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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.

• OwnerRez Status Page
• Enhancements & Tweaks
  
  • Communication History Sent By Additions
  • Show Reminder Sent Dates on Booking Messages Tab
  • Clarify Code Expiration on Two-Factor Authentication Login Screen
• Bug Fixes

OwnerRez Status Page

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.

Enhancements & Tweaks

Communication History Sent By Additions

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:

• "Manually by you" means that the message was sent manually by the OR user.
• "Automatically by Trigger" means that the message was automated by a named trigger.
• "Automatically by System Alert" means that the message was sent as an automated system alert.
• "Automatically by System Message" means that the message was sent as an automated system message.
• "Automatically by Scheduled Email" means that the message was sent as an automatically scheduled email.

Show Reminder Sent Dates On Booking Messages Tab

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.

Clarify Code Expiration on Two-Factor Authentication Login Screen

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.

Bug Fixes

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!

Bug Fixes

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!

It's technology, it happens!  We appreciate your team taking action to get everything back up and running.  Here's to a great 2023!

....

It's working now 

@Ella -- Have you removed the calendar and re-imported it as Airbnb suggests?

@Dori123 -- I see a manual send of a keycodes trigger in your account, but the reason that trigger didn't fire is that it wasn't applicable to the booking's listing site. If there was a different trigger that didn't fire, please write in to the helpdesk with the details and we'll trace the reason.

Thanks for your hard work on this difficult problem, guys. For your log -- I saw Ken had commented: "Missed email triggers should have been sent, albeit late - you can confirm this in your Communication History.  As noted, you can manually resend any you're not sure of in the usual ways, but we do not believe this to be generally necessary."

I can confirm that several triggers were missed and never sent until I sent them manually yesterday (12/29). Neither the original triggers were sent  nor those that had the option "try to send a missed trigger up until the booking has arrived."

Still seeing on Airbnb:

Calendar sync

We’re having trouble syncing some of your calendars. Click the sync icon to try again. If you continue having problems, remove the calendar and re-import it.

OwnerREzSync failed

We have partnered with BuildUp Bookings to offer another certified WordPress design service for those looking for a custom website.

We understand that everyone's needs and wants differ, so we offer our WordPress plugin alongside our Widgets and Hosted Website options. For those looking to create a very detailed and custom website, this can be very time-consuming and takes web design skills. This is where BuildUp Bookings can help! Their team will utilize our WordPress plugin to create a beautiful custom-built website for you.

Here is some information about their team that they would like you to know:

BuildUp Bookings is a digital marketing agency specializing in getting results for vacation rental businesses like yours.

Since 2016, we've worked with over 85 global vacation rental companies to build digital marketing campaigns that deliver results (aka more bookings) and have overseen over $50m in direct bookings for our clients. From single luxury villas to large 1,000+ property management companies, we know how to deliver results.

Our capabilities include WordPress website design and implementation, search (SEO/PPC), social (Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest/TikTok), email (newsletter/PMS emails/guest messaging/automations) and more.

We'd love to work with you: get in touch below, and we'll set up a call to review your goals with our knowledge of Ownerrez backed with the experience of our team.

To learn more, visit BuildUp Bookings website.

Examples of a websites they created using the WordPress plugin:

https://www.southboundstays.com/lyric-at-leipers-fork/

https://fantasyislandfolly.com/

https://blueskystays.com/

We are happy to announce our partnership with GuestView Guide to offer our OwnerRez users an interactive concierge service option.

About GuideView Guide

GuestView Guide is a wall-mounted interactive concierge for vacation rental properties. It enhances the experience for your guests, helps you save time, and you can earn more from every guest stay. Our OwnerRez integration makes it easy to automatically import your properties along with guest names and dates of their stay.

Features

• A personalized welcome screen greets the guest when they first arrive.
• Check-in Survey - Get guests' first impressions of the property so you can follow up if there are issues.
• Guests can find how-to videos on amenities so they don’t need to contact you.
• Curate a list of recommended restaurants, businesses and activities with your personalized comments.
• Upsell services like late checkout, mid-stay cleaning and more.
• Rebooking - Easily promote direct rebookings.
• And much more!

Pricing

Monthly subscription fee, you don't buy the display! Learn more here.

Start Using GuestView Guide

Get started with GuestView Guide by visiting the GuestView Guide website and checking out the OwnerRez support doc for how to integrate OwnerRez with GuestView Guide.

We are excited to announce that we've partnered with Breezeway to offer our OwnerRez users another property care and services tool.

About Breezeway

Breezeway’s property care and messaging app helps thousands of vacation rental hosts and managers automate operations, drive quality, and elevate the experience at every property. Their tools are purpose-built to coordinate complex work and deliver homes that are perfectly prepared to your specific standards.

Features

• Sync reservation and property data from OwnerRez so you can harness the power of multiple sources without switching the tech you already use.
• Automate task scheduling using intelligence on location and staff availability to assign the right job to the right person and at the right time.
• Use customizable checklists and mobile apps so field staff can do high-quality work at each property that complies with brand standards.
• Monitor work and coordinate issues in real-time and gain confidence that every property is perfectly prepared and ready for guest check-in.
• Share detailed reports with owners to showcase the full scope of your management services, and increase owner retention.
• Message guests with a comprehensive texting platform to provide updates on service issues and concierge, offer stay extensions, and improve in-stay satisfaction.

Pricing

Per property pricing, reach out to Breezeway to find out what you will be charged for the number of properties you have.

Start Using Breezeway

Get started with Breezeway by visiting the Breezeway website and checking out the OwnerRez support doc for how to integrate OwnerRez with Breezeway.

So u like kenBot sending you videos not answers? I can google myself 

Just a quick note to people upset that you don't get good "live call" service from OR - I prefer contacting them by email with issues - and they get back very quickly and concisely.

And in those emails I have had support pointing out things on my account that could make OR easier.

Very happy with the timeliness and accuracy of support.

I'm a software engineer and have been on the other side of outages like this. I want to commend you guys on your quick response, your diligence to make sure there weren't any data corruption issues, your ownership of the outage, and the transparency of this write up. Genuinely, I see few public postmortems that describe as thoroughly what went wrong and right from a technical perspective, and I think you should be commended for it. Few end users truly understand the fragility of large, complex software systems and how difficult it is to build true resiliency. I am sure you will take your learnings from this issue and incorporate them into an even more resilient system.

And kudos to all of those who responded to the outage. Getting a page about a primary db corruption during a work holiday does not sound like a good time to me.

Apartment 230 is available for the month of February. But when i search, it does not come up. When I search with no dates, and look by the map, none show up... 

@Jonelle - I just checked and I can see them on Airbnb just fine.  But you have a lot and I didn't check them all.  Please write in to the Helpdesk with specific examples of properties that are not appearing on Airbnb so we can investigate.

I just double checked add none of my properties are no won AIRBNB...

I still have one apartment, summer sea 230, where I changed the calendar to show February available but that is not reflected in Airbnb or VRBO. I have set full sinc a few times but no change. Please help! 

Thank you. We appreciate the effort to recover as well as the transparency, and time spent to write such detailed explanations.  

Taking screen shots of the monthly calendars.

Thanks for sorting this out! I’m taking screen shots from now on every two or three days. Was the outage on Amazons side?

We are pleased to announce that Florida Rentals has updated its first-class channel API connection with OwnerRez to allow a seamless booking process.

OwnerRez will be the channel manager, end to end, for your listings and bookings on Florida Rentals. All your content (photos, amenities, descriptions), rates, rules, and availability automatically sync with Florida Rentals. Also, you can take live bookings using your own credit card processing, and all guest communication is direct!

Why list on Florida Rentals?

FloridaRentals is trusted by thousands of Florida’s top property managers and owners. They specialize in finding Florida-focused travelers who are booking their vacation rental for their next trip. Their Florida-only marketplace drives over 8 million traveler visits annually, and has generated over 210,000 vacation bookings and over 22,000 traveler reviews.

Pricing

Free 60-Day Trial! There's no risk and no obligation. Take a look at their listing plan comparison sheet here.

Thank you and your entire team.  At first I was panic stricken but soon realized your team was on it and working hard to resolve the issues.  We have 100% faith and confidence in OR.  Wishing you many blessings and no hacks in 2023!  LOL!!

We have partnered with Hudson Creative Studio to offer another certified WordPress design service for those looking for a custom website.

We understand that everyone's needs and wants differ, so we offer our WordPress plugin alongside our Widgets and Hosted Website options. For those looking to create a very detailed and custom website, this can be very time-consuming and takes web design skills. This is where Hudson Creative Studio can help! Their team will utilize our WordPress plugin to create a beautiful custom-built website for you.

Here is some information about their team that they would like you to know:

Hudson Creative Studio is a boutique web and design agency based out of New Orleans, LA. With over 10 years of experience, we specialize in direct-booking websites for vacation rental property managers, helping them to effectively establish their brand, showcase their properties and generate more bookings.

At Hudson Creative Studio, we pride ourselves on our personalized approach and ability to work closely with our clients to understand their unique needs and goals. Whether you're a small vacation rental property owner or a large property management company, we're here to help you succeed.

To learn more, visit Hudson Creative Studio's website.

Example of a website they created using the WordPress plugin:

https://stayhostfolio.com/

Thank you to the entire crew for getting this resolved as quickly as possible and so sorry vacations had to be disrupted!

I am thankful to the staff at OwnerRez, you all are the best! I'm so sorry this situation affected your team's holiday but am grateful for your dedication and support. I have full confidence in you and your handling of this situation and continue to champion and support your product and your team.