Downloading Requests |
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When someone makes a request from your web site or other online service, it just sits on a web server or in an E-mail mailbox waiting to be picked up, or "downloaded". You should perform this function regularly (preferably a few times per day), for instance anytime you check E-mail, so the requests can be processed and confirmed promptly.
The exception to this is the Hercules 2-way integration, when configured for Automatic mode -- in that case reservations are downloaded and possibly processed automatically, so this function is only needed to resolve synchronization issues.
To check for and retrieve any new online reservation requests, go to Reservations / Retrieve Online Reservations. Select the Source if necessary, then click the Retrieve Online Requests button. Campground Master will connect to the Internet (if necessary), and retrieve any waiting requests. Depending on the setup options, it may also automatically delete the retrieved requests from the server to keep it tidy (this also minimizes the time needed to retrieve requests the next time).
If any new requests are retrieved, they will be displayed in the list. Note that if it retrieves a request that has already been processed, then the status of that request will be shown as "Saved" so you don't process it as a duplicate. Of course if it's automatically deleting requests from the server when it retrieves them, then there shouldn't be any such duplicates to show.
Retrieving Hercules 2-way Requests
This is generally not necessary unless the Incoming operations mode is "Manual request only". In automatic modes, any reservations available should already be downloaded and listed here. Of course in "Fully Automatic" mode, there should not be any here unless there were errors that caused them to not be imported.
When this is done, it simply checks for any new online reservations available through the 2-way interface.
Retrieving E-mail Requests
When "E-mail" is selected as the Source, it will check the POP3 mailbox (as designated in the setup) for any new E-mail messages. It will download all E-mail messages present, and attempt to parse each one to see if it's a request. If there are some messages that aren't recognized as valid requests, they will still be included in the displayed list of requests. The status of unrecognized messages will be set to "Ignored" and the Notes column will show the message subject (so you can see if it's just a junk message). If you see an ignored message that looks like it should be a valid request, you can use the function at the bottom to Edit Original Text, and try to salvage it by editing the text.
All E-mail messages retrieved are also saved in a temporary file "email.txt", located in the folder you designate in the online reservations setup. This can be viewed with a text editor like Notepad or Wordpad if desired. You can use the Re-process Downloaded Requests function to read this file and scan all E-mails again if needed (for instance if you're still testing your parsing rules). Once you're sure that you don't need the saved E-mails any more, use the Delete all Downloaded Requests function to clear this temporary file.
By the way, there is no danger of getting a virus or other malicious E-mail problem, since Campground Master simply scans the text of the message -- it won't run code in an E-mail, and any attachments to the E-mail are completely ignored (actually the attachments are retrieved as text, so they are harmless).
As mentioned in the online setup section, you may want to have all requests go to a POP3 mailbox separate from your normal E-mail. The main problem with sharing the mailbox is that when you retrieve your other E-mail, you would be removing requests from that mailbox so they can't be retrieved and processed automatically here.
If it's not feasible for you to use a separate POP3 mailbox for requests, then if there are any requests that didn't get picked up the last time you used the Retrieve function, you will need to copy the request text from your other E-mail program and use the Paste & Process function here. Therefore it would be a good idea to do the Retrieve just before you check your other E-mail so that any requests waiting in your mailbox are retrieved automatically. Also make very sure that the "Delete messages from server..." option is not enabled in the Online Connections setup for E-mail requests if you're sharing a mailbox.
Retrieving iCal files
When "iCal file" is selected as the Source, it will download all iCal files as defined by the iCal Profiles and process them. See the section Importing iCal Files for more details.
Retrieving Reservation Friend Requests (old 1-way interface)
When "Reservation Friend" is selected as the Source, it will check the POP3 mailbox (as designated in the setup) for any new reservations made through that service. This works exactly the same as described above for E-mail requests, except that separate connection settings are used for Reservation Friend so they may be retrieved from a different POP3 mailbox. Also, the temporary E-mail file is named "email_friend.txt" for messages from this source.
Further Topics:
Uploading Site Availability Data
Exporting to Web Vacancy Grids