Online Reservation checking locks up CM

[Randy@DCVRV Park]

We're looking into having our reservations imported into CM from our web reservation form. Everything seems to be working OK, with one major exception: when checking our online submissions, CM locks up.

When I select "Reservations, retrieve reservations", the "online reservations request" screen comes up. Upon pressing the "retrieve online requests" button, I can see the progress bar run across as if it's checking submissions. Once the bar goes away, the program goes into "hourglass" mode and locks up. I've tried the set up on two different computers, one with XP, one with WIN10 with exactly the same results.

I seem to recall that I had this working not too long ago with a different EMail address than the development one we're using now, but cannot recall if we ever tested it far enough to see if it would work properly.

I have a feeling that I've missed something somewhere obvious, but cannot find it. I did check the EMail address to make sure it was functioning properly and checked all the server names, etc., so I think I can eliminate a bad email address as the problem.

What did I miss?

Additional: As a follow-up, I went back to the old email address I had used previously, and it also locks up CM in the same manner. I'm now wondering - does it have something to do with the parsing rules???

[sspielbusch]

It may be getting stuck trying to process requests already downloaded in the past. Have you tried "Delete all downloaded requests" before retrieving? That should be regularly, e.g. any time you've finished processing the last batch and don't need the old messages.

Also, is it downloading a lot of old messages each time? You should occasionally let it delete messages from the server (see the Connection Options for the E-mail requests), so it's not downloading the old messages every time. See the documentation on that option:
http://campgroundmaster.com/help/onl...e_mailreq.html

[Randy@DCVRV Park]

The email address we were using hasn't been used for anything, it's totally empty. We did submit one reservation just to have something there to process, but otherwise, there is nothing there.

I had thought about deleting the old stuff if it would have been there, but there is nothing existing.

I'm kinda stumped . . . .

[Randy@DCVRV Park]

Think I've figured out the problem. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to check it out, but I think I know what caused the problem. I'll explain further tomorrow when I get more time to fool with it.

[sspielbusch]

If there's nothing to delete, and it's really only downloading 1 message (the web post), then it sounds like something in the parsing rules may be locking it up.

[Randy@DCVRV Park]

OK, here's what I've worked out. First, I've confirmed that I'm an idiot. .

Other than that, it was just what you said, Stan. Apparently somewhere along the line, we had attempted to pull down online reservations. Deleting the old stuff took care of the lock up problem, and once I got the parsing set up correctly, it seems to work quite well now - with one exception, and this is probably something I did silly as well.

The delete mail function worked a little too well. It did delete everything in the mailbox! However, I should say that the mailbox we're using to test with is the one we use normally, so I am making the assumption that once we get a separate mailbox for our reservation submissions set up, it will only delete from that box, not the entire mail server.

As I said, it's almost always something I've done stupid . . .

I should note, though, that once I get things set up correctly, and once the programmer(me) quits doing dumb things, this online set-up is going to be fantastic!!! I can already see the potential savings in time, as well as eliminating errors when inputting the reservations by hand.

[sspielbusch]

Right, you need to use a separate mailbox that would only get the reservations so you don't end up deleting E-mail that you need to retrieve elsewhere.

[Randy@DCVRV Park]

Yep, found that out. . . Oh, well, at least we got the mailbox cleaned out. It was well overdue. . .

Otherwise, it's working quite well so far. I'm looking forward to putting the process into production and see how it works. At very least, it's going to eliminate input errors.