General Help and Questions

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Thank you Bri. 

Thank you Tim. That's a good idea and I'll start implementing this.

This actually isn't the first time I've heard of clients with this concern, but yes, it's relatively rare.

A larger issue is that OwnerRez fundamentally wasn't designed to work in minutes/hours, but rather days.  This affects all kinds of things, including the fact that properties can only be rented for nights (24-hour overnight periods) rather than hours, which is why you can't add, say, a tennis court that people might rent for a couple hours at a time.

However, there are an increasing number of situations where specific times and shorter delay periods are appropriate, particularly as internationalization increases, and there is ongoing work to add that kind of functionality to the underlying systems.  I can't speak to when or whether that would grow to the point where quote-hold would be available in minutes or hours in addition to whole days, but, it's not totally impossible down the road somewhere, particularly if we see increasing demand for it.

Wow. I've never heard of someone having such high demand that they are booking in minutes. Unfortunately for you, I think this might be a situation that is unique to you and thus not likely to be addressed by OR. Quotes on OR do allow for blocking dates while the quote is open, but right now OR only has the options to hold dates for days. Maybe they could tweak that to allow for hours without a major change? Without knowing their backend its hard to know if that's an easy change or a hard one.

Hi Catharine,

In order to use OwnerRez to automatically send messages to guests, you will need to be using our Airbnb API connection, and configure your messages as channel templates.

Note that, if you require your guests to sign your Rental Agreement as we recommend, that process collects the guest's real email address, so regular email message templates can be sent automatically to guests after they've done that. But the original message with the link for the guest to sign their Rental Agreement, can only be sent automatically as a channel message.

Any current templates which you want to also be sent as a Channel Message (Vrbo Airbnb), you'll want to do the following: 

1. Copy the body of the email template.
2. Create a new booking type template
   https://app.ownerrez.com/settings/templates/channel
   And paste the copied content from the email template into that newly created channel template.  Note that any links must appear as the links themselves, including the http prefix - they cannot be built into a Web-style clickable link, as with normal email templates.
3. Go to your Trigger Settings to create a new trigger here: https://app.ownerrez.com/triggers
4. Once there, you'll want to associate the newly created booking type template to said trigger, making sure to configure which listing sites (channels) you want the trigger to fire the template out for.  All available channel message systems use the same templates, so, you can send the same channel message template to multiple separate channels.

Please Note: New custom Template/Trigger combinations (email and channel) are only able to fire on bookings created after the trigger's creation date, with the exception of time based triggers configured to send prior to arrival.

Here's more help resources on this topic:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/messaging-triggers#missedtriggers
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/vrbo-messaging
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/channel-templates
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/email-templates
https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/system-messages

I've always done this, even when they had the aliases. Just message the guest and ask for their email. I have a saved response on AirBnB that I just send as soon as they are booked.....

"blah blah blah.....Please send me your email address. All of our house info and door codes go out by automated email and won't work with the Airbnb messaging system. 
Thanks,"

No one has ever questioned it and typically they respond within minutes. I just copy their email onto the booking in OR. 

Hi Amber! What an amazing "problem" to have! We don't receive many questions about this so from a feature demand perspective, there are lots of other items already slated on the roadmap. In the future, we could look to add a Ticketmaster-like feature that locks in the dates and gives the users a certain amount of time to complete checkout, but that is not a trivial amount of work - and the booking portal (i.e., guest forms) work we're doing now has to all be in place. I might encourage you to make the above into a "Feature Request" and kick off the voting yourself and see what the interest is from other users. Thanks for bringing this up!

How do you reach your guests via email now that Airbnb no longer discloses a guests email to the host? I use OwnerRez to communicate with my guest and require a deposit and signed contract. This just happened Sept 30. I had to call my guest to get his email. Is there another less intrusive way to do this?

Hi Luke,

I'd like to send you some account-specific screenshots. Could you write in to us at the helpdesk (help@ownerrez.com) with the subject line "DAMAGE PROTECTION ON/OFF" and a brief description of what you're seeing?

Be sure to send it from your OR account login email address for verification purposes, please!

Thanks for getting back to me.

There is no 'Change' or 'Turn Off' button. I can see it has me automatically selecting coverage of '$500 Standard Coverage' in a drop down menu. There is no option to turn off there either, just to select a higher coverage option.
If you think Damage Protection is turned off for that property on all platforms and bookings I'll take your word for it being a newbie 
Is there another section in the setup process where I would potentially be able to view and confirm it's off?

Thank you 

SMS by design is plain text, not encrypted: https://www.howtogeek.com/709373/why-sms-text-messages-arent-private-or-secure/ -- since this is a standard protocol there is no way to force encryption on SMS.

To get encryption, you need to use a completely different secure messenger app. The Twilio IP Messaging link you referenced is a secure chat app: https://www.twilio.com/blog/announcing-ip-messaging-apis-for-embedded-chat-html, or something else like Signal, etc.

This shouldn't be a feature request, but instead recognized as an urgent need for our privacy and safety.

I am sick of Twilio or other tech company spying on my texts and blocking them if I use any word they consider verboten, such as cannabis or weed, when replying to guests' inquiries. 

What my guests and I write to each other is none of anybody else's business. We don't live in North Korea, after all.

Introducing End-to-end Encryption for Twilio IP Messaging with Virgil Security℠
https://www.twilio.com/blog/introducing-end-to-end-encryption-for-twilio-ip-messaging-with-virgil-security-html 

Hello! You can type to search what you're looking for on the Record Expense screen, and with any dropdown in the system actually. Note though, if you have properties named similarly owned by different owners it doesn't work perfectly - you have to type it perfectly for it to find it including any spaces. But many times you can probably get close and then use your arrow keys, then tab key; and/or mouse to select. For the Owners dropdown on the Record Expenses Screen, using an example from your screenshot, you can start typing "Bet" and then quickly be able to select Betsy or Betty. Give these a try!

We'll keep this in mind though as time moves along and see about adding traditional typeahead/search options elsewhere, like we've done in some other places.

Hi Larry - emailing marketing is not on the roadmap. With so many email marketing tools available, and it being their core business (i.e., they know how to keep things above board in the ways of sending email "campaigns"), it's not a high priority with everything else on the roadmap. That could change down the road but there are so many other core things we need to stay focused on.

You may know this, but you can manually email a guest as it pertains to a booking from the Overview tab ("Email this Guest"). By doing so, the outgoing manual email will be saved in the Communication History for that booking/guest.

We are working towards a "unified inbox" with the ultimate goal of supporting inbound email. So, if a guest replies to a message you sent them via OwnerRez automated messaging, that today is delivered to your email inbox (say Gmail or private domain inbox), but this would allow that message to come into the OwnerRez inbox and then you could reply to their message from inside OwnerRez, keeping that whole conversation in one place.

Why am I no longer getting requests & seeing my bookings from VRBO?

Hi Toni,

Please write to us at the helpdesk (help@ownerrez.com) and provide specific details. Screenshots, URLs and booking numbers, for example, are always helpful.

We'll gladly take a look and see what is going on for you!

Why am I no longer getting requests & seeing my bookings from VRBO?

Any news on this?

Thanks for the info! 👍 will do the template now ;)

For all 3 of my properties, the Changeover Restriction is set to "no restriction" but on the Airbnb platform, it is requiring one day on each side of a reservation.  Airbnb will not allow me to change it directly but states that all changes have to be made in my PMS.....but my PMS is correct, Airbnb is not.  How do I fix this?

Hi Joy,

There are some settings in the Airbnb API configuration that will override your property level rules.

Navigate to Settings > API Integrations > select Airbnb > click Change, then scroll down to your Booking Window section to check your Turnover Days. 

can someone help me know what is the field code for "platfform", this is my template

 

Hi {CFIRST},

 

It was a pleasure hosting you in {PDISPNAME}. We will certainly be leaving you a great review for your stay and I hope you have more great trips with "platform".

-{MYFIRST}

 

thank you in advance

It sounds like you'll want to use {BSOURCE}, which will insert the name of the listing site / channel that the guest booked on. This Field Code can be inserted into any Booking type Template.

Here's an overview of OwnerRez Field Codes, as well as a video linked at the top that you may find helpful - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/field-codes

can someone help me know what is the field code for "platfform", this is my template

Hi {CFIRST},

It was a pleasure hosting you in {PDISPNAME}. We will certainly be leaving you a great review for your stay and I hope you have more great trips with "platform".

-{MYFIRST}

thank you in advance

Hi Luke,

It sounds like you may already have Damage Protection disabled. If you navigate to Settings > Damage Protection, do you see the button that says "Turn Off"?

If not, then it's already off. 

You can always find more info on Damage Protection in the following articles:

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/damage-protection-overview

https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/damage-protection-common-issues-questions

Hi there,

How do I turn off Damage Protection? There was an option to disable Travel Insurance but I cant see an option for Damage Protection.

Yes, we made the max booking window required a few months back: https://www.ownerrez.com/blog/eligible-reviews-damage-protection-new-properties-scheduled-failure-system-messages-max-booking-window#max-availability. You should have received a heads up email before that update went out to notify folks without a max that they should configure a specific max or it would default to 365 when the update was released.

Yes, I finally got a response from my help desk request from last week this morning. Was this rule recently added? My website wasn't affected by this until recently. Thank you for getting back to me!

It looks like this was an issue with the max booking window rule which defaults to 365 days. I see you have found and increased that setting and I see the time available on your site now.

Does everything look correct now?

For all 3 of my properties, the Changeover Restriction is set to "no restriction" but on the Airbnb platform, it is requiring one day on each side of a reservation.  Airbnb will not allow me to change it directly but states that all changes have to be made in my PMS.....but my PMS is correct, Airbnb is not.  How do I fix this?

Hi Larry,

You can import the default OwnerRez iCal exports for each property to your personal calendar, or create custom iCal links for each property! 

Here's where you can find the default export URLs - https://app.ownerrez.com/imports/calendar?view=Export

And here's more info on creating custom iCal exports if you'd rather go that route - https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/custom-ical-links

Keep in mind that each iCal export will be for a single property. There wouldn't be a way to consolidate multiple calendars into one export URL. 

Hi!

We'd like to take a look at that import spreadsheet for you. Please send us an email at help@ownerrez.com with a subject line "BOOKING IMPORT ERRORS", and attach that spreadsheet for us along with a brief explanation as you've mentioned here, and a screenshot of the errors received.

That would generally refer to the booking creation date, ergo any bookings created in OwnerRez after that date will attribute to that owner. Many PM settings for bookings, lock in at the time of booking creation. These settings will typically not retroactively update in many cases, however you can take actions such as running a batch update to force the system to update older bookings to current PM settings.

Batch update can be found via PM > Batch Updates

~Caleb