Angelfish Availability provides a Members Area for you to enter your room, booking and closure information. You can also use the Members Area to customise your personal availability page and to keep your hotel and personal details up to date. You can log into the Members area by going to the Members page and entering your Angelfish Availability username and password.

Click on Rooms from the silver menu bar. To add a room, enter the room name (e.g. "Main Bedroom") in the box below New Room Details. Then select the room type (single, double, twin or family) from the adjacent drop down list. Finally, set the number of beds in the room and the maximum number of guests that can be accommodated in the room. Press the Add Room button to add the room to your list of rooms. The new room should appear in the list below the orange header bar. Repeat this process for each room in your hotel/guest house.

Our availability checker needs to know about your current and future bookings in order to work out which rooms you have available when. To view your bookings, click on Bookings from the silver menu bar. To add a booking, select the room from the drop down list below New Booking Details (this list should contain all the rooms you have just entered). Then enter the arrival and departure dates in the adjacent boxes. Dates should be entered in the format dd/mm/yy (e.g. 23/01/07 for the 23rd January 2007). The departure date for a booking is the morning on which the guest or guests check out. Then enter the name of the guest or guests making the booking and the number of guests in the party. Press the Add Booking button to add the booking to your list of bookings. The new booking should appear in the list below the orange header bar. Note that the availability checker only checks current and future dates, so there is no need to enter any past bookings.

Finally, you need to add details of any future room or hotel closures. A room could be closed for re-decoration, the hotel may be closed for a holiday (e.g. Easter). To view closures, click on Closures from the silver menu bar. To add a closure, select the room from the drop down list below New Closure Details (or select "Hotel" if the entire hotel is closed). Then enter the start and end dates of the closure, both in the form dd/mm/yy. Note that the end date is the first day on which the room or hotel becomes available again after the closure. Press the Add Closure button to add the closure to your list of closures. The new closure should appear in the list below the orange header bar.

Once you have entered all your current room, booking and closure information, you can set up a link directly from your website to this page so that members of the public who access your website are able to get an indication of your room availability. Of course, you must keep your bookings and closures up to date, so each time you receive a new booking, don't forget to log in to your Angelfish Availability members area (as described above) and add the new booking details.

Creating your availability page is very straightforward. There are three ways in which you can add the availability page to your website; through a direct link, an i-frame or a web service.

The simplest and safest way to create your availability page is by setting up a direct link to the Angelfish Availability website. Select the page or pages in which you wish to include the link and add the following HTML code in the appropriate place(s)

<a href="http://www.angelfishsoftware.co.uk/availability/default.aspx?id=[Your hotel ID]"></a>

where [Your hotel ID] is the unique hotel ID assigned to you by Angelfish Software. This information will be sent to you along with your username and password when you purchase an Angelfish Availability subscription. If you wish to open the availability page in a new browser window, you should adjust the HTML code as follows:

<a href="http://www.angelfishsoftware.co.uk/availability/default.aspx?id=[Your hotel ID]" target="_blank"></a>

When a user clicks on this link they will be re-directed to your customisable availability page on the Angelfish Website. So although this method is very safe and simple to implement, it does re-direct the user away from your website.

If you want users to remain within your website when accessing your availability page, the easiest method is to create your own availability page and include an i-frame that links to the Angelfish website. An i-frame is added just like any other HTML element (such as a paragraph, table, image, etc.). Once you have created your availability page, add the following HTML code where you would like the availability checker to appear

<iframe src="http://www.angelfishsoftware.co.uk/availability/default.aspx?id=[Your hotel ID]&embed=true" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>

where [Your hotel ID] is the unique hotel ID assigned to you by Angelfish Software. Your customisable availability checker will then appear in the specified section of your own availability page. You should note that i-frames are not supported on versions of Internet Explorer before Version 4. Some users PC's may also block the use of i-frames within a web page.

Our web service for users with ASP or ASP.NET websites provides the ultimate level of flexibility for displaying your availability information. As with the i-frame solution above, you build your own availability page, but in this case you also build the controls for allowing users to enter the dates of their visit and, if required, the number of guests and rooms. You also need to add a button for users to click on to check the availability, and it is this button that calls the Angelfish web service to fetch the availability data for the users requested dates. Once the availability data is returned, you can display it in whatever form you like. Full instructions for implementing the web service can be found in the Angelfish Availability User Guide. This method, although it may take a little longer to set up, can provide you with the precise look and feel you want for your availability page.