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Setting up Template Messages

Template emails are available from System Settings -> Message Templates. By far the easiest way to set up a message template is to copy settings from an existing template, even a different property.

 

By default, for new properties, the following Message Templates are created:

  • Booking notification to property
  • Confirmed booking email to guest
  • Unconfirmed booking email to guest

Unconfirmed bookings email to guest is only required if the property supports unconfirmed bookings.

The Booking notification to property is a notification email that the property receives when a booking is made. The design of this email is not as important as an email that goes to a guest. Clicking the Edit button shows this:

 

To go through each of these fields:

  • Name of Template is simply how you want this template to known
  • App can be disregarded if the property or group does not have a mobile app or if this message type is not a Push notification.
  • Message Type can be one of:
    • Email
    • Push Notification
    • Web Post
    • Slack Post
  • Trigger Event, this is the internal type of Event. "Booking Created" covers the creation of any booking, whereas "Unconfirmed Booking" and "Confirmed Booking" only apply to those types of booking being created
  • Schedule. Messages can be either Scheduled or set to go when an event happens. Booking emails tend to be event driven, whereas notifications for online check in opening can be Schedule Driven 

If you are wanting to send a scheduled message you can create a new schedule (or use an existing one) from here:

 

A schedule can be named and reused. For example, it is common for Invitations to Check in Online to be sent on the same schedule as Reminders to Check In Online (although these are different emails that go to different guests).

 

The schedule time zone will default to the property's time zone, which is usually the best setting. When the timezone itself changes name, e.g. between Summer and Standard time, this will automatically update. 

 

Active times can be set to either only allow sending of messages at certain times or to prevent sending of messages at certain times.

 

Given an event trigger or a schedule, it is possible to delay a message until a given amount of has passed since the trigger / schedule via the Timing setting. This can be useful e.g. if you want to send a message to a guest 2 hours after they have checked in  to make sure everything is OK. 

 

Add Products / Categories area is a filter. This can be used:

  • To send emails to cleaners for guest bookings who included room cleaning 
  • To send orders that include food to a kitchen and order that include drinks to a bar
  • To send concierge (event or activity) bookings to the appropriate supplier.

Connectivity Provider is generally ignored; this parameter can allow us to e.g. send messages to all properties who use a certain system to update Webrooms with availability, pricing and restrictions.

 

Some templates require extra parameters. e.g. for Scheduled Online Checkin is Open emails to specify what day's arrivals should get the email.

 

Setting the Sender Type and Recipient Type automatically affects the From, ReplyTo and To addresses below for Email templates. When there are issues around templates not working, typically it is because these have not been properly set.

Possible values for the Sender Type and Recipient Type are:

  • Guest: Person who make a booking, completes an order or who has a profile in Dash 
  • Property: Accommodation (or Order) provider
  • Group: Group of Accommodation (or Order) providers
  • User: Administrator who logs on to the Webrooms back end at https://secure.web-rooms.co.nz/
  • Other: Anyone else 

Typically emails are sent from noreply@web-rooms.co.nz using the Smtp Server smtp.mailgun.org / postmaster@web-rooms.co.nz because these are safe and the emails will get through.

If a property or group wants email sent on their behalf to go via their own domain we can do this. It is very complicated and frequently does not succeed on the first time. It is for this reason that best practise here is to use a purpose created sub domain e.g. connect.clarity.co.nz for these emails because any issues will not adversely affect email addresses already in use. Set up instructions for these are here. Allow a week for this setup.

Email Templates make prolific use of Merge Fields, denoted by opening and closing % signs, e.g. %BOOKINGDETAILSHTML%. Many of these are for individual fields like %PROPERTY_NAME% or %GUEST_EMAIL%, however some can represent an entire block, e.g. %BOOKINGDETAILSHTML% contains all the details of a booking in HTML form. Many of these fields are not documented at this point, but if you let us know what you want to achieve we can advise you what you need to achieve this.

 

To View the email HTML directly, click the <> button:

 

To add images into the message template, follow this guide to upload the image and then get it's Url

 

There are two versions of the message to send, the normal (i.e. HTML) version and the plain text version, which is intended for email clients that do not support HTML (which are increasingly few however there are people who specifically want this).

Other settings should be left in their default status unless there is specific reason to change them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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