Taxi Booking Joomla component online documentation:

1. Installation:

After you download the Archive package, please log in to your Joomla back end panel and click on Extensions -> Install/Uninstall (Extensions -> Extension Manager for Joomla 2.5) to go to Joomla's installation interface.

Click on the Browse button and locate com_taxibooking.zip archive on your hard drive.

Click on Upload File & Install.

After the installation is complete you will be able to see Taxi Booking component in the Components Joomla menu.

Click on Taxi Booking to visit back end Taxi Booking interface. Then click on Configuration link in the top right corner (Settings folder for Joomla 2.5). You will be presented with all configurable options. Please, make sure that you click on Save after you have made all required changes.

To use Driver management functionality you will have to create Joomla user group called "Driver" (without the quotation marks) and assign your drivers to that user group. (Joomla 2.5)

• Make sure that you input a propper, verified PayPal business or premier account to receive online bookings.

Taxi Booking installation video

2. Management:

Don't forget that you will have to create and publish a Menu link to Taxi Booking MAIN front end interface to show the booking form on your website.

We have added Driver management functionality. You have to create Joomla user group Driver and assign you drivers to that user group if you would like to use this enhancement. Automatic emails will be sent to Drivers when you assign new Order to them from back end.

Special Routes give you the option to use Flat rate (special) offers or you can use this Flat rate options if you run a Limousine company or Shuttle service and you don't need to charge per mile/kilometer. Just pick Points of interest for From, To, add the flat rate Price and choose radio option for Published/Unpublished, then click on Save and repeat the process for all of your Special Offer trips. You will also be able to customize the prices for your Speical routes based on the Cars you have in your Cars management, all cars will be pulled to the Special Route section and you will be able to assign different price per different car for each Special Route that you create.

You can also configure predefined Points of Interest with their exact location (Latitude, Longitude). Your clients will be able to select your pre-defined Points of Interest at the front end for quicker and easier booking process.

How to get exact coordinates Latitude, Longitude? - go to maps.google.com in your browser, in the Search bar type in the location you would like to get coordinates for, when the map loads make sure that the marker is exactly where you expect the location you are looking for to be, right click with your mouse close to the marker and form the drop down menu choose option: What's here? You will see coordinates loaded in the search bar: first one is Latitude second one (after the comma) is Longitude. You can copy them separately and add them to your Point of Interest in Taxi Booking's Points of Interest section.

A google map and directions are added at the front end for better user confidentiality.

You can also configure currency at the back end which will be passed to PayPal for payment processing (make sure that your PayPal account is configured to accept payments in the same currency).

Cars section (cars management) in Taxi Booking for Joomla 2.5 version 2.4 has significantly changed. Now beside the additional flat rate price that you can add for your different types of vehicles, you can also override the price per mile that you charge for each type of vehicle your company uses. You can also take advantage of the complex price formation based on distance of the journey, like 1-5 miles/kilometers separate price, 6-20 miles/kilometers separate price per unit distance and that's for each individual type of vehicle or separate car that you employ in your company. To manage your cars go to Joomla back end > Taxi Booking > Cars.
In Taxi Booking for Joomla 2.5 version 2.4 we have added Categories for Points of Interest (POI Categories tab in back end Taxi Booking panel). Now you can arrange your Points of interest in separate categories to keep things organized. When creating a Point of interest category you can upload an image that will act as a logo for the POI drop down at the front end (eg. a small airplane may indicate that this is an airport and your users will easily find what they are looking for).
We have changed the way Special Routes are created.
Now to create a Special Route you must use From and To destinations from your points of interest. This will get the coordinates of those Points of Interest and will display the route on the Map at the front end, also will auto calculate the driving distance and approximate time to reach from A to B. However, with special routes you have the opportunity to create Flat rate prices for routes ignoring the price per mile settings. In Speical Routes section you will see a Price field where you should enter the price for the whole journey. Individual Car price additions will remain however so if you have a Saloon car that is your standard car and there is no additional charge for it (additional Price in Car management is 0) then nothing will be added to the Total of Special Routes, but if you have luxury limousines also and you would like to add 30 to your Special route journey, then you should enter value of 30 in the car management for luxury limousine car and this value will be added to any Special route chosen.
To make it easier for users at front end we have created Ajax loading of destinations for special routes, first user only sees From drop down and can pick the destination he is traveling from (eg. an Airport), then all available To destinations that you have created in back end Special routes will load at the front end To drop down for the user to chose one.

Translate Taxi Booking into different languages:

It is easy to translate Taxi Booking into different languages (we have no copies translated in other languages as we constantly add new features and more language strings that need to be translated in newer versions, the ones that you have already translated will stay intact).
Here is a guide how to translate Taxi Booking into French:
Log in to your server via FTP and find /language/en-GB/en-GB.com_taxibooking.ini file.
Download it to your hard disk and double click on it to open it.
You will see a text strings structured like this: SOME_TEXT="Some text", the text between " " is the text that you need to translate in your new language.
Before you start translating please save the file with a new name, that corresponds your language eg. fr-FR.com_taxibooking.ini for French. Please make user that you save the file in UTF-8 encoding to properly display special characters: an example using ordinary Notepad program on Windows that opens .ini files by default - when you click on File > Save as, choose Save as > All files so you don't change the file extension from .ini to .txt, in the bottom right corner of the window you will see Encoding: ANSI (by default), click on the ANSI drop down and select UTF-8 there, click on Save and now you will have your French file ready to be translated.
Now double click on your newly created file to open it in the text editor again.
Translate all strings between " " and save the file.
Then log on to your server via your favorite FTP program and upload your newly created French file to /language/fr-FR/ folder so you are able to see /language/fr-FR/fr-FR.com_taxibooking.ini file.
Follow the same procedure for Taxi Booking's module with file en-GB.mod_taxibooking.ini
To translate administration back end taxi booking file you can do the same but admin language files are located in /admin/language/en-GB/ folder of your website.
Alternatively you can use this tutorial: http://docs.joomla.org/Making_a_Language_Pack_for_Joomla_1.6 to create installable language package for Joomla 2.5.

Silent user registration:
User account is created silently every time a new email is used to book an order. User details are then emailed to your client and he/she can now log in to your website. If they make a booking without log in and use the same email, Taxi Booking's smart system will still recognize their email address and stack up the orders to the same user ID so when they decide to log in they can vie all their orders in "My Orders" section. You will have to create a menu item for logged in users leading to "Taxibooking MyOrders".

Joomla 2.5 Settings section explained:

When you install Taxi Booking for the first time you will notice "NO Group names as 'Driver' found. This will prevent the use of Driver Management. Please create a Joomla User Group with exact name 'Driver' and assign your drivers to that group." message across the top of Taxi Booking's back end views. This message means that you will have to manually create a Joomla user group named "Driver" and assign all your drivers to that Joomla user group if you want them to be able to receive system emails when an Order is assigned to one of them.
Go to Users > Groups > Add a new group > Group Title - Driver, Group Parent - Registered > Save & Close
Next you will have to go to your Users and assign one or more to the Driver group
Go to Users > User manager > Choose your driver and click on his/her name > At Assigned User Groups (bottom left) click on Driver check box to select it > Save & Close
Repeat this operation if you have more than one driver.
This will make the message across the top of Taxi Booking's back end view to didappear and you will be able to assign drivers to you Orders.

Taxi Booking's Settings panel is divided into sections:
General Settings section:
Default City - City that you operate your business mainly in (if any)
Default Country - Country that you operate your business in, this option will narrow down Google Address auto suggest functionality at the front end to addresses in the selected Country only.
Distance Unit - Choose between Miles or Kilometers
Currency - Choose your currency from the drop down
Currency Symbol - input your currency symbol or abbreviation that you would like to use
Discount if Return Booked (%) - this is a percentage Discount that you will offer if both journeys are booked at the same booking.
Surcharge by Date (%) - DD/MM/YYYY- %,DD/MM/YYYY- % (eg. 25/12/2012 - 50%,31/12/2012- 50%). This will increase the price that you normally charge by the used percentage for the selected date.
Booking allowed after (hours) - use this field to block bookings before certain period of time (eg. you can't take bookings without 12 hours notice - enter 12).

Date format - choose between European and US date format to show at the front end for your users.

Time format - choose between 24h time format and 12h AM/PM time format.

Show POI - choose to show or hide Points of Interest drop down at the front end (separate options for From and To).

Show Address - choose to show or hide Address auto suggest fields at front end (separate options for From and To).

Enable Swap Routes - Enables the Swap Routes button at front end Special Routes (Pick up and Drop off destinations can be swapped by your users).

Load jQuery Yes/No - Many templates and modules load jQuery on the page and this creates problem for some of Taxi Booking's features, if you see that Ajax or Date picker do not work on Taxi Booking select "No" here as most likely jQuery is being loaded on the page by something else.

Load jQuery UI Yes/No - Same as above.

Price Settings:

Show price Yes/No - you can decide to just run Taxi Booking as Quote request system and this option will hide all prices at the front end, client emails and PDF invoices.
Price per Unit Distance - depending on what distance unit have you chosen: miles or kilometers, this is the General setting for a price that you would like to charge for one mile/kilometer. This setting is sufficient unless you have a more complex charge per unit like 1-5 miles/kilometers 1.5, 6-10 miles/kilometers 1.6 etc., in this case you can create this logic in the section opposite Price per Unit Distance -  Multiple distance range price settings.
Multiple distance range price settings - Distance From - To - Price, confugure complex per mile/kilometer price ranges, use "Add new" button to add new row or "Remove" button to remove a row. Changes will be active when you click on "Save" or "Save & Close" buttons at the top right corner.

"Multiple distance range price settings" means  that you can create sequence of prices for trips with different length eg. 1-2 x 4 means: between 1 and 2 miles long trips price per mile is £4, 3-10 x 5 means: from 3rd to 10th mile price per mile is £5

Infant seat price - how much you charge for an Infant seat, if it's free just enter 0. Number of Infant seats depends on the number of Infant seats each car can accommodate, this is configurable at the Cars section.
Child seat price - same as above.
Booster seat price - same as above.
Initial call charge - how much you charge for a call, this is the charge that you add to any trip besides the price per mile/kilometer calculation. You can set this to 0 if you just charge per unit distance.
Prepayment (%) - this is a percentage of the Total that you want to charge online, currently only works with PayPal.
Minimum Distance - here you can set up a Distance minimum that you want to charge a different, flat fee amount (set amount bellow), eg. for up to 5 miles/kilometers.
Minimum Distance Price - set the flat rate charge that you want to take if miles/kilometers less than the setting above.
Parking/Pick up charge - this is another useful charge that you can add up if you are operating mostly form Airports or paid parking, currently adds up to the total as Initial call charge so it might be irrelevant and left blank or set to 0.

Map Settings:
Map Height - this is the height of the Google map in px, shown at the front end
Map Zoom Level - controls the zoom of the Google map shown at the front end from low to high, default value is 8. Google map zoom can adjust depending on the length of the road as well. The Google map will try to show both Origin and Destination points and the route between them when first loaded after route search.
Direction Height - this is the height of Google Directions panel shown bellow the Google map at the front end.
Show map at Front End? Yes/No - this option will completely disable Google map view and Google Directions panel at the front end.

Order email settings:
Besides the automatic data included in the email after a Booking like Name, date, Pick up, Drop off etc., in this Settings panel you can add some more details to that email.
Header Logo - this is where you upload your company's logo. It will be included on top of the Order confirmation email sent to the client after a successful booking.
Header Info - this is a rich text area that will work as a Header in the email sent on successful Booking.
Contact Info - this is a rich text area that will work as a Footer in the email sent on successful Booking.

Terms and Conditions:
Terms and Conditions Info - this is a rich text area where you can create your Terms and Conditions. Terms and Conditions will be shown at the front end as a checkbox and link to full Terms and Conditions text loaded in modal window and your clients will have to agree to your Terms and Conditions by clicking on the checkbox before they complete the booking.

Installation of Payment gateway plugins:
Download the plugins form our server. Or find them enclosed in the .zip package of the compoenent and un-zip.
Go to your website back end > Extensions > Extension manager > Upload Package File > Browse to the location on your hard disc where you have saved the Payment Gateway plugins > Upload and Install - you should see "Installing plugin was successful" message. Click on Extensions > Plug-in manager > type "taxi" in the Filter fields and click on Search, you will see all Taxi Booking payment plugins listed here, click on the name of the Plug in and then select Enabled in the Status drop down > Save & Close.
Go to Components > Taxi Booking > Payment Methods > click on New in the top right corner > add Title so you can recognize the payment method > Published: Yes > select the Payment method you wish to activate for Taxi Booking from the drop down > Save (not Save & Close) > Configuration tab > add the values to the fields to configure the Payment Gateway and click on Save & Close - now this payment gateway is active and configured for Taxi Booking to operate with.
Common configuration fields of the payment gateways are:
* Minimum Amount - this will be the minimum amount this payment gateway will be available for eg. if for some reason you want to use PayPal just for transactions over 100 enter 100 here and PayPal payment will be hidden when a trip costs less than a 100
* Maximum Amount - same as above but for the top boundary
* Fee per transaction - you may wish to include a Flat rate charge to add to this payment gateway
* TAX in % - here you can add you national or local Tax %, in some cases Tax may vary for different payment processors so we have decided that Tax can be configured separately for each one.
We currently supply Taxi Booking with the 2 most popular payment gateways: PayPal and Cash, but more can be created on demand and should you be interested you can always contact us to discuss the matter.

Custom fields:
Custom fields section's purpose is to help you not only collect additional information but also up-sell products and services.
Custom fields are separated in 2 categories: Extras and Input boxes.
You will be able to select which type of Custom field you create when you click on the New button.
Extras are up-sell products or services that will add value to the total of the booking (or can be configured to 0 for free Extras). Here you are able to add Extra's Title (name to appear at the front end), Extra available on Pick up or Drop off or both, select one or more Point of interest categories this Extra is available on, Price and Quantity (a quantity drop down will be presented at the front end). The number that you enter in the Extra field Quantity input box means the range up to that number eg. if you enter 10 this means 1-10 and a drop down 1 to 10 will be created at front end for your users to choose.
Input boxes are designed to collect additional information from your passengers like Terminal and Flight numbers. Here you can configure Title, show on Pick up or Drop off or both, Point of interest category the input box will be showed on and weather the input box is Mandatory or not.

Each custom field can be assigned to multiple Points of Interest Categories as you hold down Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on the categories you would like to assign this custom field to.

Swap destinations:
At front end we have added a Swap destinations button for Special routes (Flat rate routes). This will help you customers quickly swapping 2 routes and also reduce creating Special routes both for Pick up - Drop off and reverse. The Swap functionality will reload the Custom fields so you don't have to worry if you only have Extras for Pick up point and not the same for Drop off like "Meet and Greet package" for example.
Enable Swap Routes option is available at the back end Components > Taxi Booking > Settings > General Settings

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. How to hide/show Child/Infant/Booster seats at the front end? - click here to see

2. Why Date picker and/or Ajax load does not work on Taxi Booking? - most likely jQuery has been loaded by a Module or your template on Taxi Booking's page. You can resolve this problem by going to your back end Components > Taxi Booking > Settings > General settings > Load jQuery > No and Load jQuery UI > No

Get Taxi Booking for Joomla 2.5