Online Booking and the Family Portal

Portal

What is the Portal?

The Portal is your front door online. Families and visitors browse your offerings from a link, a QR code or your own website and book in a few steps; families who sign in also follow their lessons and invoices there. Here you decide what it sells, which teachers it shows and how it looks.

Portal, in the sidebar just below Admin, is where you run your online front door. Families and visitors see the result at your own address followed by /portal, for example https://yourschool.alinaflow.com/portal, where yourschool is the name in your workspace address. That is the family portal link: Share & embed always shows the exact one, with a QR code and a booking widget for your website. The screen opens on Offerings, the list of what the Portal sells, each with its status: Draft is only visible to your staff, Published is live, and Archived is put away. Orders holds the bookings families make, Teachers decides which teachers the Portal shows and how they introduce themselves, Settings decides how bookings are confirmed and how the Portal looks, Share & embed has the link, and Preview lets you see the Portal as a visitor, a family or a teacher. Until setup is finished, a step-by-step setup wizard opens first: Finish later puts it away and the Portal setup card above the tabs brings it back. Admins and Editors manage offerings; only Admins change Portal settings. The number on the Orders tab counts the bookings waiting for you.

Portal setup

To set up the parent portal (the family portal) so families can see it and book, use this setup wizard in Portal. The setup wizard is the quickest way from an empty Portal to taking bookings online. It has eight steps, and each one ticks itself off as soon as the real data is in place, so it never asks you to confirm something it can check for itself. Branding is your logo, colors, a background picture and the headline visitors read first. Locations asks for a facade photo and a few words on how to find each one. Teachers needs at least one teacher shown in the Portal, with a photo and a short bio. Courses asks for a picture and a description for every course on sale. Offerings needs at least one published offering. Booking rules is how bookings are confirmed, held and signed; saving that section counts as reviewing it, even with no changes. Availability asks for weekly hours for every teacher of a published appointment offering, and only appears once you have one. Go live is where you see the Portal as a visitor, open it to the public and share the link. Under each step, Still to do lists exactly what is missing in plain words, and you fix it right there without leaving the wizard. Skip for now moves on, Finish later closes the wizard, and the Portal setup card reopens it at the next unfinished step.

Offerings

What is an offering?

An offering is one thing the Portal sells, built on a course. Scheduled classes sells the classes you put on sale; Appointments sells time with your teachers, and the class is created when someone books. Publish it when it is ready: a draft is only visible here.

An offering is one thing the Portal sells, always built on one of your courses. New offering on the Offerings tab opens a step-by-step wizard. First pick the course and how families book it. Scheduled classes sells the classes of that course you put on sale, and new dates follow your calendar: use it for a weekly group. Appointments sells time with your teachers: families pick a teacher and a free time, and the class is created when the first student books. Use it for private lessons or a trial session. How it is sold comes next. Payment can be Pay to confirm, where the place is held while the family pays online; Book now, pay later, where the place is confirmed at once and invoiced as usual; or Free. Needs your approval makes every booking wait in Orders until you accept it, and Trial offering books a free trial instead of an enrollment. Anything left on the default follows your Portal settings. For appointments you then choose who, where and when: the teachers, the locations, optional rooms, the lesson length, how many students per booking, and the booking window (how many hours ahead at least, how many days ahead at most, a break after each booking, and how often start times are offered). For scheduled classes you switch on the classes this offering sells. Last come the prices and the catalog tags families filter by, then Review, where you save it as a draft or publish it. Publishing checks that the course is active and, for appointments, that there is a length, a teacher, a location (unless it is online) and a tuition fee; anything missing is listed so you can fix it. To restore an archived offering, set the status filter on the Offerings tab to Archived, open More actions on its row and choose Publish: it goes straight back on sale, and Unpublish then turns it into a draft if you are not ready yet. A deleted offering cannot be brought back from the app, so archive anything you may sell again rather than deleting it. Archiving or deleting an offering never touches bookings already made.

Orders

Every booking families make in the Portal lands here: what they booked, for which student, when, the amount, how it is paid and where it stands. The status buttons along the top filter the list. Awaiting approval means the offering needs your approval: Approve enrolls the student and sends the usual first invoice, and Decline releases the seat and tells the family, with a reason if you add one. Awaiting payment is a place held while the family pays online; if the hold runs out, the seat is released and the booking shows Expired. Awaiting signature means the place is taken and the contract you chose in Settings is out for signing; the booking completes when the last one is signed. Paid late is a payment that arrived after the hold had already expired, so the seat may be gone: contact the family and settle it by hand. The More actions menu on each row opens the student, the class, the invoice or the offering, and Cancel booking there releases a booking still waiting for payment or approval and voids its unpaid invoice. To undo a booking that is already confirmed, drop the enrollment instead. The number on the Orders tab counts bookings waiting for approval plus late payments, and the same ones appear in Tasks so nobody misses them.

Teachers and availability

Families only see the teachers you switch on here. Turn on Shown in the Portal for each one, then use Edit profile to add a photo, a display name (left blank, the Portal shows the first name and initial), a one-line headline and a short bio. Nothing else from the teacher record, such as their email or phone, is ever shown. The Time off link on each row opens that teacher's Availability tab, which is where every bookable time comes from. To let families choose a teacher by instrument and book a lesson within the teacher's availability, set it up in this order. Make each instrument a course, such as Piano, Guitar or Voice. For each course, create an Appointments offering under Offerings and choose the teachers who teach it, the location, the lesson length and the booking window. On each teacher's record, open the Availability tab and add their weekly hours, one row per day and time window, then add any time off below it, as whole days or a few hours on one day. Review Booking rules in Settings, publish the offering, and share the link. Families then pick the instrument in the catalog, choose a teacher with Filter by teacher or leave it on Any teacher, and only see times inside that teacher's weekly hours that are really free: not on a no-lesson day, not during time off, not while they already teach, and with a room free. Catalog tags such as Strings or Beginners help them narrow the list. If a time you expected is missing, open the offering: under Availability, Show times not offered greys out every time inside the weekly hours that cannot be booked and says why, such as Time off, Already teaching, No room free, No-lesson day, Full, or Too soon or too far ahead. Families never see those reasons, only the times that work. Clicking a free time there books a student for them from the front desk.

Settings

Settings decides how bookings behave and how the Portal looks, and only Admins can change it. Catalog: Public catalog lets anyone with the link browse without signing in, and while it is off only signed-in families and your staff can see the Portal. Show prices puts a From price next to each offering, Ask for a phone number makes families leave one when they book, and Let search engines find it decides whether the Portal can appear in search results. The headline and introduction are the first words a visitor reads. Booking: Default payment and Approve bookings by default apply to every offering that does not choose its own. Hold a place for sets how many minutes a place stays held while someone finishes paying, from 5 to 120. New classes go on sale decides whether new classes are offered in the Portal as soon as they are created, unless their course says otherwise. Contracts after booking picks the document templates families sign once a booking is confirmed, sent through the e-signature service you have connected, such as DocuSign or Dropbox Sign. On your website lists the websites allowed to embed the Portal, one per line, the address only, like https://www.yourschool.com. Look holds the Portal background picture. Save once at the bottom; saving the booking rules is also what ticks off that step of the setup wizard.

Preview

Preview lets you check the Portal before anyone else does. As a visitor opens the public Portal exactly as a visitor sees it, drafts included, from a link that works for one hour. As a family member lets you find a family, choose a contact who has Portal access and open the Portal as them, and As a teacher does the same for a teacher. Viewing as someone opens a separate tab for 30 minutes, with a banner showing the time left and a Stop button, and it ends if that tab reloads. You see exactly what they see, because the same rules apply, and anything you change there is recorded in the activity log as you, not as them. Anything that would take over their account, such as their sign-in or saved payment methods, is blocked while you view as them. Only Admins can view the Portal as a family member or a teacher. You can also start it from a family contact or a teacher record, with View Portal as next to Portal Access. If nothing opens, allow pop-ups for alinaflow in your browser.

The family Portal

This is what families and visitors see at your family portal URL, https://yourschool.alinaflow.com/portal: your logo, colors and background picture, your headline, and a card for each published offering with its picture, length, ages, whether it is in person or online, and a From price when you choose to show prices. Tags along the top filter the catalog by topic. Anyone can browse without an account: a family only proves who they are when they book, by typing a 6-digit code emailed to them, and from then on they are signed in. A family who is already signed in lands on their own Portal home at the same link, where they follow their students' schedule, invoices and payments, makeups, documents and whatever else you share with them, and can still book from the catalog. Sign in at the top takes existing families to the code sign-in. While your catalog is not public, visitors are sent to sign in instead. The same catalog can sit inside your own website with the snippet from Share & embed.

Offering pages

Every published offering has its own page, which is where a link for each offering in Share & embed points. It shows the course picture and description under About, the teachers, each linking to their teacher page, and Where it happens, with the location's facade photo, its public description and, if you allow it, the address and a map link. An offering of scheduled classes lists the classes on sale under Pick a schedule, with their day, time, start date and places left. An appointment offering shows the open days and times for the next two weeks, grouped into morning, afternoon and evening, with Filter by teacher; on a weekly appointment the family keeps the same time every week. Your booking sums up the choice, says how it will be confirmed (for example that nothing is charged until you approve it) and Continue goes to checkout. When a time is missing, families simply do not see it; you can see why in the offering's availability in Portal Studio.

Teacher pages

A teacher page shows the photo, display name, headline and bio you set under Teachers in Portal Studio, and Book with followed by their name lists every published offering they teach, so a family who already knows who they want can book straight from there. Only teachers switched on as Shown in the Portal have a page, always under their display name, and nothing from the staff record, such as an email or phone number, ever appears on it.

Booking and checkout

Checkout is a few short steps with a progress line at the top. A visitor starts with Your email and gets a 6-digit code to confirm it is really them, with no password; anyone who already has Portal access is simply signed in at that point. Then come Your details (their name, a phone number if you ask for one, and whether the booking is for them or for their child) and Check and confirm, which shows when, with whom, where and for whom, and how the booking is confirmed. A family already signed in skips straight to choosing which student it is for. What happens next follows the offering's payment setting: Free and Book now, pay later confirm the place at once; Pay to confirm holds the place while they pay online and confirms it when the payment arrives; and an offering that needs your approval sends a request and charges nothing until you approve it in Orders. Every booking gets its own status page, which says where it stands (Your spot is held, with Pay now; Request sent; One last step, to sign your agreement; or You are booked), and the payment page brings the family back to it. An email that already belongs to one of your families books for that family; anyone new is added as a new family and gets Portal access, so they can come back and sign in. If an onboarding template is set to be assigned on Portal access, a new family completes it after booking, before the rest of their Portal opens. Staff cannot book through the family checkout: book for a student from the offering's availability in Portal Studio, or open the Portal in a private window to try it as a family.

Family access and sign-in

Families and teachers never have a password for the Portal. They sign in at https://yourschool.alinaflow.com/portal/login with Email me a sign-in code: alinaflow emails them a 6-digit code, which works for 15 minutes, and a link that signs them in with one tap. A family gets Portal access in one of two ways: they book in the Portal, which gives them access as part of checkout, or you give it to them. To do that, open the family, click the contact, and under Portal Access press Enable Portal Access; teachers have the same button on their own record. That sends an invite email with a one-time sign-in link, and also a text or WhatsApp message when those channels are switched on for the Portal invite in Admin, Notifications. The invite link works once, for 7 days. If you enabled portal access but the family never got an email, first check the contact's email address for a typo, because that is where the invite went. Then press Resend invite, which sits next to Portal Access for as long as the contact shows Invited, meaning invited but not signed in yet. If the invite could not be delivered at all, alinaflow says so and offers Copy invite link, so you can send it to them yourself. And whatever happened to the invite, the family can always go to the family portal link, choose Sign in, type their email and ask for a fresh code; if that email has Portal access the code arrives by email, so ask them to look in their spam folder too. A link that has expired or was already used offers Send me a new code. If an onboarding template is set to be assigned automatically when someone gets Portal access, the family is taken to their onboarding the first time they sign in and finishes it before anything else in the Portal opens.

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