Input Once, Update Everywhere
The complex had booking software that was working well. They used a service called Amilia (not Amelia, that would have been much easier) that handled all of the booking, memberships, and financial aspects of the organization. The challenge was to extend this functionality to the WordPress website they already had.
How would we make it so a booking created, updated, or deleted in Amilia would be reflected on the website without manual input?
Does it have an API?
Application Programming Interface (API), does it have one?
Indeed, Amilia had an API. They still do, in fact, and it's better than ever. On top of that, they had decent webhooks for live callbacks whenever something was updated or changed state.
Between Amilia's API and webhooks and a great WordPress add-on called The Events Calendar, we were able to create the endpoint and leverage the REST API to manage the events, as well as venues, on the website.
So many hours saved
It took 27 minutes for the API to do the initial import, thousands of events over a couple dozen venues. We discussed it and we can't imagine how long it would take to copy over all the events, not just the first time, but to manually handle all of the changes and updates as time went on. It certainly couldn't have been as quick even if two full-time employees handled the task as their only duty.
Additionally, the organization and their backers didn't have to shop for a different management SaaS.
What is 80 hours a week worth?
Every answer will be different, but those who want to get that figure back should click this button.