SleekView Kanban for OpenWorkshop Bookings
OpenWorkshop Bookings stores every appointment as a custom post type with status meta. SleekView Kanban reads that table directly, groups bookings by status, and lets staff drag cards between columns to update the record. No code, no exports, no extra plugin database.
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Workshop bookings work better as cards
OpenWorkshop Bookings keeps every appointment as a row in the wp_posts table with the openworkshop_booking post type, and the booking state lives in the _owb_status postmeta field. The admin screen shows that data as a long sortable list, which is fine for record keeping but slow for daily triage when twenty cards land in your inbox before lunch.
SleekView Kanban points at the same data and renders it as four columns: pending, confirmed, checked-in, and cancelled. Each card surfaces the customer name from _owb_customer, the service from _owb_service_id, and the booking time. Front desk staff drag a pending card into confirmed, and the meta value updates in place. No CSV exports, no second source of truth.
You can filter the board by service, staff member, or date range, then share that filtered view with a saved URL. The kanban runs against your live database, so cancelling a card in the board cancels the booking everywhere else OpenWorkshop reads from.
Workflow
From booking list to kanban in four steps
Point SleekView at the booking post type
Choose the status field as the group
Pick which fields the card surfaces
Drag cards to update the booking
Sample board
A live booking board, grouped by status
Comparison
The OpenWorkshop list view vs SleekView Kanban
Default booking list
- Default screen is a flat sortable list with one row per booking and tiny status pills
- Changing status takes three clicks per booking and forces a full page reload each time
- No way to see how many bookings sit in each state without filtering and counting
- Bulk actions cover delete and trash but not status changes across many bookings at once
- Staff still have to memorise which postmeta value maps to which workshop state
SleekView Kanban
-
Drag a card from
pendingtoconfirmedand the postmeta value writes back instantly - Column counts update live so the front desk sees workload without filtering or counting rows
- Save filtered boards as URLs, one per staff member or per service category, no duplicates
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Card layout maps to
_owb_customer,_owb_service_id, and the booking time - Permissions inherit from OpenWorkshop roles, no second authorisation layer to maintain
Features
What SleekView Kanban gives you for OpenWorkshop Bookings
Status columns you can rename
OpenWorkshop ships with pending, confirmed, checked-in, and cancelled as the four core states. Rename them to match your workshop language, reorder them to match your daily flow, and recolor each one so the board mirrors how the team actually moves through a day.
Drag to update, not to re-enter
Every card move writes back to the same postmeta field that OpenWorkshop already uses, so confirmations, check-ins, and cancellations stay in one place. No second database, no sync job, no risk of the kanban and the booking screen telling different stories.
Filter by staff member or bay
Add a secondary filter on staff assignment or service bay and SleekView Kanban narrows the board to just that scope. The receptionist sees the whole shop, a mechanic sees only their work, and the manager keeps the full picture without leaving the page.
Audience
Where workshops put the kanban board first
Daily front desk triage
Open the board at 8am, drag overnight pending bookings into confirmed as you call customers, then watch as cards land in checked-in throughout the morning. The receptionist runs the day without opening a single booking edit screen.
Per-mechanic workload boards
Save one filtered board per mechanic so each technician opens their own kanban on a workshop tablet. They drag a card from confirmed to checked-in when the customer arrives, and into a custom done column when the job is signed off.
Manager weekly capacity view
Filter the board to the next seven days and watch column counts as a live capacity gauge. If pending overflows confirmed, you know the team is overbooked and can shift a slot or hire short-term cover before the queue collapses.
The bigger picture
Why a kanban beats the default booking screen
OpenWorkshop Bookings is a great storage layer. The custom post type holds the booking, the postmeta holds the state, and the taxonomies hold the service mapping. What it does not give you is a daily operating picture.
The admin list view is a record screen, designed to look up a single booking, not to triage twenty pending requests at once. Staff end up exporting to spreadsheets, copying booking IDs into Slack, or printing the screen every morning. A kanban changes the shape of the work.
Instead of asking which bookings need attention today, you see the answer as soon as the page loads, because every pending booking is in the pending column and every checked-in customer is in the checked-in column. Moving a card is the same as changing the status, so the picture stays accurate without anyone having to remember to update two places. The receptionist works the board, the mechanics work the board, and the manager reads the column counts.
Everyone uses the same view of the same data, which is the part that traditional admin screens never quite deliver.
Questions
Common questions about SleekView Kanban for OpenWorkshop Bookings
No. The board reads from the same openworkshop_booking custom post type and the same postmeta keys that the plugin already uses. When you drag a card, SleekView writes the new status back to that postmeta field via the WordPress REST API, so there is only one source of truth for every booking record.
Yes. The column titles are display labels, not the underlying status values. Rename pending to awaiting confirmation, checked-in to on the ramp, or anything else that matches how your team talks. SleekView stores the rename separately, so the data still uses the standard OpenWorkshop values.
SleekView Kanban inherits the OpenWorkshop role mapping. If a user can edit a booking on the standard edit screen, they can drag the corresponding card on the board. If they only have view rights, they see the board in read-only mode and the drag handles are hidden from the card front.
Yes. Add a filter on the staff assignment field or the bay taxonomy, then save the filtered view as a named board. Each board gets its own URL, so you can pin a tablet to a single mechanic board and the manager view can stay on the full board on the office monitor.
The kanban polls the booking endpoint at a configurable interval, with two minutes as the default. New pending bookings appear as cards in the pending column within that window. Existing cards refresh in place so dragging a card does not lose its position when a sibling card changes.
Yes. SleekView reads every distinct value in the _owb_status field, so any custom statuses you have registered through the OpenWorkshop filter appear automatically as additional columns. You can choose which of those columns to show on the board and hide the rest without removing the underlying data.
Yes. The card editor lets you pick any field stored on the booking, including custom postmeta you have added through the OpenWorkshop developer hooks. A common layout shows customer name, service title, and booking time on the front, with the note and deposit visible on hover for the receptionist.
Yes. The plugins do not conflict because SleekView only reads and writes the same booking records that OpenWorkshop already manages. Many shops use the calendar for slot planning and the kanban for daily triage, then switch to the booking edit screen when they need to inspect a single record in depth.
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