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OwnerRez team: I can see that there's comments to now add scenarios where if X equals M, but Z doesn't happen, allow T, unless G is less than M, then allow A. I can appreciate that it's just not always feasible to program every permutation that can be dreamt up. So, I just wanted to express my appreciation for adding this feature! It's working great and is wonderful.
I have no rules that prevent coming or going on specific holidays. I DO have same day turnover limitations where someone checks out on Thanksgiving (US) or Christmas I do not allow same day turnover. Is there an algorithm somewhere I can setup that scenario?
@Wendy -- can you clarify a bit on the setting: are you wanting to set Arrival/Departure to the same value (both allowed or both not allowed)? Or more looking for a "set changeover" that lets you pick "both, neither, check in only, check out only"?
We do have an export/import for the calendar rates -- you can see this on the spot rates tab. But it doesn't support the arrival/departure rules yet. We're working on an update to add those rules there as well.
Can you make a slight adjustment to the UI so that instead of Arrival and Departure be two separate choices it is Arrival/Departure and the pop-up has both sets of Radio buttons - that way when we are setting 2 restrictions on the same days we can set both at once... will save a lot of time.
Is there a way to upload all these restrictions via CSV so that we can have a file that we update each year and will allow to set similar rules for multiple properties at the same time - conversely, allowing us to download a CSV of these Rules will allow to double check all properties are set and create a template of modifying and uploading
In the meantime you could possible add multiple property select to the Advanced Select option along with the combining Arrival/Departure above it would save a lot of time.
Also, can you confirm that this overrides all other settings including seasons - you already confirmed above that this will not be overwritten by Pricelabs rules.
Thank you for consideration
PS not sure if I should write in here or in the recommendations area.
Shawn H says:
Hi Dori123 - you can do either or both already. Just select Christmas Day on the Rates Calendar and set either or both to "not allowed" individually as they (Arrival and Departure) are separate settings. If one or both are already set from the season-level, you'll need to disable or delete that season, or override the season with the opposite setting.
Shawn:
I would like to set an Arrival / Departure Rule for a date that would automatically allow either but not both. This would be for set dates like Dec. 25, Jan 1, etc. If I understand correctly, your solution would have me set "no arrival" on Dec 25 after I get a reservation that departs Dec 25, or alternatively, I could set that date to "no departure" after I get a reservation that starts on Dec 25. This is not ideal, as it is not automated. I would still have to consult my list of "no flip" dates and remember to change the setting if I get a reservation that lands on one of those dates. And if I get any cancellations that affect those dates, I have to hope I'd remember to manually back out the setting
I would love to see the code allow Arrival only if No Departure that day, and Departure only if No Arrival that day. But not both. Let me know if I and the others misunderstand.
Blocks and season rate overrides on arrival/departure are overrideable. If you combine them it makes a singular expression for the entire set of rules. Seasons, blocks, etc all combine together so no there is no priority system.
Take for example
The combined rules comes out like this
Then if you try to make a quote/booking you would get this message
You can still override over the combined block created.
I'm with Danica ^^^^ I can set one or the other but with this setting, one is not dependent on the other. If I disallow both arrivals and departures, I have essentially blocked Christmas from both.
I currently manually block the opposite day depending on which reservation comes in first. If a guest is departing Dec25 I block that night for no arrival, and vice versa, to prevent holiday turn-around.
I guess this setting gives me the option to set a policy that allows folks to either arrive or depart on holidays. Or, I can keep doing it manually and hope I don't miss one.
So the question is, is there a way to prioritize the setting based on an existing reservation?
Stacy:
The arrival/departure settings on the Settings> Rates page (shown above) will not be changed by PriceLabs settings. You can, also, go into that Settings>Rates page and override the seasonal departure settings for a particular night.
I do a lot of upselling currently but sm interested in what others are doing!
On Thursday, 2/23, join us live with The Host Co to discuss what every rental manager needs to know about adding more revenue with elevated amenities and services…without adding extra work for you or your team.
In this webinar, The Host Co team will discuss what “instant amenities” work best, how to quickly create your own offerings and add them to guest messaging, and go over how much money can be made from upsells (hint, it can eclipse your nightly rate).
The session is free to join, but you must use The Host Co webinar link to register.
You can find all our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
Joshua, it depends on the holiday. Many holidays change dates every year so recurring seasons wouldn't work. Also, you have to have a 1 day season in order for that to work which is tedious. Setting it on "the entire Christmas" holiday period (eg. 5 or 10 days) typically doesn't work because that means that no one can arrive/departure on any of the days of that season. You typically want to pinpoint some exact dates to exclude arrival/departure, not entire seasons. But yes, if your season is 1 or 2 days, you can do it that way as well. That might mean you have multiple overlapping seasons.
It seems seasons would still be better to control Arrival/Departure rules otherwise you will have to add the rule every year. With seasons, you can make it reoccurring for most holidays with the exception of maybe Thanksgiving
It seems pretty much the same as before except for all of the rate lines? Am I missing anything? Any way to push reviews over?
@Shawn. above regarding Dori's comment on Christmas.
I am not following how your solution works. Assume I don't have anything set at the season level. Christmas is just a random day in the middle of a rate season. I can allow an arrival IF I don't have a departure on the same day. I can allow a departure IF I don't have an arrival on the same day. One depends on the other. if I simply set either or both (arrival and/or departure settings) to "don't allow" I don't think it accomplishes the intention. Can you please elaborate further?
On this day in 1985, U.S. Postage first-class stamp prices were raised from 20 cents to 22 cents. 🖃 Today the cost of a stamp is 63 cents!! 💸
Thank goodness for email! Sending emails to guests is even faster, easier, and less expensive than good old snail mail. And by using OwnerRez's System Messages, Email Templates, and SMS (text) messaging, you automate and streamline communication with guests across all channels, allowing you to focus on the important things--like growing your business and brand!
And on the topic of automation and streamlining, read on to review the February 15th release with four updates that include an OwnerRez Zapier Integration tweak and Channel Bridge History improvements!
We're working to lessen your need for Channel Bridge over time, but while it's still around, we're trying to make it more useful. For those who may not yet know, OwnerRez's Channel Bridge is a Chrome browser extension that allows you to log in to your listing site accounts (e.g., Vrbo, Airbnb) to bridge data over to OwnerRez that is stored there, rather than relying solely on the limited export functionality that the listing site offers. With Channel Bridge, you can download your account data and upload it directly into OwnerRez in a few steps.
OwnerRez users work extremely hard to get reviews. And if you're like most users, you ask your guests to post reviews and when they do, you want to use them in other places. It can take a decade (or more!) to build a good list of reviews, and the more you have them, the stronger your reputation (and easier your marketing) gets. You should collect and store all your reviews so that you can use them on your OwnerRez Hosted Website or the Reviews widget.
But we know that our users are busy and can sometimes forget when they last imported reviews from their listing site accounts. And while the OwnerRez Channel Bridge History was tracking and displaying booking import histories, that same history wasn't tracking review imports, only exports.
Wonder no more about when that last review import was completed. Now Channel Bridge History includes review imports, noting the date the previous import was completed and the status of that last Channel Bridge!
There are two new columns also - Account ID and Account Email - which helps users especially with more than one account know which Channel Bridge files went with which channel account.
Learn more about OwnerRez's Channel Bridge by reading the Channel Bridge Overview support article.
OwnerRez offers an abundance of Integrations to assist owners and PMs in operating their vacation rental businesses. One of our most recent integration partners, Zapier, asked us to sort our API List Results by most recent data first. So we now sort in descending order by ID Description. Adding this capability benefits our users using Zapier to make Zaps and doesn't presently hinder any other integrations utilizing our open API, so we went for it.
Want to learn more about integrations or Zapier? Read our Zapier support article and Paul's Zapier Integration Public Beta Now Available! blog post.
Allow Selecting of Earlier Years on the Right Side of the Reports' Date Range Picker. We continue to make the date picker better. The Reports' Date Range Picker now allows users to select prior years from the right side of the Date Range Picker. This is especially helpful when a user selects Custom Range before choosing the needed dates.
Improve Deposits Form Number Parsing and Adjustments. We noticed that users saw some anomalies while recording deposits.
Will the settings we do here for # of nights and arrival/departure override Pricelabs settings or vice versa?
I really hoped you all would also offer an Arrival / Departure Rule that would allow one or the other, but not both! Lots of people either arrive or depart on Christmas day at our ski place, but I don't want the cleaning staff to have to do a flip clean that day. Pretty please, can you add this functionality?
Hi Dori123 - you can do either or both already. Just select Christmas Day on the Rates Calendar and set either or both to "not allowed" individually as they (Arrival and Departure) are separate settings. If one or both are already set from the season-level, you'll need to disable or delete that season, or override the season with the opposite setting.
I really hoped you all would also offer an Arrival / Departure Rule that would allow one or the other, but not both! Lots of people either arrive or depart on Christmas day at our ski place, but I don't want the cleaning staff to have to do a flip clean that day. Pretty please, can you add this functionality?
Are you celebrating National Football Hangover Day today? Did you watch the big 🏈 game, or did you watch the 122 dogs that faced off in the Puppy Bowl instead? 🐶
Regardless, we hope that you were able to celebrate (or commiserate if your team lost) with family and friends and enjoy some yummy snacks. Whether you are still recovering from all the excitement of last night or were up and at 'em on this Monday, take some time to relax and give this February 10th release with 3 updates a once-over. We've rolled out our new Global Alert System and added some nice enhancements to the Rates Calendar to "advance the ball" (yep--we went there)!
OwnerRez users may have noticed our new In-App Global Alert System already. Still, we're "super" excited about this new feature that adds a more efficient way to communicate OwnerRez news and information.
This new and hopefully unobtrusive global alert bar will appear at the top of the OwnerRez app. We do not intend to "alert" our users unnecessarily to the point of annoyance; we think OwnerRez must communicate important news and information.
And while some of the alerts will automatically expire and disappear, users can read more or Dismiss the alerts at any time.
If you were able to "Read More" about our first alert, you already know that it featured more information about the new In-App Global Alert System. How meta is that? And in case you missed it, a screenshot of all the interesting details is shown below (Hint: click on the image to make it larger).
So, there you have it! From the new OwnerRez Status Page to this new In-App Global Alert System, OwnerRez is committed to providing more transparency and information to our users.
It had been a while since we last updated the Rates Calendar, so it was time to give it some love! Are you a user that has to create a season that lasts just a day or two to apply specific rules? Well, you likely will no longer have to, so keep reading to find out why not.
Set Rules Drop-Down List
We've added a new Set Rules drop-down list that allows users to set Maximum and Minimum Nights and apply Arrival and Departure rules in the Calendar Tab. Users can also navigate there by clicking on Settings > Rates or selecting the Tools drop-down list > Rate Calendar.
Minimum and Maximum Nights Rules
In the improved Set Rules modal that pops up, users will now see the current Minimum Nights Rule displayed in the blue informational callout and can choose to either Use the default rule from season or property or to Set a custom rule for these nights.
Arrival and Departure Rules
Users can set specific Arrival and Departure rules directly from the Calendar tab.
The Arrival and Departure Rules modal pop-ups are essentially the same, including the following options:
See the Arrival and Departure Rules in action below. Note how the gray line denoting Arrival or Departure rules is added after each Arrival and Departure Rule is applied.
Expanded Hover Cards
Hover cards now display additional expanded details, such as Arrival and Departure restrictions and Channel Blackouts, when users hover over each day in the Calendar Tab.
After the saving process is complete, the new Spot Rates will be displayed in bold font, while Seasonal Rates will be displayed unbolded.
It was determined to be in our users' best interest to remove the Rates Calendar Delete Button. Our reasoning is to refer to it as "delete" was inaccurate because deleting is not what was happening when you used "Delete." Instead, you're removing any override set on that date, whether rate or rule, and reverting to the default rate/rule from the season or property. Since adding the additional rule options, it's clearer to set to use the default under each individual rate/rule setting.
Fixed Issue With Downloading Lynnbrook Deposits With Many Transactions. There was an edge case where a large PM had thousands of transactions in a single deposit that were truncated and didn't fit in a column. We corrected this by enlarging the column and reprocessing the deposit to ensure that these Lynnbrook Deposits download smoothly despite the file size.
New Backdated Product Updates available since last time:
- New User Welcome Email, Vrbo PPB Commission Imports, and Updated Maps!
Publishing a Product Update on the day of the release?! Yes, it's happening. It's already February, and OwnerRez remains steadfastly committed to our 2023 resolution of more timely Product Update blog posts!
Did you know that on this day in 1874, a patent was issued to Samuel W. Francis for the humble spork? Much like the all-purpose spork, OwnerRez has an abundance of versatility. We strive to build in more each week. So dig in (I had to say it!) to today's product update to review the versatility presented in our February 3rd release with 8 updates.
One of the things that went live this week that boosts the versatility factor of OwnerRez is the public beta of our Zapier integration! If you missed yesterday's announcement, check out Paul's blog post for the details.
Two-Factor Authentication is coming!!! Are you ready?
Very shortly, all accounts will have two-factor authentication turned on. On February 13th, email two-factor authentication will be forced on for ALL users (primary and team access staff accounts).
We already required new user accounts that joined after this feature was initially released on December 8, 2022, to use 2FA, and now it's everyone else's turn to join in that haven't yet.
We will email users who have not yet enabled 2FA for their accounts early next week.
Please read our Two-Factor Authentication support article to understand how it works and how you can preemptively enable it before February 13th to better secure your account today.
What the heck is a branded subdomain? And why would OwnerRez users want one anyway? We realized that not everyone knows what a subdomain (a domain that is a part of another domain) is and that Branded Subdomain confused some of our users.
We decided to clear up that confusion by renaming the Portal Branded Subdomain name to a simpler Branded Portal in the Team Access Portal tab, as shown below.
Here is an example of a Branded Portal login screen.
Want to create your own Team Access Branded Portal? See our Branded Portal Setup support article.
OwnerRez users can now see any Airbnb account error notification specifics displayed on the Airbnb API settings page. Notification alerts will appear on the top right of the Airbnb API Properties tab.
When users click on the alert, an informational pop-up details the account alert, as shown below.
Learn more by reading the Airbnb Overview support article.
Allow Deletion of Canceled Bookings If They Can Otherwise Be Deleted. OwnerRez recognizes that there is no valid reason not to allow the deletion of canceled bookings as long as the deleted booking doesn't have any financial transactions history, such as credit card payments or damage protection insurance associated with that specific booking. We fixed a couple of instances where the deletion of canceled bookings was sometimes not allowed.
Don't Reapply Check-in/Check-out Times From Airbnb Upon Booking Modifications. Airbnb doesn't allow changing check-in/check-out times on their side, so applying any check-in/check-out time booking modifications will overwrite any changes made in OwnerRez. This only started happening since our last release where we tweaked some of the check-in/out Airbnb logic. We have applied a fix set to use only the check-in/check-out time when a booking is added to OwnerRez from Airbnb. We will adjust again in the future if Airbnb changes how they handle dates and times.
Widget Does Not Initially Load Property Blocked-Off Dates. When a website (OwnerRez Hosted or Other) with multiple properties available to book, the Inquiry/Book Now widget was not always initially loading blocked-off dates in the date picker for the selected property. Any blocked-off dates were only displayed in the date picker after switching from one property to another and then back to the initially selected property. This bug has been corrected to load the calendar data correctly the first time.
Fix Issue With Houfy Feed Surcharge/Discount Season Criteria Date Rendering. We detected a bug where some overlapping discounts conflicted, causing the dates to render incorrectly for Houfy. This bug is now fixed, and those should render correctly in Houfy.
We have been working on this for some time now and have finally released our Zapier integration as a public beta!
Many of you have been waiting for this, some of you even helped beta test this with us before it became available to the public (we truly appreciate all the feedback we received), and now we are ready for everyone to try it! This is just one of the many exciting new things we will release this year.
Our beta users have already created over 150 active zaps! Curious about what Triggers & Actions you can use this with? Take a look below:
No worries if you've never used Zapier or aren't super comfortable with it yet! Zapier moves info between your web apps automatically so that you can focus on your most important work. We have published several Zap Templates to help you get started. Below are some creative Zaps that others found useful and that you can easily utilize:
We've also released the source code for our integration on GitHub and are open to community contributions and ideas. Open-source applications/projects are fantastic because anyone can help make them better! Feel free to put your code skills to the test and share them with the community.💪
Did you know that today is National Plan for Vacation Day?! Fingers crossed that guests are planning to book your vacation rental today!
Or maybe, you should start planning your vacation today? Either way--while you are waiting for all those new bookings to roll in, take some time to review the January 27th release with 12 updates.
We know that users are jazzed about our new OwnerRez Status page, and we are too! So jazzed, we've added links inside the app and on the OwnerRez website, so users can readily access it. Here are the two spots:
Click on the ? drop-down from the top menu anywhere in the OwnerRez app.
Click on the Status link located in the OwnerRez website footer.
In addition, on the splash page that is shown during maintenance, there is a new paragraph that states:
For live status of OwnerRez, visit the OwnerRez Status page which will show known incidents and problems.
Prefer a direct method of getting to the OwnerRez Status page? The URL is status.ownerrez.com - we encourage everyone to bookmark it! I know, I've said it before, but I'll probably repeat it!
Check-in and check-out times can be an intricate dance between the previous guests, incoming guests, cleaners, door locks, maintenance workers, etc., especially when that day includes a turnover. And we all have had those nightmares of guests checking out late, guests checking in early, messed up calendars, sick cleaners--you name it, any of these scenarios can create havoc.
Of course, guests can request early check-in or late check-out times (Airbnb has made that especially easy - some would say, too easy!), and we as users can sometimes accommodate those requests, but sometimes those requests are cutting the times too close for comfort. Airbnb, in particular, only supports whole hours for check-in/check-out times, meaning that it is possible to have a messy scheduling situation.
For example, if your property rules include a check-in time of 3:30 p.m., it is possible that Airbnb, which does not support 30 min incremental times, would move the check-in time ahead 30 mins to a 3:00 p.m. check-in time, rather than later by 30 minutes! This little 30-minute change has the potential to create chaos.
So for Airbnb, we updated check-in/check-out time requests to round pessimistically to the next hour for check-in, and the previous hour for check-out times. For instance, if an Airbnb guest requests a 3:30 p.m. check-in time, OwnerRez will now display that request as 4:00 p.m. Conversely, an 11:30 a.m. check-out request will display that request as 11:00 a.m.
Additionally, we updated how the booking and quote added system alerts, including Third Party Alerts (TPA), display the check-in and check-out times that are outside the property rules to give users (and TPA recipients) a better heads-up so that they can decline requests or prepare accordingly. New alerts will display the standard check-in/check-out times with a strike-through as set in the property rules, and the new check-in/check-out times as shown below. This now matches the formatting of the booking changed system alerts.
Have you ever made a bunch of changes in your OwnerRez account and forgotten to hit save? Oof--how frustrating! Especially if the form or section to complete is lengthy. We recognized that some pages (Properties' Rules and Amenities) are remarkably long and detailed. To benefit our users, we have applied sticky bottom/footer functionality to in-app forms where the Save/Cancel buttons "stick" to the bottom of the screen, as shown below. You may have noticed that it has been this way in the Properties' Photos edit/change area for a while, but it was time to add the behavior throughout!
Cancellation Fee Creation Bug Fixed. Several users noticed this bug when creating a Cancellation Fee, whether while writing a Cancellation Policy or creating one from the booking cancellation screen. Upon saving, it would display raw code (that you should never see!) The fee was saved in the background, but users wouldn't necessarily realize it, so they might create multiple cancellation fees under Surcharges. This is now fixed.
Cap Property Maximum Nights Rule to 1100. Following Airbnb's lead of capping property maximum nights to 1142 consecutive nights, we capped the property maximum nights rule at 1100 nights (i.e., just over three years) and added the appropriately displayed tooltip to inform users. Any user that had their property maximum nights set greater than 1100 now has their property maximum nights set to 1100 and was also notified directly by us.
Timezone Addition to Dates in iCal to Fix Outlook Import Failure. We released this bug fix that explicitly includes the booking/blocked-off start and end times relative to the property's timezone with the dates for every event in the iCal, instead of including the timezone once for the initial event creation, which sometimes resulted in events being changed into All-Day events (and losing the start and end times) after that initial sync. That's what Outlook was looking for, and it solves the date layout issues for those using Outlook for viewing iCal feeds from OwnerRez.
Fixed Issue With Brivo and PointCentral Lock Integrations. When OwnerRez users using either Brivo or PointCentral lock integrations had set the departure grace period setting to "Code works all day," the locks could be deactivated at 12 a.m. (midnight) on the day of check-out causing guests to get locked out of their vacation rental on the morning of check-out. We corrected this to ensure that check-in/check-out times are defined even if the booking and property have no times specified (i.e., the "Standard" times).
Correct Issue Where v2/owners API Could Return an Error Converting an Owner Phone. We realized that sometimes the v2/owners API would produce an owner phone error despite the owner's phone number being correct. We have fixed this problem.
Include API Query Parameter Descriptions That Were Missing From API Support Documents. We have included formerly missing API Query Parameter Descriptions on the OwnerRez API v2.0 documentation.
Include From/To Guests API Query Options. We have improved queries to begin the index with the user ID and then the date. This allows the query to start from the booking side, find the matching dates quickly and filter that down to matching guests.
New Backdated Product Updates available since last time:
- ECBYO & Florida Rentals API Integrations & more as we close out 2022!
ECBYO will send an inquiry filled out with data into OwnerRez, which allows you to use your own credit card processor, and all guest communication is direct. I have sent a message to our contacts at ECBYO to remedy this situation.
I converted to API. The contents and rates are pushed but ECBYO does not calculate the rates by given dates or get bookings on their site. Book Now button is still sending the guest to my web site, like before the API connection. On the negative side, now I have 300 lines of spot rates more confusing for the guests on ECBYO unless the price for the dates is calculated. I sent an email to ECBYO inquiring about the situation.
On Tuesday, 1/31, join us live with the team from Ascent to discuss what every rental manager needs to know about accepting credit cards.
In this webinar, the Ascent Payment Solutions team will discuss how credit and debit processing works, how the process of signing up to process payments, and talk about the challenges of chargebacks.
The session is free to join, but you must use the Ascent webinar link to register.
You can find all our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
Hey there! We said it out loud, and we've followed through - in 2 ways! In our previous product update blog post, Happy 2023! Bugs and Resolutions!, we stated that we are committed to posting our product updates in a much more timely manner this year. Even if it is Ditch New Year's Resolutions Day, we are on the right track and committed to staying the course. So, here is today's product update detailing our January 12th release with 14 updates.
The 2nd way we followed through is Paul stated in the About the December 26th Outage blog post that we would be working on "future preventative actions" and reporting to you what our full findings were from the outage and what you can expect OwnerRez to do about those findings. Some of that is still to come, but in this release, we tackled an essential public-facing item - an OwnerRez Status page!
The status page serves as a place where users can go at any time (and/or subscribe to) to know if OwnerRez is experiencing any sort of outage, service interruption, or planned maintenance window. The URL to get to the new OwnerRez Status page is status.ownerrez.com - we encourage everyone to bookmark it. The key thing to note is the page is entirely separate from OwnerRez's servers. The page is powered and hosted by a 3rd party, Sorry™, a well-respected status page provider. It is a mobile-friendly page too.
When you land on our status page, you can see at a glance if "all systems are go" or if an incident is occurring.
This page intends to be public-facing, always available, and transparent about the current status of OwnerRez's services.
One of the best features of our new status page is the ability to subscribe to email and/or text message (SMS) updates. If you want to be alerted when something planned or unplanned happens, you can have those notices come your way by clicking the Subscribe button in the top right corner.
Once you enter your email address and click/tap "Start subscription," the next page will ask you how you would like to be notified.
Once you've subscribed to updates, you can subscribe/unsubscribe to services individually using the bell icon. If you don't want to receive updates for a particular service, you can click on the bell for that item. It will turn lighter gray and the page will indicate in the top right corner that you need to save your changes. We recommend you stay subscribed to them all until you see how OwnerRez will use the page over time.
We've exercised the page a couple of times already since we built it. You can see a way to view recently resolved or previous incidents at the bottom of the page. Not a lot to go on yet, but it will have months and years' worth in time. You'll notice one of the recent incidents involving Booking.com's services. When they alerted us, the page was updated to acknowledge an incident with Booking.com and that we, OwnerRez, were monitoring closely. The other item was completed planned maintenance - this release we're writing about here! Those kinds of timely updates are worthwhile and something we can easily share out now.
And that's it, a straightforward way to know the health of OwnerRez's services 24/7.
Communication is key in the vacation rental industry, right?!? But sometimes, figuring out who or what sent certain messaging was unclear. So, we improved Communication History to help clear things up. Messaging details (whether email, SMS, or channel messaging) now includes detailed Sent information. Was it sent manually or automatically? Or via system alert or trigger? Well, now, when you drill into a message that went out, you can tell.
Sent information could include one or more of the following:
On the Messages tab of a booking, OwnerRez has had colored status labels such as Sent on 7/5/2022 or Skipped with the date the message was sent for message statuses, for a while now. With this enhancement, the labels and informational tooltips displayed on hover (or tap on mobile) of the colored status label have been improved for increased helpfulness and accuracy.
For example, Payment reminders can go out multiple times. You can better see if any were already sent and if others are scheduled to go out.
Or for sending the 'Guest CheckIn Info' template as shown below. The informational tooltip will assist users in correcting their triggers if necessary or at least point them in the right direction.
This last example details a status label for a future booking email.
OwnerRez offers a robust two-factor authentication setting that all users can add to their accounts. Both master logins and team access (staff member) logins can use two-factor authentication.
We now require that all new user accounts (i.e., users that joined after this feature was released on December 8, 2022) use two-factor authentication. Shortly, all users, including historical accounts, will be required to turn it on, so please read how our Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) works so that you can go ahead and enable it and better secure your account today.
As in OwnerRez fashion, we strive to make things better continuously. Well in the case of 2FA, OwnerRez's verification code expiration screen was not super clear for some users about the authentication process if they haven't verified their login in a while or didn't act upon the initial verification code email in time.
We formatted the text to better indicate the current verification code has expired and directs them to as shown below.
Complex Booking Merge Fields Text Correction. When OwnerRez users created a custom iCal Export with certain complex merge fields (e.g., BBACT, BBACTD, BBINFO, and BCTAB), we noticed that these booking fields weren't automatically converting to a text format and remained blank. We have resolved this issue, and the affected merge fields will display correctly.
Default System Alert Inquiry Language Change. We realized there was duplicate/confusing language (i.e., the quote was sent in another email) in the System Alert Inquiry email template. We have edited the language to read as "I've prepared a quote for you. You can view your quote online here:"
Disassociate OwnerRez Account Theme From Property Upon Theme Disable. When an OwnerRez user disabled a theme, but that theme was tied to messaging templates, previously that theme would stay mapped and be used in the messaging templates. That has been fixed so that the disabled theme will not stay mapped to the template(s) but revert to use automatic theming - which generally is the Account theme. If/when the OR user chooses to re-enable the previously disabled theme, those messaging templates will automatically revert back to using the re-enabled theme unless the templates were changed from something other than automatic theming.
Don't Allow Deletion of SMS/Channel Triggers When They've Been Sent. OwnerRez does not permit deleting triggers that have been used in the past. We already validate before deleting any email triggers that were not used in the past, so we have made Airbnb, and SMS triggers do the same. Instead, OR users should disable SMS/Channel triggers.
Don't Allow Negative Days Before Arrival on Discounts/Surcharges. When OwnerRez users set the Arrival Days from Now to a negative number (such as -25 days) in the booking field section of discounts or surcharges, they would receive a channel listing sync error as channels cannot handle negative numbers. We made a change to not even allow this to happen. Users will no longer be able to set the Arrival Days from Now to a negative number in the booking field section when adding discounts or surcharges. Any number greater than or equal to zero (in the case of same-day check-ins) may be added. While doing this fix, we also made the system not accept negative numbers in other booking criteria where that's not allowed.
Fix Commission/Pay Settings Not Applied to Property Mappings Created During Owner Addition. Last year OwnerRez removed the owner default settings when users made changes to owner commissions, but those changes did not apply those edited settings when users added a new owner and mapped them to a property simultaneously. We have corrected this issue.
Fixed Duplicate Links for OwnerRez Forum Alert/Watching Email. Links that users added to OwnerRez Community Forum posts or replies were sometimes duplicated in the OR alert/watching email and we have fixed that bug.
Pricing Preferences Change Error Alert Addition. When OwnerRez users made pricing preference changes and changed any of the settings to "Combine all..." and the descriptions were left blank, those pricing preference changes were not saved. If the user was only viewing the top of the page and didn't scroll down, they may not be able to see the errors that needed to be corrected further down on the page. We have added an error alert banner that loads at the top of the page (like other pages have) that calls out the errors that need to be corrected.
Standardize Property Delete/Disable/Duplicate Actions. Left menu links to Delete/Disable/Duplicate a property have been moved to each Property's General Info page. OwnerRez users can choose to delete, disable or duplicate a property by clicking on the Actions drop-down list on the specific Property overview page, as shown below.
Note that we included a hyperlinked message that the Actions left menu links have moved to the property General Info section.
Use Channel Expense Category for Host Fees on Channel Bridge Imports. When we added the channel expense category last year (as part of PM Expense Categories), it was only added for API-Integrated host fees, so during Channel Bridge imports, host fees were incorrectly categorized as credit card processing expenses. Channel Bridge correctly categorizes host fees as a channel expense on import.
As we continue to work through our analysis and forensics of the December 26 outage, we are identifying single points of failure in our systems that can be altered to improve resiliency. By their nature, some of these things require the system to be offline briefly as we implement the changes.
These outages will be very brief - within the constraints of the automatic retry cycles of our partners, and often within the timeouts of your browser - so you may not even notice them. Do not be alarmed, though, if you find OwnerRez unresponsive for a short time - just have a coffee and try again.
Over time, this work will eventually eliminate the necessity for the entire system to be down even for regular maintenance and upgrades, as well as adding additional levels of failover in the case of a major issue.
We'll have a public webinar discussing our findings and plans in the near future. Thanks for your patience and understanding as we work to improve OwnerRez! 🙏
On Thursday, 1/12, join us live with the team from Ok2Charge to discuss why you should care about EV charging.
EV sales are ramping up and your guests expect to charge their electric vehicle where they stay. In this session, you’ll learn how OwnerRez in collaboration with partners like OK2Charge is preparing you and your properties to ensure that you recover utility costs for your owners and create a new amenity revenue stream for your business.
The session is free to join, but you must use the Ok2Charge webinar link to register.
You can find all our upcoming and past webinars on our Webinars page.
Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress. -Charles Kettering
Welcome to the first product update of the new year detailing the January 4th release with two quick fixes.
I shouldn't begin the first product post of the new year talking about resolutions, should I? Ok, ok, I'll keep it brief.
Our resolution (blog-related) is to publish Product Update blog posts more promptly. We are a wee bit behind on 2022 product posts and are working on getting those published, but 2023 Product Update blog posts should follow new releases very closely, as this one did. We'll consider you our accountability partner in meeting this goal!
I hope you've had a chance to read the December 21st email from Paul laying out the highlights from the 2023 roadmap. We're excited about where OwnerRez is headed and hope you are too! We'll be striving to accomplish as much from the roadmap as possible this year. Some of the roadmap depends on our partners (e.g., Vrbo), but a lot rests with OwnerRez's Product and Engineering teams. Things happen and plans sometimes have to change but it should be a great 2023 ahead! Stay tuned by keeping an eye out on the changelog and here with the blog.
Now on to the bug fixes, and then we'll let you go until next time!
Manually handle security deposit option on booking cancellation screen. Back in December, we added the ability to control what to do with security deposits (e.g., hold or refundable deposit) while canceling a booking via OwnerRez. Intended to be super handy, if you had selected the "I'll release or keep it manually" option during the cancellation process before this fix, it went ahead and kept the whole security deposit. Only a few bookings were affected, but we quickly fixed it so it didn't wrongly handle any others. Don't fear selecting it now; if the "manually" option is selected, it will do nothing as it should.
OwnerRez Hosted website and Portal certificates weren't canceled when no longer needed. A peak behind the curtain with this one. OwnerRez runs a behind-the-scenes check regularly to evaluate OwnerRez-powered hosted websites and portal sites to ensure SSL certificates are valid and up-to-date. Part of that protocol included that if the DNS configuration was removed or inactive for 30 days and the user had done nothing to correct it, OwnerRez would cancel the certificate. Well, that wasn't happening but all is well now.
HAPPY 2023 OwnerRez and OwnerRez users!
Thanks OwnerRez for working extra hard to get us back online and crossing into 2023 without any more outage. As mentioned in my previous comment, I am still fairly new to your platform but I must say I am impressed by the quick move to fix. Your Support team also continued to do a great job in responding to messages eventually letting us know what happened. As seemingly the "Goliath" in this space, I hope that your team will continue to invest time and brain power in actively searching for threats to your platform and jumping on them as you did this one to help minimize disruption to operations. THANKS AGAIN FOR THE TREMENDOUS EFFORTS THAT WENT INTO THIS. Oops sorry, didn't mean to yell with the all caps n' all! ;).
Happy 2023!
