jAC TheRentalCalendar.Com

Tutorial {TOC}

This initial tutorial will take you through becoming a Member and adding your first property and explore the jAC Menu System.

Then you add some bookings and view your default calendar. Then we learn to configure the calendar including Legend Status Types, Languages, and themes and colors. Then we learn how to use the calendar links from another website (i.e. your website!).

Once the basics above are covered, we move on to the most powerful part of jAC: the ability to display a group of calendars on the same page. It is possible to display availability for many properties even though the availability data may come from different sources such as iCAL and XML from other sites. First you add some additional properties and then begin working with the different display methods.

You have a lot of control of the display of your calendars. The Advanced Configuration Options can be used for a single calendar or group calendars.

jAC does not yet provide a enquiry/contact form, but it does give you the oppurtunity to link back to your own websites.

Becoming a Member{TOC}

Find the Register Now Link on the Login. You can also try out the demo users. Registering does not require any payment or info other than an email address. Your account is free for 30 days.

Notes

You cannot use the @ in a username. So No emails. a-z 0-9.
JAC does NOT have Password Recovery or Username recovery (yet!). WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU ENTERED, you will need it at the next step to login. If you forget these things, you would need to email jacmgr to recover/reset them. You will not lose any data. Or, if you just screwed up registering, and you don't have any data, simply register a new user and remember them this time. Sorry, but those features will come later.
Once you log in you CAN change your passwords and username, but don't forget bullet 1 above.

Adding Your First Property{TOC}

When you log in the first time you will be presented with the screen for your first property. You must enter at least one property before you can continue using jAC.

It is really quite simple. Click the link! The only required data for setting up a property are:

A short Unique Property Code for this property. jAC refers to this as a PCODE.

The PCODE must be unique within the entire jAC System. You can change the code later, so don't worry if you decide on a new code system later. So try a code, if it is not unique, you will be presented with an error message and a can try again.
A short Descriptive Title for the property.

Once you entered that info, you can use all the features of jAC, add another property, etc... Explore the menus. Add some bookings. No other configurations are required. All of the remaining options are a convenience....

The menu system is oriented towards BOOKING view for Multiple Properties first. When you select a single one of the properties, the menus will switch to apply to the single property. Single property view is where you can change the configuration of one property using the Calendar menu. Using the ALL menu item will switch you back to the Multi-calendar Group Views.

Entering Bookings{TOC}

You can only enter bookings by clicking on a date in the Booking->Manage calendar day links for a single property, or from the Booking**S**->Manage group calendar day links. Once you click on a date, either an existing booking will appear to edit, or a new booking will appear to create.

The Booking Entry Form{TOC}

OK. THIS IS QUIRKY..... But it is what it is for now. Work thru the logic here. You clicked on a date to get to this form. That date becomes the ARRIVAL date for a new booking. Now simply click on a DEPARTURE DATE. You can also toggle and pick different ARRIVAL DATES, and then a new DEPARTURE date. The number of nights will be AUTO calculated; you cannot enter the number of nights. Just check the text boxes before you hit save. Add a Note for this booking. Consider these are private notes and not displayed to anyone except you as a logged in user. Your only choice of booking type at this point is Not Available. See the Configuration Options for how to set additional booking types for a calendar.

You can edit this booking by clicking on the main calendars daylinks, or from the Booking->Manage single property menu, or BookingS->Manage Group menu.

jAC Links to your Calendar{TOC}

jAC provides public links to display the calendars. The basics of the links are shown on the Property->Tools menu and the CalendarS->Group LInks menu.

These are plain old HTML links. You can bookmark them or copy and paste them into your own web pages. These will display default configurations and styles stored in jAC. There are more advanced linking mechanisms discussed later in the tutorial.

Single Property{TOC}

http://therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendar/PCODE
For PCODE of VR-300
http://therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendar/VR-300

And creating a link is as simple as this:

    <a href="http://therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendar/VR-300"
             target="_blank">
             Check Availability
    </a>

And produces this link: Check Availability

Group Property{TOC}

Group Calendars have a calendargroupv style and an calendergrouph style. So there are 2 possible links.

http://therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendargroupv/PCODE1,PCODE2,....
http://therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendargrouph/PCODE1,PCODE2,....
For PLIST of VR-304,VR-303,VR-302,VR-301
http://localhost/jac/show/calendargroupv/VR-304,VR-303,VR-302,VR-301
http://localhost/jac/show/calendargrouph/VR-304,VR-303,VR-302,VR-301

And creating a link is as simple as this:

<a href="http://localhost/jac/show/calendargroupv/VR-304,VR-303,VR-302,VR-301"
                 target="_blank">
                 Vertical Group Availability
</a> ||
<a href="http://localhost/jac/show/calendargrouph/VR-304,VR-303,VR-302,VR-301"
                 target="_blank">
                 Horizontal Group Availability
</a>

And produces these links: Vertical Group Availability || Horizontal Group Availability

IFRAME Usage{TOC}

You could embed the calendar right in one of your pages without any clicking by the visitor. Using an iframe is pretty simple and you can place the calendar almost anywhere. Most of the calendars you see on the jAC public site examples are iframes.

<iframe name="IF1" 
    src="https://therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendar/VR-301?&cfg=c:3,m:6,cb:0"
    height="480" width="95%" marginwidth="4" marginheight="4"
    border="0" frameborder="0" >
    Your browser does not support  inlineframes
</iframe>

Produces this in your page:

Additional Configuration{TOC}

Notice that I added some additional URL configuration options &cfg=c:3,m:6,cb:0 that will override what was saved as defaults inside jAC. In the example above the &cfg=c:3,m:6,cb:0 overrides the defaults and assures 3 columns, 6 months, and no close button when this calendar is shown. These cfg= options are explained in the advanced config section.

Many of the property/calendar forms/settings are not really needed by most folks; however, they do round out a nice layout if you have multiple calendars.

This form is generally self-documented. It is where you go to set your calendar defaults for themes, number of months, and in particular THE LEGEND STATES.

If there is good data in this section, jAC is able to produce a nice flyer page for the property. in particular, this is the page to enter LINKS BACK TO YOUR ACTUAL PROPERTY WEBSITES. If yoiu provide those links, then jAC will link to them instead of its internal listing page.

Normally you don't need to change anything here. The source of your data is this application, jACTRC. The booking data is entered here in jac and it is used on the calendars. But there are some circumstances where you might want to create a calendar that displays READ ONLY (not editable) calendar data from an EXTERNAL source.

For instance, maybe you have a calendar you maintain somewhere else, but you want to display it in a color scheme or format that is better for iframeing in your own site. You could simple set jac to read your ical file, and then not use the bookings in jac at all.

For instance, maybe you have a buddy who you refer bookings to, or they refer bookings to you. In that case you could set up a calendar in jACTRC and your buddy could set up his own calendar in jACTRC and you could set one of your calendars to be readonly of your buddy's calendar. Display them as a group, and you can both see who has availability. Help each other out.

Here are your options for external calendars. Remember, the booking data is NOT editable and jACTRC bookings will not be shown on this calendar.

default - jAC TheRentalCalendar

Whenever default is selected the source ID will automatically be set to the current jAC Property Pcode. You do not need to enter a new pcode. It will be ignored. THIS IS THE STANDARD USAGE OF jacTRC.
Another property from jAC TRC

Maybe you have reason to have 2 username(s) or seperate your properties for some reason. In any case the calsource ID is simply the pcode of that property. Do not enter any URL. Or maybe you just want to see what VR-300 is up to alongside your own property.
Full URL to Any External ICAL

For this source enter the full URL to the location of the iCAL file. For example: http://www.calendarlabs.com/templates/ical/US-Holidays.ics
Full URL to Any External XML

If you can produce an XML file that matches jacTRC XML Format, jAC can read it. Enter a complete URL to your xml FILE.

This menu is informational links. Already discussed the basic calendar links above. But there are also links to other forms of calendars, including iCAL, XML object of all your property data, and an excel sheet of your bookings. Useful for periodic backup.

Advanced Configuration{TOC}

Suppose I want a link with a 1 column wide 3 month calendar suitable for an iframe in a sidebar. I don't need the title banner or close button since its on the same page. You can use the cfg= variable on our URL "on the fly". https://www.therentalcalendar.com/jac/show/calendar/demo100?cfg=c:1,m:3,cb:0,bn:0

Test this calendar configuration

Available CFG options{TOC}

See All Examples

code	values	description
c	1,2,3,....	Number of Calendar Columns. Number of rows is set by Number of months divided by number of columns.
m	#	Number of Months. Show from 1 month up to a reasonable number. Most people use 12 as their default. Sometimes you reduce the # months to fit some page iframe. Number of months may increase to match your columns and rows. i.e. 2 columns with 5 months will actually show 6 months.
date	YYYY-MM-01	Starting Year and Month, day must be included as '01'. If you specify a date, the Autoadvance and Lag will not be used. Some people like their calendar always starting in January for the winter season, and then switch it to always start in May for the summer season, etc...
aa	0,1	USE(1) AutoAdvance. That means the starting date will be kept up with the current year/month.
aal	#	LAG for AutoAdvance. The # of months before or after the current month that should be used. If you enter "-2" then the start month will be 2 months before the current month. If you enter "2" then it will be 2 months after the current month.
cb	0,1	SHOW(1) Close Button. If you are using the Iframe, you probably don't want the Close Button, so set it to "0".
bn	0,1	TURN OFF(0) Banner Title Block. Iframe users may not want the title either.
lg	0,1,2,3,4,5	TURN OFF(0) Legend Block. If you create your own legend in your page, then you don't want to show the jAC legend. This is useful if you are Iframeing a calendar for a non-english language. Values 1 thru 5 are SHOWING the jAC Legend in different formats.
pn	0,1	SHOW Previous/Next Buttons. If you don't want to show the "PREV" and "NEXT" links at the top of the calendar then set this to "0".
ml	0,1	LINKS on MONTH NAME. These are also a handy way to go forward and back in time. If you don't want to use them, set this to "0"
L	XX	2 letter language code (default is EN) Common Codes are: en = ENGLISH es = SPANISH it = ITALIAN de = German fr = french
fd	0,1,2,3,4,5,6	First Day of week. 0=SUNDAY, 1=MONDAY, 2=TUESDAY, etc...
dl	0,1,2,3,4,5,6	Length of the DAY NAME. Some languages require a length of 2 or 3 to show 1 character.
wk	0,1	SHOW Weeks Numbers
cal	0,1	Include Calendar. Default is ON, but maybe you have some reason you just want to show the legend or title banner. Probably not!
theme	themename	Override your selected default theme. Available themes are: jacblue jacblue2 basic-lime basic-apple basic-sea basic-cape basic-peach basic-green basic-red basic-ro simple-blue simple-green simple-red simple-wheat simple-orange More are being added all the time. [Preview Current themes](http://localhost/jac/themes/VR-300)
tg	0,1,2	use Triangles to mark first day and/or last day of booking. (not available for the "simple" themes) * 0 = no triangles, departure day not marked * 1 = Arrival day has triangle [DEFAULT] * 2 = Both Arrival and Departure have triangles

Another Example{TOC}

Here is an example for a custom layout: ...?cfg=c:2,m:6,date:2022-07-01,L:EN,bn:0,lg:3,dl:2,ml:0,cb:0,pn:0

Test this calendar configuration

So that is, Spanish, always starting on Jan 2011, legend, no title banner, no month links, and 2 columns wide with total of 6 months, and 3 letters on the day name.

Legends{TOC}

Legends are essentially the categories that you would like to use for marked dates. The default is set to Available and Not Available.

Legend Notes

There is a field for Legend Notes that appears just above the legend. You can leave the Legend Notes Field blank, or use it to communicate any message to your viewers.

Marked States

There are 5 different //States// or Categories. Enter the text you want to appear on the calendar legend for each state. Most people only want the unmarked and marked (state 1 and 2). If you leave state 3, 4 and 5 blank, they will not appear on your calendar or legends.

When you enter a booking, you will assign one of these categories to the booking. Some examples you could use:

  Reserved 
    Closed for the season 
    Pending 
    etc...

Be creative.

Some folks set up the calendar for their own use, not for showing to potential guests. In that case, they assign types like

  reserved
    deposit received
    paid in Full
    etc...

Once you save the settings you will see these options in the ADD BOOKING Screen as well as on your calendars.

Fixed Starting Date or Auto Advance{TOC}

**STARTYEAR AND START MONTH ** : Use these if you want your calendar to always show only a specific set of months. Some folks like their calendar only starting at JANUARY and then changeing it themselves a few months later to show starting in JULY, etc...

Auto Advance : Use this feature so that the calendar will automatically track with the current month. That means it always start at the current year and month.

When you select AutoAdvance the saved STARTYEAR AND START MONTH are irrelevent.

You can use LAG with AutoAdvance to control the start month relative to the current month.

  If LAG = 0 STARTMONTH=CURRENTMONTH 
    If LAG = -1 STARTMONTH = CURRENTMONTH - 1 MONTH 
    If LAG = -3 STARTMONTH = CURRENTMONTH - 3 MONTH 
    If LAG = +1 STARTMONTH = CURRENTMONTH + 1 MONTH

So you can use this to keep your calendar advancing without any action from you!

titlelink And DAYLINK. Where are they.{TOC}

? Maybe abandoned feature...... You can add links to the DAYS in a publicly displayed calendar using the titlelink option

"titlelink" by default is 0
0 = no link on property title
1 = link to the first link you provide under property data contact
2 = link to the second link you provide under property data contact
3 = link to the internal jac "listing" page

If you use titlelink, properties that do not have contact urls will display the jac listing page.

Troubleshooting{TOC}

In particular for reading external iCAL or XML.

?cacheclear = true

code	values	description
c	1,2,3,....	Number of Calendar Columns. Number of rows is set by Number of months divided by number of columns.
m	#	Number of Months. Show from 1 month up to a reasonable number. Most people use 12 as their default. Sometimes you reduce the # months to fit some page iframe. Number of months may increase to match your columns and rows. i.e. 2 columns with 5 months will actually show 6 months.
date	YYYY-MM-01	Starting Year and Month, day must be included as '01'. If you specify a date, the Autoadvance and Lag will not be used. Some people like their calendar always starting in January for the winter season, and then switch it to always start in May for the summer season, etc...
aa	0,1	USE(1) AutoAdvance. That means the starting date will be kept up with the current year/month.
aal	#	LAG for AutoAdvance. The # of months before or after the current month that should be used. If you enter "-2" then the start month will be 2 months before the current month. If you enter "2" then it will be 2 months after the current month.
cb	0,1	SHOW(1) Close Button. If you are using the Iframe, you probably don't want the Close Button, so set it to "0".
bn	0,1	TURN OFF(0) Banner Title Block. Iframe users may not want the title either.
lg	0,1,2,3,4,5	TURN OFF(0) Legend Block. If you create your own legend in your page, then you don't want to show the jAC legend. This is useful if you are Iframeing a calendar for a non-english language. Values 1 thru 5 are SHOWING the jAC Legend in different formats.
pn	0,1	SHOW Previous/Next Buttons. If you don't want to show the "PREV" and "NEXT" links at the top of the calendar then set this to "0".
ml	0,1	LINKS on MONTH NAME. These are also a handy way to go forward and back in time. If you don't want to use them, set this to "0"
L	XX	2 letter language code (default is EN) Common Codes are: en = ENGLISH es = SPANISH it = ITALIAN de = German fr = french
fd	0,1,2,3,4,5,6	First Day of week. 0=SUNDAY, 1=MONDAY, 2=TUESDAY, etc...
dl	0,1,2,3,4,5,6	Length of the DAY NAME. Some languages require a length of 2 or 3 to show 1 character.
wk	0,1	SHOW Weeks Numbers
cal	0,1	Include Calendar. Default is ON, but maybe you have some reason you just want to show the legend or title banner. Probably not!
theme	themename	Override your selected default theme. Available themes are: jacblue jacblue2 basic-lime basic-apple basic-sea basic-cape basic-peach basic-green basic-red basic-ro simple-blue simple-green simple-red simple-wheat simple-orange More are being added all the time. [Preview Current themes](http://localhost/jac/themes/VR-300)
tg	0,1,2	use Triangles to mark first day and/or last day of booking. (not available for the "simple" themes) * 0 = no triangles, departure day not marked * 1 = Arrival day has triangle [DEFAULT] * 2 = Both Arrival and Departure have triangles

GOTO TOP

Tutorial {TOC}

Becoming a Member{TOC}

Notes

Adding Your First Property{TOC}

jAC Menu System{TOC}

Entering Bookings{TOC}

The Booking Entry Form{TOC}

jAC Links to your Calendar{TOC}

Single Property{TOC}

Group Property{TOC}

IFRAME Usage{TOC}

Additional Configuration{TOC}

Property Menu{TOC}

Property Menu Calendar Configuration{TOC}

Property Menu Listing Configuration{TOC}

Property Menu Data Source{TOC}

Property Menu Tools{TOC}

Advanced Configuration{TOC}

Available CFG options{TOC}

Another Example{TOC}

Legends{TOC}

Legend Notes

Marked States

Fixed Starting Date or Auto Advance{TOC}

titlelink And DAYLINK. Where are they.{TOC}

Troubleshooting{TOC}

Tutorial{TOC}

Becoming a Member{TOC}

Notes

Adding Your First Property{TOC}

jAC Menu System{TOC}

Entering Bookings{TOC}

The Booking Entry Form{TOC}

jAC Links to your Calendar{TOC}

Single Property{TOC}

Group Property{TOC}

IFRAME Usage{TOC}

Additional Configuration{TOC}

Property Menu{TOC}

Property Menu Calendar Configuration{TOC}

Property Menu Listing Configuration{TOC}

Property Menu Data Source{TOC}

Property Menu Tools{TOC}

Advanced Configuration{TOC}

Available CFG options{TOC}

Another Example{TOC}

Legends{TOC}

Legend Notes

Marked States

Fixed Starting Date or Auto Advance{TOC}

titlelink And DAYLINK. Where are they.{TOC}

Troubleshooting{TOC}

Tutorial {TOC}