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Campground Master's 2-way real-time integration with Hercules offers the most robust online integration available of any system. It offers the best of both worlds -- a first class front office system that you have full control over, coupled with an industry leading online reservation system that seamlessly melds into your web site.
"2-way" means that reservation and availability information flows both ways -- reservations made online are imported to Campground Master without any re-typing necessary, and reservations made locally (as well as other site availability changes) are uploaded to the online system. This means that both systems will be in sync without any effort on your part.
"Real-time" means that the synchronization happens continuously and automatically. Most importantly, it means that you can offer your entire inventory of sites to online reservations without worrying about conflicts between online and local reservations. You may never have go online to adjust your site availability, since it's all done automatically. You can even specify certain dates that each site should not be available online, e.g. for special events you know will be full well in advance, all within Campground Master.
Getting Signed Up
Hercules is an online reservation system offered by Leisure Interactive (formerly Friend Communications). Before you can use Campground Master to integrate with their online system, you need to sign up for their service and get it set up. For more information, visit our web site: http://campgroundmaster.com/online.html.
Site Locking
No matter how "fast" a real-time system is, it can't avoid conflicts without "locking" sites before using them, to ensure that the other side can't start a reservation on the same site you're working on. This is accomplished with Hercules the same way it's done with the Campground Master local networking functionality, with one exception -- because the response from the internet may take a little longer, Campground Master doesn't have to wait for the response before letting you continue your work. Instead, it will check to see what the lock response was when you're at a point where any potential conflict needs to be avoided (e.g. saving the new reservation). If there is a potential conflict with someone making a reservation online (typically a rare occurrence), then it will warn you (and/or prevent continuing, depending on the operator's access level).
Likewise, whenever a site is being used locally for a reservation, Hercules will know about it and will prevent anyone from selecting that site for an online reservation.
Automatic vs Manual
Normally the fully automatic mode should be used, since this is the only way to prevent conflicts 100% of the time. However if you're having trouble with internet connectivity then there is the option to fall back into manual mode for uploading and/or downloading. Site locking can also be skipped, and uploading and downloading reservation changes will not take place until you request it. You can get them synchronized any time, through Reservations / Retrieve Online Reservations, but keep in mind that conflicts could arise during the time that the data has not been synchronized.
Further Topics:
Operations (handling errors, etc.)
Retrieving Online Reservations and Uploading Availability (Manual mode)