Groupon launches Scheduler in Sacramento, Miami

Groupon's new Scheduler feature allows merchants and consumers to make bookings to redeem vouchers

Daily deals site Groupon launched an interesting new feature, a Scheduler for merchants and consumers to better organize the times and places to redeem money-saving vouchers. The feature is available Wednesday Dec. 7 in Groupon markets in Sacramento and Miami, and will expand to nationwide markets "soon after," said the company's release.

Technology for the update was provided by OpenCal, which created an online appointment system that allows meeting-goers to coordinate via an online platform without a lot of calls and emails back and forth. OpenCal kicked off in 2009 and was acquired by Groupon in September 2011.

Some of the cool perks for users of the Groupon Scheduler include email confirmation of appointment bookings, automated email reminders 24 hrs before an appointment, and (for merchants) the option to include a "Book Now" button widget on company websites, so customers can go directly from reading about goods and services on web pages to signing up for vouchers on Groupon.

Another interesting addition to Groupon's services, courtesy of the new Scheduler tech, is that merchants can schedule all appointments and bookings on Scheduler, from staff schedules to inspections, not just those through Groupon.

The Groupon Scheduler seems like a great time-saver for merchants, in that if voucher schedules reflect an influx of traffic, they can staff accordingly to better serve their clients. For consumers, the tool also seems a nice addition for keeping track of when their vouchers will expire.

One feature that does not seem to be included on Scheduler, which would be very helpful on the consumer's end, is a traffic counter, showing how many people are redeeming vouchers in a given time period. This kind of transparency between merchant and consumer would give customers a much better indication of how busy a place will be, to provide for extra time for parking shortages or congestion in the place of business.

In my own experience with redeeming Groupon vouchers, people tend to use them at the end of the month when vouchers expire, and it would be nice to know if this is the case, and whether there will be a mad-dash.

Another interesting aspect of the Groupon Scheduler is that its application appears strikingly similar to Google Calendar. This is a plus for those already familiar with the Google scheduling system, though it also sort of begs the question why merchants wouldn't be better served just using Google Calendar, for those non-Groupon-centric aspects of the new Scheduler.

Since Groupon's founding in 2008, the company has received $10.3 million in funding from such investors as New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Digital Sky Technologies, and expanded to 565 cities around the world, saving over $300 million for its users.