There are two cron jobs used in PBBooking.  The first to sync to google calendar and the second to send scheduled reminders and testimonials.

The results of a recent survey of PBBooking users revealed something that I had sort of already suspected from my ticketing system -- configuring cron jobs was a pain in the backside!

Between hosts that restricted the frequency of cron jobs, didn't support loop back requests or, flat out just didn't offer a cron service there was a steady flow of support requests for advice.

The dilemma that I had was cron was the only way to guarantee tasks happened.  While a number of Joomla plugins allow scheduled tasks these are all tied to page refresh.  On a low traffic site, say a local beauty therapist site, this could mean that your calendar could get quite out of date, or reminders might not get sent.  Neither a really good situation!

I'm really exited to say that for v4 I have just finished coding automated setup of cron jobs!  This uses the <a href="https://www.easycron.com/?ref=83308">EasyCron</a> service so it's not dependent on your host.  EasyCron offers a really sweet api to allow developers to programmatically add and view the status of scheduled tasks.

So from v4 PBBooking will have a new section to the dashboard allowing you to click a button and create the needed cron jobs on the EasyCron service.