General Help and Questions

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I believe Google Pay might have their own info on implementing that OwnerRez could use.

How about enabling Google Pay on it's own? (bypassing Braintree or other processors). This would be sweet. Google does not charge any fees for sending/receiving $ . Valid Debit Card, Bank Account or Google pay balance is all that's needed. AND at that point, we can discount as we don't have processing fees! Better than sending a check, payment is instant! :)
Please consider/update :)
Ella

Hey, BlueMtn

Could you send that e rental lock information to me? I will be setting up my email templates over the next week or so,

Sorry, Glenn. It wasn't ignored on purpose, I promise!

There isn't a way to do that currently, as you already know, but it's something we've kicked around internally. It's difficult to create a scheduled time for that. We'd have to say trigger off of "middle of the stay" and a certain day of week. Other users have use cases for this too, so it's on the radar.

Hi. I would like to request if you would link to the following service (they are well known in the VR industry, and have been around 6 years of so.) SafelyStay.com. If you can't, can I link to it from my hosted website?

This basically offer Guest Verification, Liability insurance, etc for a reasonable price per booking (I plan to charge this to the guests).

But it will be clumsy to use if their service is not linked to my guests booking activity in OwnerRez.

This is their API description: https://www.safelystay.com/technologyplatform. They say "Since our APIs are RESTful and JSON based, they can be accessed using standard HTTPS protocol and we provide detailed descriptions (including input/output)."

Can we create a custom template? This is something different than just a legal agreement or email template. This would be a few documents I would like to create a hyperlink to, FROM email, legal agreement, etc.

Now I think you just click a little up[load button when editing a template

I guess this question/request did not deserve a response from anyone. Sadly it seems to be the only topic among many that was posted in the last few weeks that did not get a single response. How embarrassing!

Glenn

How do I upload a couple documents that I can link to them in the agreement or email?

In the same way you have the two Travel Insurance docs uploaded...

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/767/what-is-the-resolution-center

"Turn temp down once the motion sensor reports no movement for an hour on a departure date, lock the door in case they didn't,"

This sounds overly complicated, and complicated things are subject to fail. I would say:

1) With erentallock, it set so their code automatically expires upon checkout. The door is already "locked" because no one can now get in.

2) For departure, who cares about resetting the thermostat depending on if there is no motion? If they are supposed to leave, then who cares about their comfort? This looks simpler and less prone to failure...

$70 "Honeywell Wi-Fi 7-Day Programmable Thermostat with Built-In WiFi" at Lowes with features:
-Wi-Fi enabled thermostat allows for remote access via smartphone or computer
-Free smartphone app for iOS and Android operating systems
-Can be configured to meet almost any scheduling requirement - selectable 7-Day Programmable Thermostat with option to select multiple days at a time; 4 program periods per day
-Automatically downloads software updates
-Smart Response Technology - thermostat learns your heating/cooling cycles, then optimizes to deliver the right temperature at the right time
-Auto change from heating to cooling
-Permanent and temporary holds

I may start with this SmartThings app here and then learn about the integration. http://smartthings.rboyapps.com/#a5
I do a fair bit of amateur programming so perhaps once I learn a bit more I can pass you the information.
Besides lock code generation, I am keen to add thermostat control. i.e. Turn temp down once the motion sensor reports no movement for an hour on a departure date, lock the door in case they didn't, then on an arrival date turn the temp back up an hour or so before check-in time, that kind of thing.

Sure thing, I just sent over an email.

I see a lot of docs on SmartThings about how to create scenes and automations for a specific lock you own, but not much about how to make a generic app that could interact with any lock. Do you have any link to an info article on that? We'd need to be able to connect to their API from our servers, authorize into your specific account, and then start generating lock codes from there.

No you didn't miss anything. We need to add some instruction on that to the main article but are waiting until we release the new update so it will be simpler and make more sense.

Yep, we need to promote some of those options to be more visible for sure... but the top bar is already pretty full of other locations to the point where it just barely fits on some size screens. Right now, the best way to get to the support area is to use the dropdown arrow in the top right and click Help.

Like Rich mentioned, the main search on the Support area will search everything on that site -- support articles, forum posts, and blog posts.

The search on "my booking area" will find by guest name, booking/payment id, or Airbnb/VRBO reservation number (if you've done a channel bridge to import those numbers to OwnerRez).

Unfortunately, Airbnb doesn't have a configuration for a pet fee, so you can't have it automatically collected on their side. If the guest flags the booking as having pets we'll pick that up on channel bridge imports, but they often don't do that either.

The best way to handle pets is to put the fee in your house rules and then submit a resolution request on Airbnb for the pet fee.

Did I miss an instructional article somewhere? I poked around a bit...

For the carousel to look good in full width view, you need to take separate cuts of the photos and switch it to custom photo mode (vs the property photos it defaults to). Those should be 400 pixels tall and at least 1980 pixels wide.

For example: https://www.shenrent.com/

You could also switch to inline or full page modes on the carousel (we call it "hero unit") and those will show normal aspect ratio photos much better.

For the other photos, it's looking for a 3/2 aspect ratio.

We've got an upcoming dev cycle to add some tooling around this so you'll get a crop tool on the carousel and the property photos will show the original ratio when viewed in full screen.

The carousel looks bad in one way, and the individual photos for each property is bad another way. Tried looking for tool or documentation on site, but find neither. :(

I have the same question about resizing to fit the carousel. Thanks!

Jackie

I have the Schlage touch locks at my properties. They are z-wave not WiFi and they connect through a SmartThings hub. Really interested in exploring how to program a code for a guest and include it in an email autoresponder. SmartThings is very API-friendly and works with IFTTT too. Should be possible to integrate with OR. Was wondering if you are considering this integration.

Is there some magic to how we should put in photos? On my hosted website, I am getting the bottom half of a famous man. Another chops into the picture from all sides. Another is bizarre

Is there some photo editing/editor, some magic sizing, some way that my pictures will work and be as I imagine them?

Can I pick how to display them, so they aren't cropped badly?

The carousel takes a horizontal slice out of the middle of each picture...!

https://www.jimthorpevacationrentals.com/

While we are at it:

The Support link at top should be in "My Booking Area"

The Support page should enable opening a support ticket if what is on the page doesn't answer the question.

The only way I see to email for Help is the Contact link, which seems more aimed at new prospects (Sales)

Have not started AirBnB yet, but isn't there some not so obvious ways when it comes to requesting money? Things like pet or custom fees. I have heard this song before, unfortunately...

It appears that Airbnb does not have a way to set a pet fee as part of the surcharges. While there are manual ways to get around this on a per booking basis, these seem highly undesirable. If I recall, the surcharges do not transfer over when you push OR rates to Airbnb. Does anyone know of a clean way to handle this?

Randy

JTVRs - my thoughts

1) Agree, it's a minor annoyance. My practice is to keep OR open in two tabs in Chrome. One for the My Booking Area and the other for the Forum. And I've learned to get to the Forum by going to ownerreservations.com and clicking on Forum.

2) I never use that search, but for me it works to find the guest last name. But I never know the guest's last name so not super useful. I agree would be nice to know what is being searched

3) This one I can help with. Go to https://www.ownerrez.com/support and use the search there. I agree would be very nice to have it in the forum itself, but it's still useful where it is. I've never complained because there are many other features I'd like in the Forum, such as being able to 'like' someone's post, attach files (including images), have info about how many posts a user has made, that sort of thing.

I purposely avoided wifi locks. In the mountains wifi is over satellite and not unlimited. Power outages happen too. I don't want to rely on the connection that can fail. having 10 digit code is a small inconvenience compared to other possibilities. I have a very good ownerrez template with illustration how to operate the erental lock. The only issue I had is not with guests but with some repairmen.