There are various prerequisites for using the Online Reservations functions in Campground Master, outside the program itself.
Internet Access
It should go without saying that access to the Internet is required for online reservation processing by Campground Master. Of course if you use a 3rd-party service like Reservation Friend or Webervations then you could let them handle the online reservations separate from Campground Master, but if you don't use Campground Master's functionality to retrieve those reservations then you would have to enter them into the system manually.
More specifically, you will need to be able to access the Internet anytime you want to retrieve online requests and/or update the sites available on the Internet. A constant connection is not needed, but a high-speed connection is recommended if you do this often.
You will also need to make sure that any firewall or other security software allows Campground Master the appropriate types of access to the Internet. For instance it will need POP3 access to retrieve requests directly from E-mail or Reservation Friend, secure HTTP (HTTPS) access to retrieve requests from and update the Webervations availability, and FTP access to upload availability to your own web site.
Note that access is only required from one computer running Campground Master. So if you have a networked installation, only one of the Campground Master workstations requires Internet access. The rest can be protected from the Internet if desired.
E-mail Requests
We refer to "E-mail requests" rather loosely throughout this documentation, but be aware that not just any E-mail request can be handled. A request must have a certain structure in order for Campground Master to extract the data from the E-mail text automatically, using Parsing Rules that you define. The request text is assumed to be some type of web form submission or formatted confirmation from a 3rd-party online reservation service. For instance, most web forms send an E-mail to you that have one field on each line, with a field name followed by the data. The parsing rules allow much more flexibility than that, but that's the general idea. See the Parsing Rules section for more details and examples.
In order to retrieve E-mail requests automatically, the requests must be available in a "POP3" mailbox. This is an Internet mail standard. However some E-mail services don't make this available, like America Online, and web-based E-mail services like Hotmail or Yahoo may not allow POP3 access. If you don't have a POP3 mailbox, then you will have to copy the text out of the E-mail and use the "Paste & Process" option to process the requests.
It's also strongly recommended that you have a POP3 mailbox set up exclusively for online requests. While any non-request E-mails can be ignored automatically, there are other problems with trying to retrieve requests from the same mailbox as you use for your own mail. The main problem is that when you retrieve your E-mail from another program like Outlook, any requests that might already be in your mailbox will be deleted from the POP3 server -- so Campground Master can't retrieve them automatically. You would then have to copy them and use the Paste & Process option to manually process them. This can quickly turn into a nuisance and possibly missed reservations.
Of course if you're taking reservation requests from a form on your own web site, you may also want to show the current site availability and update it as often as possible. For this you can use the Export to Web Vacancy Grid functionality. This is covered in a separate section, but in general this is assumed to be the "upload" half of E-mail request processing.
Reservation Friend
If you use the 3rd-party Reservation Friend service (through Friend Communications), Campground Master can retrieve and extract the reservation data from E-mail confirmations that they can send in a special format. If you don't have a web site or don't want to spend the time to set up reservation forms on your web site, you can use this service to accept online reservations. They can also accept credit card payment directly for full payment of the reservation. As of this writing, they charge a percentage for reservation payments taken through their service, with no annual fee.
To use this service, you will first need to get an account with Friend Communications, and go through their setup process (add your sites, descriptions, rates, etc. as needed). You will also need to decide which sites you want to designate as available for reservations through their service -- since availability can't be updated from Campground Master, it's recommended that you select only a portion of your sites for online reservations through their service, and treat them as being restricted to online reservations.
You can also specify that sites will be "released" from Reservation Friend a certain number of days before the arrival date, so they could be used for walk-in customers if no online reservation was made for them. You can configure Campground Master to know which sites are available and how many days before arrival they should be released, to help avoid double booking.
Since Reservation Friend data is sent to you as E-mail messages, you also need a "POP3" mailbox for these. We recommend using a separate mailbox for these messages to keep them separate from your normal E-mail, and if you're also getting E-mail requests from your own web site or another service then you should keep it separate from those also. Friend Communications can provide a POP3 mailbox for these if necessary, or you can tell them to send the messages to any mailbox you desire. You can also get their normal "human-readable" confirmation E-mails separately from this special form data, and that can go to your everyday E-mail account without affecting the online reservations function..
Refer to the Setting Up for Reservation Friend section for more information.
Webervations
Campground Master supports the download and upload protocols for Webervations.com, a 3rd party online reservation service. If you don't have a web site or don't want to spend the time to set up reservation forms on your web site, you can use this service to accept online reservations. As of this writing, Webervations charges a flat $80 per year for their service. They will show availability for a site (or a class of sites as a whole), which Campground Master uploads to their server, and makes requests available for downloading directly into Campground Master.
To use this service, you will first need to get an account with Webervations, and go through their setup process (add your sites, descriptions, rates, etc. as needed). You will also need to decide whether you want requests to be made for a specific site or only for a "class" or "type" of site (so you can select the site for the customer). This will determine how you set up Webervations, and also how you set up the fields in Campground Master to select sites appropriately.
Refer to the Setting Up for Webervations section for more information.