The panel that stays beside a listing as the visitor scrolls is the booking sidebar. It holds two tabs, Schedule a Tour and Ask a Question, and both send an email to whoever the listing routes enquiries to.
Nothing is booked or held. A tour request is an enquiry that carries a preferred day and time, and you confirm it by replying.
Before you start
- You are in standalone mode. The booking sidebar is part of the standalone property page and does not appear on WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes or WpEstate.
- Enquiries have somewhere to go, which means either a linked agent profile with an email address or the company Email in the design settings.
What the visitor sees
At the top of the panel is the agent the listing is attached to, with their photo and the label Listing Agent. On a listing showing the MLS feed’s own agent that line becomes your Company name and the label Contact, because a feed agent’s own details are not published.
The Schedule a Tour tab opens first. It offers a strip of days starting with today, arrows to page through them, a row of time buttons when you have configured any, then name, email and phone, the consent checkbox and Request This Tour.
The Ask a Question tab is the same contact fields with a message box, pre filled with an opening line naming the listing. It also carries the optional intent dropdown, and a Call shortcut when a phone number is available.
After a successful send the form is replaced by a confirmation panel, so the visitor is not left wondering whether it went.
Setting the tour times
- Open MLS Import Design Settings and go to the Property Page tab, then the Tour Details sub tab.
- Fill Preferred tour times with a comma separated list, for example
9:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 2:00 PM, 4:30 PM. - Save and reload a property page.
Expected result: the times appear as buttons under the day strip, with the first one already selected. Leave the field blank and the whole time row is left out, so the visitor picks a day only.
Blank is a deliberate choice, not an unfinished setting. If your availability changes week to week, offering a day alone means you confirm the time in your reply instead of honouring a slot the site promised on your behalf.
What arrives in your inbox
The day and the time are combined into one value and reach the lead email as a single line reading Requested tour date: followed by something like Mon 09 Jun at 9:00 AM. The rest of the email is the standard enquiry: name, email, phone, a link to the listing and the message.
Tour requests follow the same recipient order as every other property enquiry, so they land with the linked agent when there is one and with your company address when there is not.
Nothing in the subject line separates a tour request from a general enquiry. A mail rule matching the phrase “Requested tour date” in the body is the reliable way to file them, which matters once a listing page is drawing several enquiries a day.
Putting the tour form somewhere else
The whole panel is available as a block, a shortcode and an Elementor widget named Booking Sidebar. The shortcode is [mlsimport_property_booking].
There is also a standalone Schedule a Tour section, [mlsimport_property_schedule_tour], which is the plain lead form with a date field rather than the day strip. Use it when you want a tour request inside the content column instead of the rail.
Both need a listing for context. On a property page they resolve it themselves; anywhere else, pass the property with the id attribute.
If it does not work
- No time buttons appear. Preferred tour times is empty. That is the only thing that controls the row.
- Requests arrive with a day and no time. Same cause. When slots exist the first is preselected, so a time always travels with the request.
- The panel shows your company name where the agent should be. That import task is set to show each listing’s own MLS agent, so no agent profile is attached.
- The button does nothing. A cached page carries a security token that expires after a day, and JavaScript optimisation can strip the form’s script. Exclude property pages from both.
Frequently asked questions
Does it check the agent’s calendar or hold the slot?
No. There is no calendar integration and no availability check. Two visitors can request the same day and time, and both requests arrive as ordinary enquiries.
How far ahead can a visitor request a tour?
Thirty days, and the strip always starts on today. That range is fixed, so changing it means editing a copy of the property template in your theme.
Can I remove the booking panel from the property page?
Not from Arrange Sections, which does not list it. It is part of the property template, so removing it means copying single-mlsimport-property.php into a folder named mlsimport in your theme and editing your copy.
Can a visitor type a time that is not on my list?
No. The time row offers your configured slots as buttons and nothing else, and with no slots configured only the day reaches you.
Related
- Where property leads are sent
- The consent checkbox and your privacy policy
- Property page building blocks
- Arranging the single property page
- The Design Settings page
Send us a listing URL and the times you want to offer and we will check how the panel renders them.