Enabling features

Every feature answers to a platform-wide toggle. On Booknetic SaaS, a tenant-facing feature also answers to a Booknetic plan capability. Both apply: a feature reaches a tenant only when it is globally on and that tenant’s plan grants it.

The platform toggle

This is the master switch, set in the Hub on the Features page. It is a single platform-wide setting, not a per-tenant one — it belongs to the site owner (on SaaS, the platform owner), so no tenant ever sees or changes it.

• On — the module registers its hooks and, where it has one, its plan capability.
• Off — the module registers nothing at all: no hooks, no capability. On SaaS it doesn’t even appear in the plan editor. The feature is simply not part of the site while it is off.

A feature with no stored value defaults to on, so activating the bundle leaves every module working until you decide otherwise. Turning a feature off never deletes anything — its tables and settings stay exactly where they are, and switching it back on brings them back.

The Booknetic plan capability

On Booknetic SaaS, each tenant-facing feature is gated by one of Booknetic’s own plan capabilities — the same mechanism Booknetic uses for every other per-plan feature. You grant it in the plan editor; tenants on a plan that holds the capability get the feature, tenants on a plan without it do not.

The Hub’s Features page shows, for each such feature, how many active plans currently grant it, so you can see at a glance which features are actually reaching tenants.

Three kinds of feature behave differently here:

• Its own capability. Most tenant-facing features register their own plan capability — Service Break, Staff Durations, Payment Breakdown, Force Deposit, Flexible Price, Staff Discount, Email Verification, Bank Transfer and Short Links. Payment Breakdown’s also has sub-capabilities for its methods, lines and reports.
• A capability Booknetic already has. A couple reuse an existing one rather than add their own — Advanced Reports uses Booknetic’s “Reports” capability (a plan that already grants Reports grants Advanced Reports too), and Gift Card Partial Payment rides on the official Giftcards add-on’s capability.
• No capability. Save & Add Another, Staff-as-Customer Email Mapping and ZIP Lookup have no plan capability — once switched on they apply wherever they are relevant. The SaaS-admin tools (Bulk Workflow Tools, Tenant Categories, Platform Customers, Dormant Tenants, Workflow Menu Control) have none either, because they are the platform owner’s tools, not a tenant’s.

Keeping grants when you move from a standalone add-on

Essentials uses the same capability slug each standalone plugin used. So a plan that already granted, say, the old Staff Discount add-on still grants the Essentials Staff Discount feature — the per-plan grants carry across untouched. See the FAQ.

On a regular Booknetic site

A plain Booknetic install has no plans or tenants, so there is no second gate: the platform toggle is the only switch. A feature that is on is on for the whole site.

Turning a feature on — the short version

1. Open Essentials → Features in the Hub and switch the feature on.
2. On Booknetic SaaS, if the feature has a plan capability, open the plan editor and grant that capability to the plans that should have it.
3. Where a feature has settings of its own, set them — the Hub links to each feature’s settings, and most also have a settings screen in the normal Booknetic admin. Several are configured per tenant in the tenant’s own Settings.