Sending commands to Unity to define a new user

amastroi · ‎08-28-2001

The environment: The Hotel The requirement: As the hotel use a PMS (Property Management System), would there be a way for this PMS to check-in a guest at the hotel (as it already does so today) and then with this information automatically (ie. without human intervention) send such information to Unity so it can go ahead a create this new Subscriber with all the info it collects from the PMS (ie. First Name, Last Name, Room = DN#)? Essentially, how could this PMS interface with Unity to send this commands/instrcutions to Unity?

Permalink · ‎08-28-2001

The short story is Unity (as of 3.0) does not have a hotel/PMS integraiton package. I currently have a HVM/PMS integration package on my request list for items we can do as a vertical market. The best thing you can do is hit GiPPERS with this request and be sure to include which PMS package you're wanting to talk to if you have a specific one (or ones) in mind.

Doing a basic integration to Unity via serial/SQL connection to a PMS system is realatively easy for the basic stuff you have to support. This would include check in, check out and a bi-directional database resync function to build rooms/sync up check in/out status after a communication outage. Getting fancy with wakeup call support, uncheckout etc... is a little more involved but I found in the Repartee days when we were doing hotel packages most only wanted the basic three functions anyway.

The hard part is doing a hotel guest conversation since clearly the full subscriber conversation wont fly. For instance you don't want hotel guest leaving messags for other hotel guests or distribution lists or setting up transfers to their cell phones etc... You need a stripped down conversation at the very least.

The other hard part is there are a lot of PMS systems out there that have wildly different communication protocols. Repartee supported around 30 of them and there were many more we had to decline. We have a pretty robust serial parsing engine (most PMS systems communicate via RS232) that can handle these differences relatively easily.

There are lots of other details to consider but they're reasonably easy to deal with. For instance several states (i.e. Nevada) have a reuirement that you save messages for 24 hours after a guest checks out just in case they need to get to them after they leave. It's those little details that'll bite you (we learned the hard way).

That said, it's doable. Ping through GiPPERS (I know there have been similiar requests out there) and see if we can get the attention of the product folks and push for some resources to kick this out.

Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect/Answer Monkey
Cisco Systems
lindborg@cisco.com
http://www.AnswerMonkey.net (new page for Unity support tools and scripts)

amastroi · ‎09-12-2001

Where can I get more technical information on "providing basic integration to Unity via serial/SQL connection to the PMS system"?

In response to amastroi · ‎09-12-2001

You should contact your PMS vendor for specifications on how their product would communicate with a voice messaging system. Most hotel Property Management Software is designed to interface with 3rd party products including voicemail, telephone, and call accounting systems.

Scott Morgan
Cisco Systems TAC