Executing Going Live Procedure

 

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During the going-live process, neither check-ins nor
new reservations are allowed to be executed, i.e., created!

 

After all of the requirements and preparations have been fulfilled and successfully executed, please contact protel BWI Support at least 1 hour before the going live time agreed with BWI.

Please note!  Execute the following steps only AFTER being requested by protel BWI-Support!

Persons involved

  • Installer (on-site)

  • Hotel employee (on-site)

  • protel BWI support employee (Dortmund)

  • BWI employee (Arizona)

Communication

Set up a Skype group to which you can invite all of the persons involved.

Contacting BWI

The going live procedure will be overseen by a BWI employee in Arizona, USA. Please ask protel BWI support for the contact data in due time!

Contact the BWI employees in due time and invite them to the Skype group so that it can be used for communicating during the going live procedure.

Activate IDS

Enter the IDS license, if you have not already done so.

Start the IDS service.

Set the status of the BWI instance in the IDS remote tool to "Running":

After having consulted with protel, start a full data export in the IDS Remote tool:

Inform protel BWI support as soon as the IDS reports that it is "Exporting changes".

Save default values in the Cloud Center

Access the hotel administration in the protel Cloud Center (System > Hotel administration).

In the tree view to the left, select the hotel and click the "BWI" tab at the top.

In the lower part of the window, select the fallback values for the room type & the rate code, and the default values for the market and source code.

Please note! For the time being, please click NOT YET the [Upload certificate] button!

 

"Flip the Flag"

In Skype, open the group to which you had invited the BWI employee. As soon as the employee is on-line, you should contact protel BWI support.  If protel BWI support gives you the "Go", ask the BWI employee in the Skype chat if the start can proceed. The reply "Flip the Flag" is the starting signal. The certificate will now be able to be saved in the cloud (see next step).

Certificate / Save the key to the Cloud (Best Western public key infrastructure (PKI))

This will be done by protel BWI Support.

The certificate must and can only be entered during the going live procedure, because the interface uses this to connect to BWI.

The certificate will be saved to the respective hotel in protel Cloud Center (System > Hotel administration > BWI tab). By clicking the [Upload certificate] button, the socket connection between the hotel and BWI will be directly created. Afterwards, data can be immediately exchanged between the two parties.

Check socket

This will be done by protel BWI Support. A PING message will be sent to test the socket connection.

If everything is okay, the BWI employee will be informed by the protel BWI support concerning the activation of the interface.

Test reservation from BWI to protel

BWI sends a test reservation. The BWI employee will issue you a CRS number. Use the number to check to see if the reservation is in protel. The test reservation will need to be deleted after consultation with BWI!

You will be able to tell whether or not the reservation has been exported as "Cancelled" by the green dot next to the respective reservation (Annotation by author: illustration coming soon).

Afterwards, inform the BWI employee about the successful cancellation. In return, the BWI cancellation number issued by Best Western will need to be displayed in protel.

NOTE: Should the "Discrepancies found 2651" error message appear in the interface traffic light, it can be ignored and deleted.

BWI Interface Syncs

After having consulted you and protel BWI support, the Best Western employee will kick-off an initial data synchronization. You will then receive four reports which will need to be checked by you. Differences must be checked and corrected ,if necessary, and confirmed by BWI! If all of the reports are correct, confirm their correctness using "Applied".

1)   Availabilities Overall Report

Contents of the report: Overview of all availabilities.

What should I pay attention to? The availability in protel must correspond with the availabilities displayed in the report.

This is how you check the report: In protel, find a day which does not have any reservations (for example in year 2020). Check to see how many rooms are available during that day. Compare the number with the number mentioned in the report (PMS column). If all of the numbers match, everything is fine. Should the report indicate fewer rooms in the PMS, it will need to be checked whether or not rooms have been locked on this specific day.

2)  Availabilities Specific Report

Contents of the report: Availability overview per room type.

What should I pay attention to? The number of available rooms per room type must be the same for both (PMS/CRS).

! In this report, you will only need to check the displayed numbers for Level A!

This is how you check the report:Check to see how many rooms are displayed per room type in the PMS column of the report. The number must be the same as the number displayed in protel.

3)  Rates Report

Contents of the report: Overview of all rate codes.

What should I pay attention to?

I.  The rates shown on the PMS side should not contain rate codes with a zero.

II. The rates shown on the PMS side should not be lower than in the CRS.

This is how you check the report:

All rate codes will need to be checked. Should a rate in the PMS column contain a rate code with a zero, the rate code detail is missing for these rate codes. In this case, it is pertinent for you to enter this rate code detail afterwards! Afterwards, a new data export will need to be started in the IDS Remote Tool. Ask the BWI employee to generate the report again and to repeat the testing.

Should a rate in the PMS column be lower than in the CRS, ask the hotel employee if this is intentional. If not, the rate will be noted and corrected after going live. In this case, the report will not have to be generated again.

4)  Status Report (Restrictions)

Contents of the report: Overview of strategies / restrictions.

What should I pay attention to? The set strategies should be the same at both ends.

If some of the data are marked as "Close" in the CRS column and "Open" in the PMS column, ask the hotel employee if this difference is intentional. Jot down all of the discrepancies which need to be corrected. The respective changes in protel can be done after having gone live.

Before GNR Report

During the installation process, please print an arrivals report for the next year before CRS sends the reservations they are holding. It is important that this report will be labeled Before GNR and be retained for your records.

GNR download / Get reservations

During the GNR download, all CRS-Reservations from BWI to protel will be sent to protel from BWI.

Beforehand, all of the reservations in protel will need to have been provided with a CRS number, because there is the danger that the reservation will be generated twice!

In the protel Cloud Center, check to see if the actual data is transmitted (Menu BWI Support > Reservation Channel Import). The import will continue after 20 minutes (time out) should the import "freeze".

What should I pay attention to?

All reservations must have the SentToChannel status. Reservations with the Received or Converted status are in the process of being transmitted, but have not yet arrived in protel.

The usual status sequence for transmission is as follows: Received > Converted > SentToChannel

Reservation export  from protel to BWI

Is done by protel BWI Support.

The BWI hotel status will be set toActive in the protel Cloud Center (System> Hotel administration > "BWI" tab).

All of the reservations will then be sent by protel to the CRS (BWI CRS > Reservation export).

Afterwards, the ExportLog (BWI CRS > Channelmanagerexport) will be checked for available reservations with the "deferred" status. Such reservations will again be sent to the CRS by simply clicking the [Resend deferred] button.

The BWI help desk will be informed that all of the reservations have been uploaded from protel.

After GNR Report

After all of the reservations have been sent in both directions, it is recommended to once again print an arrivals report for the next year. Please label the printed list as "After GNR". It is Important that this report will be labeled After GNR and be retained for your records.

End of day

The hotel is only allowed to execute the end of day procedure only after the going live procedure has ended (confirmed by BWI)! before the end of day, the bwi_eodsync.xml CKit will need to be implemented!

Post-processing

Changes to reservations

In order to find out if there have been changes made to a CRS reservation generated in protel, you can compare each reservation in protel with the data from the Before GNR" reservation list.

Doubled reservations

Check to see that there are doubled reservations!

Reservations without CRS numbers

Please check for Reservations without allocated BWI confirmation numbers (BWI add-on module > Reservations without allocated BWI confirmation numbers).

Possible reasons:

  • Is there a required field missing in the reservation?

  • Does the guest profile have a Cloud reference? Does the guest profile have a greeting?

  • Is it a sharer-reservation?

  • Is it an optional reservation or does the reservation have the "waiting list" status?

Availabilities

Check the availabilities (Match Member Web / Room type plan).

If there are differences which might lead to an overbooking, these days will need to be closed by means of the rate availability until the differences have been corrected (block LVLA).

Compare the CRS with the settings in the Member Web

  • Have all of the restrictions been correctly set?

  • Have the guarantee conditions and cancellation conditions been correctly set?

  • have all of the rates been correctly set?