Enquiries & requests

Sometimes the automated booking flow can’t seat a guest: their party is too large for any table, or the date they want has no availability. Rather than hitting a dead end, the guest can make an enquiry - a request your team picks up from the Requests inbox in the portal, replies to, and turns into a reservation when you can fit them in.

How a guest lodges an enquiry

Whenever a guest reaches an oversized-party or no-availability dead end - in your public booking widget or the Sidedoor guest app - they’re offered a Make enquiry button alongside the usual “reduce your party size” or “try another date” suggestions. Choosing it opens a short Make an enquiry step:

1. The guest reviews the slot they were after - venue, date, time and party size (carried over from the booking flow).

2. They can add an optional free-text message (“Anything else?”) - up to 2,000 characters - to explain the occasion or ask a question.

3. Identity. A signed-in guest is recognised automatically. An anonymous guest enters their name and email and clears an invisible captcha challenge, the same as joining a waitlist.

4. They choose Send enquiry and see an “Enquiry sent” confirmation.

Each enquiry captures the venue, requested date / time / party size, the guest’s name, email (and phone, if known), the optional message, and where it came from (widget or guest app). It lands in your Requests inbox as a new, unread pending request. Nothing is booked and no table is held - it’s a request for your team to action.

Note

Making an enquiry is separate from the waitlist. A waitlist entry is a table-only, same-day “seat me when something frees up” request that lives on the Reservations grid; an enquiry is a message about a slot the automated flow couldn’t offer at all (an oversized party, or a future date with nothing available) that you resolve from the Requests inbox.

The Requests inbox

Open Requests from the portal sidebar (you’ll need reservations access). It lists booking enquiries across all your venues, newest and most urgent first (nearest requested date at the top), with unread requests in bold. Open a single venue first to see just that venue’s requests.

Each request shows the guest, the venue, the requested date / time / party size, a message preview and a status badge. You can search by guest name, email or message text, filter by venue, status or party size (a from/to range), and sort the columns - all across the whole roster, not just the loaded page.

Adding a request yourself

Most requests arrive from guests, but you can also lodge one on a guest’s behalf - handy when someone phones, emails or asks in person. Add request (top right of the Requests page, and inside each venue) opens a create panel with the same details as a guest enquiry: pick or search for the guest (link an existing guest account, or add a new contact with a name and optional email and phone), then set the requested date, time and party size, add any tags and a message. At the all-venues view you choose the venue first; inside a single venue it’s already set. Save it and the request lands in the queue exactly like a guest-submitted enquiry, ready to chat about or convert into a reservation.

Statuses

Status	Badge	Meaning
Pending	New	Just arrived - nobody’s opened it yet (shown in bold).
Read	Open	Someone on your team has opened it; still needs actioning.
Booked	Booked	Converted into a reservation (links to the booking).
Declined	Declined	You turned the request down.
Expired	Expired	Auto-closed because the requested date passed unactioned.
Trashed	Trashed	Moved to the trash. Not shown by default; find it under the Trashed status filter.

Pending and Read together make up the actionable queue - the inbox’s default view. Opening a request marks it Read (you can Mark as unread again to restore the badge). Booked, Declined and Expired are final states, and a request stays recoverable even once it’s Trashed.

Auto-expiry

Requests don’t linger forever. Any Pending or Read request whose requested date has passed is automatically moved to Expired, so the queue only ever shows enquiries you can still act on. Expired requests stay searchable under the Expired filter.

Working a request

Click a request to open its detail panel. It has three tabs: Details (the guest’s contact details, the requested slot and their message - its Edit guest action updates the name, email or phone stored on this request, with Link a different guest alongside it to attach the request to a different account, the same as on a reservation), Chat (talk to the guest, covered below) and History (a timeline of the request’s lifecycle - when it arrived, was opened, chatted, booked or declined). From the Actions menu you can:

• Book now - convert the request into a reservation (below).
• Decline - turn the request down. You’re taken straight to the chat so you can send the guest an optional note explaining why.
• Mark as unread - put an opened request back in the new queue.
• Trash - move the request to the trash. It leaves the main list but isn’t gone for good: find it under the Trashed status filter and Restore it from there (or from its own Actions menu) at any time.

Converting an enquiry to a reservation

When you can fit the guest in, Book now carries the enquiry straight into the normal reservation flow:

1. Open the request and choose Book now from the Actions menu. (Have the Reservations area open first - Book now opens the reservation create panel there.)

2. The create-reservation panel opens pre-filled from the enquiry: the venue (locked), the date and time, the party size, the guest (name, email, phone) and their message copied into notes.

3. Adjust anything you need - pick a table, tweak the duration, add tags or a deposit - exactly as you would for any reservation.

4. Save. The reservation is created and the enquiry is linked to it and flipped to Booked. It drops out of the actionable queue, and its detail panel gains a View the reservation → link so you can jump to the booking any time.

Chatting with the guest

Every request has a two-way chat so you can talk to the guest without leaving the inbox - open the Chat tab in the request panel to reply. When you send a message, the guest gets a venue-branded email with a secure magic link that signs them straight onto the conversation in the guest app (the link expires after 15 minutes). Their replies appear back in the request’s Chat tab.

The chat is available while a request is actionable and after it’s Booked or Declined - handy for confirming details or explaining a decline. Once a request has Expired, its chat becomes read-only.

Note

An anonymous guest - someone who enquired with just their name and email without signing in - still receives the same venue-branded email with a secure sign-in link when you reply. It signs them straight onto the thread, exactly as it does for a registered guest. The only request with no way to reach the guest is a name-only one you added yourself with no email at all: there’s no address to notify, so follow up by phone or another channel.