A service with booking rights is a restricted service that cannot be publicly booked in the customer interface.
Initially, Vihta’s special feature of ”booking rights” was implemented so that a professional could manually create a booking right for a customer for a particular service. With the booking right, the customer could book a suitable time for that service during a specific time frame set by the professional. The professional could define the service, the branches, and the booking schedules to which the booking could be made. Additionally, the professional could set the time frame and number of bookings for the booking right. In Vihta, the professional added the booking right to the customer’s details and sent the code for booking the time via email and/or text message. This allowed the customer to book a time for the restricted service themselves via Vihta’s customer interface using their personal identification number and the code sent by the professional.
Currently, Vihta’s booking rights can also be created automatically, for example, through pre-appointment forms and strong identification. If the customer fills out the pre-appointment form before booking and identifies themselves strongly, a booking right can be created for them based on their answers. This allows the customer to be offered times for the suitable service, such as to the customer’s home municipality’s branches, the correct booking schedules, and time frames.
In addition, automated booking with booking rights allows for chained booking rights or double booking. When the customer has booked a time with the first booking right, a second booking right can be automatically created for them, with the time frame depending on the first booking’s details. Thus, the restrictions for the second booking right can be based on the first booking’s information.
Currently, Vihta’s booking rights are being used for automated and chained booking through services such as Finentry and the COVID-19 chatbot for booking test times, as well as for booking COVID-19 vaccination times in the Uusimaa region.
In the future, booking rights could be used automatically for booking referral-based services if Vihta could obtain the necessary information to create the booking right from the patient information system.