separate timeslots (e.g. weekdays vs weekend, AM vs PM), you may use different visitor policies.

Time selection options: Depending on the chosen option, your visitor may only be allowed to use predefined time slots or can freely choose the duration and time. It is recommended to define custom time slots for an improved visitor experience to avoid that the visitor has to input custom start and end times.

1. 1. A time slot: Predefined hours and timeslots when the visitor is allowed to book. For instance, for the slot “09:00-13:00” you configure the start time as 09:00 and the duration as 4 (as expressed in hours). This choice is appropriate when you want to impose fixed choices on the visitor.
   2. Custom time picker: It allows the visitor to choose the time and the duration of their visit as part of the selected visitor policy schedule.
   3. Time slots and custom time picker: Give the visitor the choice to either book flexibly or based on a predefined schedule. 

Watch the below video for a comprehensive overview:

b. With Payment

Visitors can be required to pay for the reservation of a parking spot if desired.

Please note the following contextual elements for the payment part:

• Izix acts solely as payment facilitator.
• The visitor pays for the services provided by the Izix customer.
• A Stripe account is required. In case you do not have a Stripe account, Izix can facilitate the creation of it.
• Two types of fees are included in the setup: 
  • Fixed fees: Amount charged at each transaction and agreed between the Izix customer and Izix.
  • Variable fees: Corresponds to a certain percentage of each transaction.
• VAT is part of every monetary transaction we make in our daily lives and is compulsory. The VAT will be included as part of the checkout process for the generation of receipts and invoices when a visitor makes a reservation.
• The chosen visitor access policy must not allow booking per hour. A separate access policy is required for every available reservation timeslot. 
• In case of cancellations of reservations, the visitor will be reimbursed. See below FAQ section for more details.

Watch the below video for a comprehensive overview:

3. How to invite a visitor to make a reservation?

Visitors are invited to reserve their parking via a URL connecting them to the Visitor Portal. The URL can be directly shared via email from the Izix interface or copied to be sent via other means of communication. The invitation can be sent in English, French or Dutch. It is also possible to send a QR code to the visitor (this is not automatically included in the generated email invitation). The QR code allows the visitor to scan and access it via their mpbile device. As long as the Visitor Portal was configured in multiple languages, the visitor will be able to switch the language at a later stage which will determine the language of any future communication.

Visitor portals may or may not be date restricted which will impact the possibility to create invitations. For Visitor Portals without a date restriction, the invitation URL does not have any expiry date. The visitor will be able to use it again in the future for a different date. It is always possible to create a new invitation which will generate a new URL for different visitors. The creation of new invitations does not invalidate previous ones. 

Watch the below video for a comprehensive overview:

Email invite example:

QR code example:

FAQs

• Is it possible to send an invitation to a visitor allowing them to book one of several days, so within a specific timeframe? I would like to send an invitation without setting a specific date while restricting it to a specific week. How do I do this?
  
  • Unfortunately, this is not yet possible. The Visitor Portal configuration allows you to restrict invitations by date. Hence, you can create a date restricted Visitor Portal and generate one invitation per date and send separate invitation URLs to visitors so that they can choose the date that suits them best. Alternatively, create a non-date restricted Visitor Portal to allow the visitor to choose the date of their choice and limit the period by restricting the validity period of the visitor access policy. Remember that this validity restriction will apply to all Visitor Portals that are using the same visitor access policy.
  • Example: 1. Visitor Portal 1 is date restricted. You create two invitations for a different date each. The visitor should only proceed with one reservation via one of the links. 2. Visitor Portal 2 is not date restricted. You create one invitation and the visitor chooses their preferred date freely.
• Is there an overview of the number of invitations sent and the people who have received them? Is it possible to see whether a visitor clicked on the link and/or booked the spot?
  
  • This functionality is not yet available. For tracking purposes, it is recommended copy invitation link to send via the communication channel of your choice so that you can keep a record of the invitation sent. Please note, if the invitation is sent from the Izix interface, the sender will be Izix, not your organisation.
• If the visitor wants a refund, how much will it be and how will it be calculated?
  
  • If the booking is cancelled, the transaction will be refunded to the final user. Stripe does not refund its fees, but Izix does refund its fees to the end user. Izix refunds its fees proportionally (if a booking for 5 places has been made and the refund is only for one place, then Izix refunds the fees, i.e. 1/5 of all the fees earned by this transaction).
• If the visitor wants to come for a full week as a visitor, how can he do?
  • If a visitor want to book a whole week, you will need to book five separate reservations, which will then give you five confirmation emails with five virtual remote controls to open during the week. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to book a visit for more than one day.
• I cannot choose a specific language for the invitation, it only shows one language. What is the issue ?
  • It is likely that your Visitor Portal was defined with only one language. If that is the case, you cannot choose additional languages for the invitation. Review the language selection of the portal and adjust it if necessary.