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Meet & Greets documentation

How to set up and use Meet & Greets: install, settings and fixes for common problems.

About Meet & Greets
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Overview

Meet & Greets lets pet-care staff run in-person Meet & Greets from a phone: today’s list from Time To Pet, the client’s details filled in, and paperwork drafts that are never lost.

Where to find it: Meet & Greets, in the main WordPress menu.

What you need

  • WordPress 6.2 or newer
  • PHP 7.4 or newer with the sodium extension
  • A Time To Pet company calendar feed link
  • Gravity Forms, only to look up the client’s email

Install

  1. With The Vault (easiest): open The Vault in your WordPress menu, find Meet & Greets and click Install. It is installed and activated for you.
  2. By hand: buy a license on the plugin page, then go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip and activate it.

Updates arrive automatically from wpwizards.com, like plugins from WordPress.org.

License

This is a premium plugin. Open The Vault → Licenses, paste the key from your order confirmation and click Activate License. WP Wizards clients have every plugin included while their service is active, with no key needed. Without a license the plugin keeps working but stops receiving updates.

Quick start

  1. Paste the calendar feed. Go to Meet & Greets → Settings and paste the company calendar feed address from Time To Pet. It is stored encrypted and never shown again.
  2. Sync. On the All Meet & Greets tab click Sync now. After that it syncs every hour.
  3. Choose who can use it. Under Staff, tick the roles that may run Meet & Greets. Administrators always can.
  4. Make the staff page. Create a page, add the shortcode [meet_greets] and publish it. Logged-out visitors only see a login form.
  5. Set the office email. Then review the three email templates.

How staff use it

  1. Open the staff page on a phone and log in.
  2. Today’s Meet & Greets lists theirs first. Everyone shows all of them, and the arrows or the date box show other days. Tap the address for directions or the phone number to call.
  3. Tap Start paperwork. Name, email, phone, address and pets are filled in and can be changed.
  4. Fill in the paperwork. Questions for dog walking or cat sitting only appear when that service is ticked.
  5. Tap Review, check the answers, then Submit paperwork.

Drafts are never lost

  • Every answer is saved on the phone the moment it is entered, and sent to the site about a second later.
  • The bar at the bottom shows Saved, or Saved on this device, will sync when there is no signal.
  • Switching to another app, locking the screen, reloading, or the phone closing the tab loses nothing. Opening the staff page again goes straight back to the paperwork.
  • The same paperwork can be opened on another phone or tablet and carries on from the saved draft.
  • With no signal, staff keep going. The draft, and even a finished form, is sent when the signal returns.
  • If two devices changed the same paperwork, the plugin asks which version to keep before anything is replaced.
  • If the login expires, the work stays on the phone and comes back after logging in again.

The staff page has to be opened once with signal before it works offline. A draft kept on a phone stays there until it is submitted, so staff phones should have a screen lock.

Matching the client’s email

Each Meet & Greet is matched to the client’s website request to get their email. The forms listed under Gravity Forms form IDs are searched in order, by phone number first, then by first and last name.

  • If exactly one email address matches, it is linked automatically.
  • Otherwise it is flagged Needs matching. Staff can tap Find their website request on the paperwork, or the office can pick the request or type the email.
  • A choice made by a person is never changed by a later sync.

Office review

Meet & Greets in the dashboard lists everything, with filters for upcoming, in progress, each review status, needs matching and cancelled.

  • When paperwork is submitted, the office email gets a message with the answers and a link.
  • Open a Meet & Greet to see the paperwork and set its status: Pending, Approved, Denied or the fourth status.
  • Changing to Approved or Denied sends the client the matching email, unless you untick the box.
  • Print or save as PDF opens a clean page to print or save.
  • The Meet & Greets dashboard widget sits at the top of the second column of the WordPress dashboard. It shows how many are upcoming, waiting for review, approved and denied, with a Review paperwork button.
  • Each Meet & Greet opens with the client, date and status at the top. The phone, email and address are links, and View in Time To Pet opens the client there.

To put a button in the Approved or Denied email, add [mg_button url="/welcome/" text="Start here"] to the template. Add style="outline" for an outlined button. Button shortcodes copied over from an old Gravity Forms notification are turned into real buttons as well.

When the calendar changes

  • A Meet & Greet that moves in Time To Pet is updated.
  • One that is removed, and is still in the future, is marked Cancelled. If it comes back, so does its status.
  • Completed paperwork is never deleted or changed by a sync.
  • If the feed cannot be reached, nothing changes and the sync screen says why.

Moving from a Gravity Forms paperwork form

Set the old form’s ID under Settings → Old paperwork form, then open the Import tab.

  • Copy lists and emails from the old form copies the “How did you hear about us?” choices, the walker list, the fourth review status name and the three notification emails into Settings.
  • Import past paperwork brings every entry in as completed paperwork with its review status. It can be run again without making duplicates and changes nothing in Gravity Forms.

Reminders

An outside workflow, such as Zapier, can ask for upcoming Meet & Greets to send reminders.

  1. Under Settings → Reminders click Create a key and copy it. It is shown once.
  2. Send a POST request to the address shown there with the key in an X-WPWMG-Key header. Optional body value hours sets how far ahead to look (default 48).

The answer lists each upcoming Meet & Greet with its start time, minutes until it starts, and the client’s name, phone and matched email.

Privacy and security

  • The staff page and every address it talks to require a login and the staff permission.
  • Client details are never put in page addresses.
  • The feed address, drafts, door codes and alarm instructions are encrypted in the database. Door codes and alarm instructions are left out of emails.
  • Only administrators can change settings and review.

Settings

Meet & Greets → Settings

Calendar feed address The Time To Pet company calendar link. Stored encrypted and never shown again. Paste a new one to replace it.
Service name Which calendar events are Meet & Greets. Punctuation, spaces and capitals are ignored. Default: Meet ‘n Greet.
Company name Used in the paperwork and emails. Empty uses the site name.
Gravity Forms form IDs The request forms searched for the client’s email, in order.
Who can run Meet & Greets The roles allowed to use the staff page.
Staff names Only for staff whose Time To Pet name differs from their name on the site: Name in Time To Pet = username or email.
Paperwork lists The “How did you hear about us?” choices, the walker list and the fourth review status name.
Emails Office address, from name, email button colour, and the office, Approved and Denied templates.
Old paperwork form The Gravity Forms form the Import tab reads from.
Reminders Create the key for the reminders address.

Troubleshooting and questions

No Meet & Greets show after a sync.

Check that the service name matches the Service shown on the events in Time To Pet.

A staff member’s list is empty but Everyone shows theirs.

Their name in Time To Pet does not match their name on the site. Add a line under Staff names.

It says the calendar feed could not be reached.

The feed address is wrong or Time To Pet is unavailable. Paste the address again. Nothing is lost in the meantime.

The staff page shows a login form.

That is what logged-out visitors see. Log in.

A client email was not sent.

Check the client’s email on the paperwork and that the Approved or Denied email is switched on.

For developers

wpwmg_fields Filter. Change the paperwork fields.
wpwmg_submitted Action. Paperwork was submitted.
wpwmg_reviewed Action. The office changed the review status.
wpwmg_offline Filter. Return false to turn off offline support.
WPWMG_KEEP_DATA Constant. Define it as true in wp-config.php to keep the records when the plugin is deleted.

Get help

Stuck on something this page does not cover? Contact us and tell us which plugin and version you are on. Need it to do something it does not do yet? We build custom plugins too.