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For complete real-time communications and to eliminate the possibility of conflicts, you need to have both Incoming and Outgoing modes set to "Fully Automatic", and the Site Locking setting set to one of the "Do locks & synchronization..." options. These settings are found under Maintenance / Online Reservations / Hercules / Hercules Setup / Operations.
In this mode, Hercules is periodically polled for new reservations, and any new ones are automatically processed and added to Campground Master. Synchronization occurs not only at pre-defined polling intervals, but also any time you begin to make a reservation or edit an existing one on a Site that's also available online. It will do the following before every operation:
•Check for "Temp Holds" on Hercules, to see if someone is trying to reserve that site online at this moment.
•Lock the site(s) selected for the reservation, so it cannot be used online (if it's not already being used).
•Receive any new reservations made online since the last check.
•If a full synchronization is needed, either up or down, initiate that to get in sync.
All of this will happen automatically behind the scenes. You will only "know" it's happening if you get an Alert of new reservations received or sync problem, or if the site you're working on cannot be locked online (see Error Handling).
To clarify -- when a reservation is made on Hercules, you will normally not see it in Campground Master immediately, only when it's necessary to know about it to prevent double booking. For instance, when you start a new reservation in Campground Master, then it will sync with Hercules (or after your defined update period for periodic checking). So don't expect online reservations to pop into Campground Master immediately if you're not doing anything on it.
Automatic Reservation Processing
While there's an option to process the online reservations manually once they're received, this isn't recommended due to the potential for conflicts. However you can be notified when a new reservation is received (which we recommend), and given the chance to immediately review it and make adjustments if needed. If everything is set up perfectly in the Parsing section of the setup, adjustments should rarely be needed. The online reservation is automatically converted into a Campground Master reservation on the site selected online, all customer data fields are imported, Deposit transaction added, etc., and it will appear on the Rack and other views immediately. If you have Auto-rates enabled, and have chosen the option to auto-calculate when a reservation is Created, then that's also done when an online reservation is processed.
However, one reason you should review all incoming reservations is to check for duplicate customers, so you can merge them into a single customer record (or check that customer's history for problems). This is done through the View Recent Online Reservations dialog, which will highlight possible duplicates and allow merging them, as well as highlight any where a possible duplicate has a Warning flag.
Manual Syncing to update Unavailable sites
You should do an occasional "Send Full Sync" (see Initial Synchronization), just to make sure Hercules is up to date with any dates you've set as Unavailable (and to double check for reservation sync issues).
If you need details on why this is necessary: While changes to the database always trigger automatic updates to the online availability, this does not address the issue of a moving time frame. Since the full sync only covers a limited number of days in the future, as those days not yet covered approach, the online availability information can become stale. The setting you use for "Max future days to upload" is an important part of this. For instance if Hercules allows reservations to be made 2 years in advance, but you tell Campground Master to only upload 365 future days, then you're already starting out with a 1 year gap -- it will appear as if the whole park is available after 1 year. If you set the "Max future days" to match the Hercules future allowance (e.g. 2 years), that's fine for the first day. But 1 month later, there's still a 1 month time frame at the end that Campground Master has not uploaded availability for.
Since new reservations are always uploaded, this is generally not a problem if you don't have any Season Dates or Special Dates Unavailable set in the Site Setup, and don't have any dates as "Special dates unavailable for online reservations" in the Hercules setup. Otherwise, the manual syncing is important.
Further Topics:
Viewing Recent Online Reservations
Send/Request Full Synchronization