Setting Up for Webervations |
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If you're interested in setting up Campground Master to retrieve online reservation requests from the online service Webervations.com, the following areas need to be addressed. (See the related sections for details.)
Note: If you don't find the Webervations connection settings tab under the Online Connection, then you need to set a special flag to enable Webervations in Campground Master.
To enable Webervations support, go to Maintenance / Raw Data Tables / Park Setup / Settings.
•Check Allow Editing of Fields, then add a New Record. Fill in the columns as shown:
Section: Online
Key: WebervWasEnabled
Value: 1
•Close the dialog, and then make some other change (e.g. add a Transaction or make a site unavailable for a day) to trigger a "Save".
•Close and re-open Campground Master.
•Now go to Maintenance / Online Reservations / Other Online Interfaces / Connections & Options. There should be a Webervations tab, click on that.
•Once in that tab, press F1 to get the Help, which will guide you through the things that need to be set up for linking with Webervations.
Setup Checklist:
•Create an account on Webervations.com
•Set up the Webervations connection settings, using your Webervations account information (must at least be "Enabled" for some other setup functions to be available).
•Decide how you want sites to be represented in Webervations (see below) .
•Make sure the Reservations data field "Resv_Online_Request_ID" is enabled.
•Enable the Site data fields "Site_Online_Weberv_ID", "Site_Online_Weberv_Name", and "Site_Online_Weberv_Class".
•Enable the Site data fields "Site_Online_Weberv_Ex" and/or "Site_Online_Weberv_Release_Days" if desired.
•Fill in the Site data fields above with the appropriate values.
•Set up one or more Parsing Sets to extract the data from Webervations. There is a default parsing set for Webervations that should work in most cases, though you might need to make some small changes or additions depending on your Webervations account setup.
Webervations Site Configuration
Site Data Fields Needed For Webervations requests and availability upload:
The Site data fields "Site_Online_Weberv_ID", "Site_Online_Weberv_Name", and "Site_Online_Weberv_Class" must be enabled for Webervations functionality.
The Site data field "Site_Online_Weberv_Ex" is optional -- it can be enabled if you want to exclude some sites from Webervations availability.
The Site data field "Site_Online_Weberv_Release_Days" is optional -- can be enabled if you want to specify that sites are removed from Webervations availability a certain number of days ahead of time. See the section Online Connections -- General for more information on release days.
Webervations Name -- This is the "Room Name" from Webervations for this site. It doesn't have to be unique for each site -- for instance it could be more like a site type, if you're not setting up Webervations to be site-specific. It must of course match the room name given for the site on Webervations, but for instance you can specify on Webervations that the room "Cabin" has 20 units available. Thus you would enter "Cabin" as the Name here (and ID, below) for all 20 cabins.
Webervations ID -- This should be the same as the Webervations Name to work properly with the availability upload for Webervations.
Webervations Class -- This is the "Unit Class" from Webervations. Often this is just "Default", but if you have multiple classes set up then enter the appropriate value here.
Exclude from Webervations -- Set this to "Yes" if you want to exclude the site from Webervations availability. "No" and blank have the same result.
Webervations Release Days -- Specify how many days ahead of time that the site should be removed from online availability. Leave it blank if it should always be considered available for both online and offline reservations. Enter 0 if it should never be available offline (locally), and always available for online reservations. See the section Online Connections -- General for more information on release days.
When you set up your Webervations account, you need to create a number of "Rooms", and optionally "Unit Classes". You can also specify how many "Units" are available for each "Room". So instead of actually creating a separate room for each of your sites, you can treat the "Rooms" in Webervations more like the Site Types in Campground Master. So for instance you can have a "Normal RV" room, "Deluxe RV" room, "Tent" room, etc. Then for the number of units in each room, enter the number of sites you have of that type.
On the other hand, there's no need to match up with your site types exactly. If you want to create more specific rooms, you can do so. For instance you might want to divide them by 30A/50A service, lakefront vs. street-front, or however you would like to allow the customer to choose a site or location. Campground Master allows you to specify the "Room Name" used in Webervations for each site, so you can assign them as needed.
Now assuming that you treat the rooms similar to site types as described above, a reservation request will indicate the "Room Name", which is really the type of site. If there happens to be only one site of that type configured, then it will automatically assign that site to the reservation. Otherwise, you will need to select the site yourself when processing the reservation.
Alternatively you can set up a room for each site you have. This would be appropriate if you have a small number of condos or cabins, for instance.
Whether you set it up as groups or just individual sites, be sure to set the "Site_Online_Weberv_Name" data field for each site appropriately so it matches the room name you used in Webervations. This is case-sensitive. If a value is entered for a site that doesn't match a room name exactly, Webervations will report an error when you upload availability data (and of course a request for that room might not work since it doesn't match the site). Note that Webervations sends you an E-mail each time you do an upload, and that's where errors are reported -- Campground Master will not see the error messages, so be sure to check your E-mail soon after uploading.
The Unit Class, which equates to the "Site_Online_Weberv_Class" field, is usually set to "Default" unless you specify a different class in Webervations. You could use this to divide up classes similar to the Site Class in Campground Master, but it's not required unless you need more than 50 "Rooms" defined in Webervations. Remember that one "Room" in Webervations can actually be as many Sites as needed, so 50 Rooms is usually sufficient unless you want every site listed individually.
The "Site_Online_Weberv_ID" field is not currently used other than when uploading availability to Webervations. You should set this field to be the same as the room name ("Site_Online_Weberv_Name") to make it work properly. Otherwise it may upload more "rooms" than you intend (see below).
Of course you don't have to expose all of your sites to Webervations. You decide which ones you want to be available for online reservations, and set those up in your Webervations account.. Use the field "Site_Online_Weberv_Ex" to exclude sites from Webervations availability so they're not uploaded.
You can also use the "Site_Online_Weberv_Release_Days" field to remove sites from online availability a specified number of days ahead of time -- but this assumes you're uploading availability at least once per day. Campground Master actually uses this to create the availability data accordingly -- Webervations doesn't know about this value, so if you don't update your availability often enough then it's irrelevant.
Note that when you upload the availability data, an entry will be created for each unique combination of "Room", "ID", and "Class", indicating the number of units for each room are available for that combination. This must match what Webervations expects. This is why we recommend that the Room and ID always be identical, and that you just use "Default" for the Class (unless you create multiple classes in Webervations of course). This is the way Webervations expects it.
Further Topics:
Online Connections - Export to Web
Online Setup - Site Data Fields
Retrieving Online Reservations