Clarity Information Solutions

Clarity Bookings

Clarity Bookings is a web-based activity and resource booking solution that is used by public authorities to streamline the management of one-to-one appointments, group courses, large-scale events, customer facilities (e.g. rooms) and meetings. It includes back-office scheduling, monitoring and reporting features, along with client facing online booking interfaces.

Features

• Schedule and publish appointments, courses, events and meetings online.
• Create both private (invitee-only) and public activities.
• Validate client eligibility to attend activities.
• Clients can view availability and book activities and facilities online.
• Offer flexible online payment plans and secure payment telephony.
• Allocate personnel, trainers, venues and resources to scheduled activities.
• Manage trainer availability, competencies and invoices.
• Manage venue availability, capacities and contracts.
• Integrate with corporate payment gateways and CRM systems.
• Track booking, payment and attendance and generate critical action alerts.

Benefits

• Allow clients to book courses online at any time.
• Minimise call centre traffic by channelling bookings through the website.
• Maximise online bookings by offering intuitive touch-friendly interfaces.
• Enhance call centre PCI compliance with secure telephone payments.
• Use a self-service approach for trainer availability management.
• Process rules automate governance (course capacity and trainer competence).
• Maximise course attendance by providing SMS and email reminders.
• Create an unlimited range of activity types.
• Schedule an unlimited number of activity occurrences.
• Manage individuals' needs and support minority language groups.

£1,800 a licence a month

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  ODT

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at bill.duke@clarity-ltd.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

497774825595853

Contact

Bill Duke
07800810460
bill.duke@clarity-ltd.co.uk

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Private cloud
• Service constraints: Not applicable.
• System requirements:
  • Users must have internet connectivity.
  • Users must have access to a common browser platform.

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: An initial response is provided within 15 minutes.; ; The standard service is available between 08:00 hours and 17:30 hours on Monday to Friday excluding UK public and bank holidays.; ; 24/7 response coverage is also available for an additional fee.; ; Critical Faults - Technical response within 30 minutes, provide analysis and guidance within 3 hours, provide resolution within 6 hours.; ; Major Faults - Technical response within 1 hour, provide analysis and guidance within 1 day, provide resolution within 2 days.; ; Material Faults - Technical response within 3 hours, provide analysis and guidance within 1 day, provide resolution within 5 days.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: Yes, at an extra cost
• Web chat support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web chat accessibility testing: Clarity uses a third party web chat service provider that has completed; appropriate web chat testing. We have however not been directly involved in this testing.
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Clarity provides a fully managed solution support service, which is underpinned by a Service Level Agreement. The service includes unlimited access to a Help Desk, with guaranteed response and resolution timescales for all support requests.; ; All costs are included within the monthly subscription and no additional usage or service level fees apply.; ; Customers are provided with direct access to suitably qualified and experienced technical support personnel through the Help Desk. An Account Manager is also assigned to each customer and given overall responsibility for ensuring services are delivered in accordance with contractual obligations and customer expectations.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: Clarity provides onsite users acceptance testing and training services before go-live. User documentation is provided as part of that service. ; We also provide an onsite transition support service, where a system specialist works with new users in their offices during the first few days of system adoption. This approach is used to facilitate a seamless transition to effective use of Clarity Bookings with minimal business disruption.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • HTML
  • ODF
  • PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: Clarity provides a full export of all client-requested data in an agreed common use format, such as csv or xlsx.
• End-of-contract process: The solution is taken off-line at an agreed time on the contract end date. Clarity provides a full export of all client-requested data in an agreed common use format, such as csv or xlsx, within 10 business days after the contract end date.; Clarity destroys all client data 1 month after contract expiry or at an earlier date, if preferred by the customer.; The customer is notified and confirmation is sought prior to destruction of data.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: All client booking screens are responsive and the interfaces adapt automatically to suit the device being used.
• Service interface: Yes
• User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Description of service interface: Dedicated sets of user interfaces are provided for administrators, call takers, providers who conduct appointments and deliver courses and clients who wish to book appointments, courses and events. All interfaces can be accessed using any standard internet browser and they are all mobile friendly.; ; Business users can create activity types, schedule activity occurrences, allocate venues and trainers, process telephone bookings and payments and monitor bookings, payments and attendance. ; ; Clients can review available activities, book and pay for activities online, access activity information and modify booking details.; ; Providers can declare their availability, monitor allocation, access registers, record attendances and submit invoices.
• Accessibility standards: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Accessibility testing: Clarity uses the AChecker test toolkit to check and maintain our WCAG 2.1 compliance (to level AA) on a regular basis.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: Clarity Bookings includes an API that provides the following functionality:; - Add document (the ability to add a document for an instructor, venue or booking); - Retrieve report (the ability to retrieve report data from Clarity by passing the name of the report and associated date parameters); - Add note (the ability to add a note to a client booking); Clarity can include additional API entry points in response to customers' requests.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: Open API (also known as Swagger)
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: Users can select from an extensive range of functional configuration options in order to adapt the solution to support preferred working practices.; Business users (Course Administrators) are invited to participate in requirements clarification workshops, which are used to identify customisation preferences that are configured by Clarity prior to initial go-live. Authorised Course Administrators can subsequently implement changes directly, using the Administration Interface. Course Administrators can also request configuration changes through the Clarity Help Desk.; ; Client interface configuration options include:; • URL; • Number of courses displayed on screen; • Contact Us details; • Allow clients to add special requirements during booking; • Allow clients to cancel booking; • Allow clients to rebook; • Allow Payment Plans; • Email reminder period; • Use SMS reminders; • Email From address; • SMS Sender ID; • SMS Text; • Address Lookup; • Expiry Date Booking Period; • Timeout; Customers can also apply their own corporate branding to the client booking site, utilising a creative design that matches their own corporate website.; Administration interface configuration options include:; • URL; • Available course types; • Data anonymisation period; • Data retention period; • Password expiry; • Administration email address

Scaling

• Independence of resources: Clarity provides a dedicated installation within our hosting environment for each customer and the associated infrastructure is configured to accommodate substantially greater demand than any individual customer ever anticipates.; ; Scalability testing is employed to ensure that the solution delivers acceptable performance even during times of high load. Furthermore these tests are used to confirm that the system can handle the projected data volume, transaction frequency, etc. This verifies that the solution is able to meet the growing needs of the customer.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: BOOKING STATISTICS, encompassing course types, time periods, client profiles and a breakdown of online versus call centre bookings.; PAYMENT STATISTICS, including a breakdown of payment methods, full payments versus payment plans and client numbers with "booked not paid" status.; BUSINESS USER STATISTICS, including numbers of named users performing defined roles over specified time periods.; ANOMALIES, including client email bounce-backs. ; SERVICE PERFORMANCE, including system availability, support requests and response activities.
• Reporting types:
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest: Physical access control, complying with another standard
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: Clarity Bookings includes a management reporting tool that can be used to produce parameter-driven reports encompassing all/any data that is held in the Bookings database.; ; Suitably authorised users can produce these reports and then save them to a convenient common-use format (csv, xlsx or pdf).; ; Clarity is also happy to provide user-requested data exports free of charge as part of the managed solution support service that we provide.
• Data export formats:
  • CSV
  • ODF
  • Other
• Other data export formats:
  • XLSX
  • PDF/A
• Data import formats:
  • CSV
  • ODF
  • Other
• Other data import formats: XLSX

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: We provide our customers with both a Service Level Agreement and a Business Continuity Management Plan, which sets out the arrangements that we use to maintain exceptionally high availability. As an indication of our commitment to robust availability management, the system availability achieved across the entire Clarity Bookings customer base for 2019 was 99.88%.; ; Our SLA provides a commitment to maintaining a monthly rolling average of at least 99% availability and we will provide customers with service credits if we ever fail to achieve this target.
• Approach to resilience: Our UK-based data centres are certified to ISO 27001 and access is strictly limited to security-cleared personnel, controlled by extensive CCTV monitoring and state-of-the-art access control systems.; ­ CCTV covers all areas of the data centres and corporate offices.; ­ Highly experienced security guards are on duty 24x7x365.; ­ Role based access control requiring swipe-cards is used to manage access through multiple secure areas, ensuring absolutely no access to buildings and rooms by unauthorised personnel.; A copy of the Certificate of Registration to ISO 27001 can be provided on request.; Comprehensive ISO 27001-compliant security arrangements are used to protect data at rest and data in transit and further information can be provided on request.; The ISO 27001 certification also covers equipment disposal and physical resilience and availability management within the data centres.
• Outage reporting: Clarity Bookings includes a management dashboard, which alerts authorised business users dynamically when there are outages. Email alerts are also sent to designated customer contacts. ; ; Availability and outage statistics are included in monthly management reports, which are issued to customers.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication: Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Business users are added by a nominated System Administrator and they are assigned to pre-defined roles within Clarity Bookings, including System Administrator, Course Administrator and Call Taker.; ; An email is sent to each new business user with a system generated password after a new account has been created. The role allocated to the user determines which system functions are available to them.; ; Business Users are given a different URL from clients, which they use to log on with the password from the email and access features associated with their role. Logged in business users are able to change their password.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication: Username or password

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: User-defined
• How long system logs are stored for: User-defined

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: Yes
• Who accredited the PCI DSS certification: Self assessment (SAQ-A)
• PCI DSS accreditation date: 26th August, 2021
• What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover: The scope is restricted to service providers and card-not-present merchants. All cardholder data functions are fully outsourced to payment gateway providers, who hold full PCI DSS certification.
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • NPPV3
  • PASF

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: No
• Security governance approach: Clarity has gained extensive experience delivering high integrity information management solutions, which are used to store sensitive data, including records classified as SECRET, to numerous high-profile organisations throughout the UK public sector. Consequently, a robust approach to information governance and security management is fundamental to our business and our management structure, staff selection and personal development procedures reflect this core requirement.; In particular, we have established Security Operating Procedures (SYOPS) and most of our staff have undergone MOD, government and police security vetting procedures and have obtained clearance to work on confidential systems.
• Information security policies and processes: Clarity has established Security Operating Procedures (SYOPS) that define acceptable forms of use that apply to Clarity personnel whenever they access live customer environments.; ; SYOPS apply to all personnel who access live environments. While these procedures clearly apply to staff that provide routine support and maintenance services, they are equally applicable to any individuals who are required to access live environments for any reason.; ; The Operations Director is responsible for authorising individuals before they can access a live environment and for defining the permissible form/s of access and the purpose. The Operations Director maintains a register that identifies all such authorisations.; ; We utilise a systematic, risk-based approach to information security management, based on ISO 27001 requirements and guidelines. We identify system usage profiles and associated threats, vulnerabilities and risks. We also conduct impact assessments and assign security classifications in order to identify impact levels and risk tolerance, which influences the controls used to manage risks. Independent penetration testing is also used to increase information assurance.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: Software configuration management procedures are used to identify and control the use of software items, thus enabling traceability and replication. Configuration management is used to ensure all Clarity Bookings components can be combined in a consistent and repeatable manner. Our configuration management procedures include methods for:; - Unique identification and version control for all products and components.; - Receiving and acting on observations and for recording and controlling changes arising.; - Defining the means by which a product may be built or re-built.; - Controlling replication and distribution of products.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: We utilise a systematic, risk-based approach to information security management, based on ISO 27001 requirements and guidelines.; We identify system usage profiles and associated threats, vulnerabilities and risks. We also conduct impact assessments and assign security classifications in order to identify impact levels and risk tolerance, which influences the controls used to manage risks. Independent penetration testing is also used to increase information assurance.; ; Patch deployment speed depends on perceived threat levels, but we can deploy critical patches within 2 days.; ; Clarity subscribes to feeds from recognised security experts and government bodies, including Qualys and the National Cyber Security Centre.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: All users must be authenticated in order to access system functionality. This cannot be bypassed and any malicious attempts to access Clarity Bookings are recorded in the system audit logs. ; ; Should a security breach occur, Clarity shall follow ICO guidelines in order to:; Identify how the breach occurred; Take immediate steps to stop or minimise further data loss, destruction or unauthorised disclosure; Assess and record the risk; Notify affected individuals and any relevant regulator (ICO); Establish what security measures were in place when the breach occurred; Assess whether technical or organisational measures could be implemented to prevent the breach reoccuring.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: Our Service Level Agreement defines an incident management process, which is enacted any time a Support Request is classified as an incident.; Users can report incidents by either phoning the Clarity Help Desk, emailing the Help Desk or raising a request through an online Support Portal.; Customers are initially advised on the progression and resolution of incidents through phone calls and emails. Customer agreement that an incident has been resolved is always documented (typically by email). Incidents are reported formally through monthly management reports, which identify the cause, the effect and actions taken to resolve the incident and prevent recurrence.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Social Value

• Fighting climate change:

  Fighting climate change

  Clarity has increased our support for home-based working substantially and we have reduced business travel dramatically.
• Covid-19 recovery:

  Covid-19 recovery

  Clarity has increased our support for home-based working substantially and we have reduced business travel dramatically.
• Tackling economic inequality:

  Tackling economic inequality

  Clarity is happy to donate surplus IT equipment to charities and other 3rd sector organisations.
• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  Clarity collaborates with local colleges to provide work experience and employment opportunities for junior staff.
• Wellbeing:

  Wellbeing

  Clarity has introduced flexible working practices to support the health and wellbeing of our staff.

Pricing

• Price: £1,800 a licence a month
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  ODT

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at bill.duke@clarity-ltd.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.