Booking confirmation emails

When a member books a rink, the confirmation goes out in the same moment the booking is saved — not on a schedule, not on the next cron run. By the time the member sees “Booking confirmed” on screen, the email has already been handed to the mail server. It goes to the member who made the booking; anybody else named on it gets a notification in the app rather than an email of their own.

This is true of every route into a booking: the website booking page, the members’ app, and a steward or officer booking on somebody’s behalf from the admin screens. They all go through the same code, so none of them can quietly skip it.

The wording is yours to change under Settings → Email Templates → Booking confirmation.

Common questions

Booking fails with "could not reach the server".

Fixed in 9.99.209. Sending the confirmation was calling a method on the wrong class, which stopped the request dead after the booking row had already been written. So the booking was saved, the app reported a failure, and anybody who tried again got a second one. Update, then check Bookings for duplicates on any day where somebody reported this — they will be two identical bookings a minute or so apart.

A member says they never get a confirmation.

Open the steward tablet, tap the Bookings figure, and look at the Emailed column against their booking. A tick means it was sent and the problem is at their end — usually a junk folder. off means they have confirmations switched off in their own profile. no address means the club holds no email address for them. failed means the site could not send it at all, which is a mail settings problem rather than a booking one.

It says off, but the member insists they turned them on.

Before 9.99.196 there were two switches that both said they controlled booking confirmation emails, and only one of them did. The Notifications panel on the profile page is headed “Email Notifications” and says “Email when a rink booking is confirmed”, but it only ever controlled the in-app bell; the tick box under My details was the one that decided whether an email was sent. A member who turned it on in the panel that mentions email got nothing and had no way of telling why. The two are now the same switch — whichever one they use, both agree afterwards.

Every confirmation says failed.

Nothing is reaching the mail server, so this will be affecting renewals and rota reminders too. Check Settings → Sending Email and send yourself a test. Most shared hosting will not send mail reliably without SMTP details.

Can I resend one?

Not as a single button yet. In the meantime the quickest fix is to cancel and rebook the slot, which sends a fresh confirmation — or simply forward the details by hand, since the booking itself is already safely saved.

Does the member get an email when they cancel?

Yes, a cancellation notice goes out the same way and honours the same preference.

Where is the record kept?

Pavilion keeps a short rolling record of the last few hundred bookings and what happened to each confirmation. It is deliberately not kept forever — it exists to answer “did that one go out?” this week, not to build a mailing archive.