Arctic Reservations Development

New Module: Complete Reservation

2008-06-19T02:37:00.000-07:00

This post is one of a series, highlighting old new features (these are additions to the software that have been made in the last few months, but were never described on the blog). For more information, view the original post.

In the past, one of the most time consuming tasks for reservation staff of rafting and adventure companies has been collecting and entering guest information, either into reports or into their reservation system. This is especially true for overnight trips, where a substantial amount of information is required. Often, the process would require printing forms, postage, waiting for a response and then deciphering the guest's handwriting to type the information into the reservation system.

A new module for Arctic Reservations, called Complete Reservation, helps cut down on waiting time to collect such vital guest information and, more importantly, saves your reservation staff time in terms of having to enter that information. Once a guest has booked a reservation, the staff simply sends them an e-mail containing all the trip details and the invoice. The e-mail will include a personalized invitation URL, that will allow the guest to visit the company's website and fill in all their guest information.

All this works through the My Module functionality of Arctic Reservations, which allows you to integrate Arctic with your company website. Through an extensively customizable template system, the website will match the design of the rest of your site. In addition to booking new reservations and sharing photos, this website can be used by guests to access trip details, download invoices and liability agreements and enter all needed personal/group details.

Details entered automatically appear in the appropriate customer record, and a notification appears on the home page log, allowing you to review the details and ensure that all information is correct.

The information collected can range from basic details (contact information), to extensive food preferences and emergency contact information. And the module can be configured to collect different information for different trips.

Of course, due to the variety of group types (families, couples, groups of friends), the module seeks to accommodate all configurations. For families, most details entered are common to all guests (such as contact information). While, for a group of friends, each person can fill in their own details. And the primary contact can view who still needs to enter their information, and even send them a personalized link to the website as well.

This new module will help increase efficiency and help ensure all guest details are accurately collected, while freeing up office staff to pursue new reservations, instead of spending time collecting data. If you are interested in trying this new module or adding it to your installation, contact a sales representative.

Season Three

2008-06-19T02:22:00.000-07:00

As it is now entering peak season time for many rafting companies, it is exciting to announce that this is the third season that Arctic Reservations has helped different rafting and adventure companies manage their reservations, trips, customers and billing. And although the blog has been quiet recently, the software has been anything been static. There have been new features and new reports introduced, as well as new modules developed and many improvements to the interface for the software.

But the blog has been neglected, so over the coming few weeks, I will aim to write posts highlighting many of these (already older) new features.

With our third season underway, I would also like to personally thank our existing clients for their feedback. It has all helped craft Arctic Reservations into - at least in my opinion - an exceptional reservation management program. And, in addition, there are still many ideas yet to be implemented, giving us a clear development road-map for the software for the coming seasons. It will be exciting to see what comes next...

If you haven't tried out Arctic Reservations, let me encourage you to take a look through our demonstration version.

New Security Features

2007-12-19T06:36:00.000-08:00

A number of new security features have recently been added to Arctic Reservations, to ensure that all data is kept secure and to help prevent malicious login attempts. This effort to increase security is due to the recently released credit card module. Since Arctic Reservations now handles important financial information for customers, it has become increasingly important to protect that data.

The first big change is an invisible one. The site now does more logging of activity and login attempts, to help identify unusual behavior or brute force attempts to gain access to the website. The software continually reviews this data using a number of strategies (including access frequency, etc), and will block access to certain users based on the perceived threat. This effectively prevents a brute force attack, where a hacker tries to gain access to the software by guessing passwords.

The second change involves offering a number of new options for controlling how users login to the system. Now below the login form is a link to show advanced options. These advanced options control how long a user will remain logged in, whether the session can transfer IP addresses and whether data should be cleared on browser exit. In addition, administrators can set defaults for each of these options from the settings page. When these new options were added, we lowered the default login duration and enabled IP address specific login, both of which help to boost security. More details on these options can be found in the new FAQ category.

Remember that security is also a huge responsibility of the end user. We can continue to add more and more security features, but if you pick "password" as your password, they will do no good. So just as a reminder, remember to pick a secure password and don't provide your password to anyone (not even Arctic Reservations support). Some tips for secure passwords include:

It should not be a dictionary word.
You should include a number or symbol in your password.
Don't use anything that can easily be guess about you (e.g., your zip code, your birthday, your address).
It should be at least seven characters long.

New Module: Credit Card Processing

2007-06-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

Our credit card processing module has recently undergone extensive beta testing and I am happy to announce that it has passed all the tests with flying colors! One customer has now been using the module and have processed almost 300 transactions.

The credit card module allows you to seamlessly process credit card transactions within the Arctic Reservations software. This means that when processing a payment, you never have to leave Arctic Reservations. Just type in the card information and instantly get approval information from your processing bank. Upon approval, Arctic Reservations will automatically add a payment item to the invoice. And of course, when processing follow up transactions, you can easily access saved credit card information for the particular customer. And finally, the software offers extensive tracking and reporting information, as well as the necessary transaction tools to run refunds and void transactions that have not been settled.

Of course, this has all been implemented with thorough security precautions. All transactions must go through 256 bit SSL encryption and data is properly and securely stored on the server. Finally, extensive logging is performed to make sure only authorized users access the transaction information.

Currently, the credit card module has been setup to work with SkipJack as a payment gateway. This means that SkipJack will provide merchant services and act as a middleman between transactions performed within Arctic Reservations and your bank. Eventually, we will consider supporting additional payment gateways, but we judged SkipJack to be a good starting point as they offer low cost gateway services as well as reliable service.

Reservation Details Face Lift

2007-06-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

The reservation details page has received a design revamp. It now puts more focus on the essential data and provides a handy side bar with access to common commands and other important details. The new design embodies many of the principles that were used when creating the launch page that was implemented a few months ago. This update should ease access to reservation details. Below you can see an image of the new page.

E-mail Features

2007-06-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Arctic Reservations new template based e-mail system (which still is in beta) has been implemented throughout the site. The e-mail system allows for highly customizable HTML templates for sending e-mails... that means your e-mails can include graphics, custom attachments and many more features. In addition, the new e-mail system allows you to easily create the template in your favorite e-mail client and simply e-mail it to a special address. Then the site does the rest, turning your design into a template where content will later be added.

Now, in addition to marketing e-mails, you can now use the new e-mail features in other parts of the site, such as when sending an invoice. And all e-mails sent will be logged for fifteen days, allowing you to view previously sent messages and resend message if they did not go through. The sent e-mail log can be accessed from the "E-mail" button on the left menu.

Previously, the template based e-mail system was going to include tools for mass messaging customers. We are sorry to say that this feature has been removed. If the site was to include tools for mass messaging, we would run the risk of our e-mails being blocked by large internet service providers. We decided that it is more important that individual e-mails consistently get through (such as launch invoices and photo site invitations), rather then offering a mass message feature. Currently, customer information can already easily be exported and imported into third party e-mail messaging systems.

New Module: Guide Scheduling

2007-06-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

A new module for Arctic Reservations has been released. The new guide scheduling module allows for easy management of guides to ensure proper scheduling. The new tool allows guides to be assigned to work on certain trips. Then, overall summaries as well as individual guide schedules can easily be printed. In addition, the module can enforce mandatory "off days" (days in between trips) to make sure a guide is not over schedule, especially on multi day trips where guides must be involved in turnaround activities. Finally, you can also easily specify a preferred guest to guide ratio, which the site will help you keep by highlighting trips with too few guides.

This is just one of many modules available with Arctic Reservations. Such modules can easily be added on to an account to expand functionality, depending on the needs of your outfitter. The guide module can be seen when using the demo of Arctic Reservations. Existing customers may add the module by contacting sales.

Mail Merge Support

2007-04-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

When creating a new inquiry, Arctic Reservations has always included the ability to send out a hard copy letter (as well as an e-mail) to the customer. This offers a great way to create personalized content, which can be sent to the customer helping ensure a reservation down the road.

But the system has been limited, as the actual letters had to be designed in Arctic Reservations and were downloaded as static PDF documents for printing. This meant that there was little ability to customize the letter based on a specific question the customer asked.

Today, that has been fixed. In addition to PDF letters, you can create letters that work as a mail merge instead. When you run the end of day report, you will get mail merge files for those new letters. Then, just download the mail merge file and import it into your favorite word processor (e.g., Microsoft Word). This way, you can use the familiar interface of your favorite word processor to prepare your letter template and also make little changes before printing the individual letters.

To use the new feature, just go to the "Manage" menu and select "Letters". Then either edit an existing letter or create a new letter and just check the mail merge box at the top. In the next end of day report, you will be provided mail merge files (with the extension "csv"). By default, the files open in Excel, but you can also select them as a mail merge data source in Microsoft Word (or your preferred word processor).

Reservation Summary

2007-03-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

A new report is now available for all Arctic Reservation customers. The reservation summary report allows you to prepare a table showing all launches over a certain period of time. For each launch, there are lists of the individual reservations with details on the primary guest, the number of guests and deposit information. This summary is easy to print (just clicking print in the browser should give you a high quality, nice looking printout). Whether printed or viewed on the computer, the list gives a nice overview of coming season and can offer a great quick reference to upcoming availability.

You can provide a variety of different search parameters when preparing the reservation summary, such as what trip types to include and what date range to include. In addition, the reservation summary can be customized for some outfitters to include pool dates in case a particular launch is overbooked and more permits need to be purchased.

And of course, the reservation summary has full support for sublaunches. Sublaunches and their reservations will be enumerated separately on the summary.

Want to try preparing a reservation summary? Current customers can access it through the "Reports" menu. If you are not yet a customer, sign up for a demo to try out the handy reservation summary.

SSL Installation

2007-03-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

I am happy to announce that Arctic Reservations is once again offering SSL encrypted access. This feature was offered a short while ago, but due to complications that prevented some users from accessing the software, we rolled back the SSL option until the larger problems could be fixed. After many tweaks and hours calling others for input, SSL is now available again!

All users can access their primary Arctic Reservations installation via a 256bit SSL certificate. This means that all data sent between your computer and our server is encrypted using todays leading encryption technique. Although the risk of such communications being intercepted is extremely low, it is becoming increasingly important to protect client data.

The need for security is especially important for an upcoming feature that I can only hint at now: "credit card processing." When handling client credit card information, it is vital to implement such leading encryption tools to prevent fraud and ensure the security of your customer's personal information. More details about credit card processing will be coming soon, as our first beta testing will begin shortly.

Note that SSL certificate installation required some big changes: we had to rewrite a core set of files and completely reconfigure the server (this is why it took so long to offer this feature). During the upgrade, all installations had to be moved to a new IP address. Although this should not adversely effect software performance, your computer may still try to access the old IP address for 24-48 hours. As a result, you will not be able to access your installation. If this happens to you, please call your support representative and he/she will provide instructions for clearing cached DNS information. During such a large overhaul, other problems may have arisen. If this is the case, please contact support right away... we will be standing by to make any needed corrections.

By default, all accounts allow users to select whether or not to use SSL certificates when they first access the website. Administrators can change settings to either always require an SSL access or never allow SSL access. I strongly encourage administrators to always require SSL certificates.

System Upgrades

2007-03-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

We have recently been running upgrades and maintenance on the server. We are getting ready to role out new security features, but in the process of performing the installation, server access may have been interrupted for a few minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience. So far though, we have upgraded to the latest version of PHP and will soon be announcing new modules and security settings.... stay tuned!

In the future we will try our best to schedule maintenance during weekends or night time hours to prevent changes from effecting our users. Remember that you can always access your secondary server during maintenance (refer to your welcome letter for details regarding your secondary server).

New Overview Histograms

2007-02-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

The overview report has been expanded to include two new options. These new options allow you to view histograms of either reservations or inquires, allowing you to breakdown useful statistics. For example, you can compare how many reservations are booked in the morning with how many are booked in the afternoon. Or you could compare the number of reservations booked in one month with another month. In addition to comparing booking times, you may also compare how many reservations each reservation agent has booked. The same histograms are available for inquiries as well.

These new reports are meant to help provide indicators in terms of when customers are most willing to book reservations as well as when to anticipate the most load on reservation staff.

With time, more histograms and other graphs will be available throughout the Arctic Reservations staff. Today marks the first step in providing useful analytic tools for viewing and interpreting the large amount of data that Arctic Reservations automatically collects. If you have suggests for a specific graph or tool, we'd love to hear it. Just leave a comment on this post.

New Features: Inquiry improvements

2006-12-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

New features were added over the weekend, including:

Trip specific inquiries - You can now create inquiries that reference a specific trip. This helps the person following up the inquiry, as they have instant access to all details regarding that trip (including availability, etc).
Inquiry to reservation button - Along with the new trip specific inquiries is a new button that allows you to convert an inquiry into a reservation. Clicking the "reserve" button next to an inquiry will mark the inquiry as completed and will take you to the new reservation page with the customer and trip information already selected. This makes it easy to book a reservation for a customer during a follow up phone call.
New trip selector - To go with the new customer selection tool is a new trip selection tool. This can be seen both on the new inquiry and the new reservation page. The trip selection tool allows the pages to be much cleaner and more useful.

New Feature: Reservation Process

2006-10-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Administrators can now change the sequence of events for when you create a new reservation. Under the reservations tab on the system settings page, there is a new option for what to do after creating a new reservation. For example, if you collect deposits immediatly after booking the reservation, you can set it to go to the resrvation invoice. Or if you want to collect user data next, specify the user details page. By default, it simply takes you to a reservation summary page.

Update: Reservation Notes

2006-10-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

A new feature has been adding allowing different types of reservation notes (before, there was just a single notes field). Now you are able to differentiate notes that you want included on the trip roster, notes that you want only visible from the reservation system and notes that you want sent to the customer. When you later e-mail out the invoice for the reservation, the notes will automatically be inserted into that e-mail.

This allows you to track additional information, such as wet suite sizes and pickup time. The wet suite size might be stored in the roster notes field, so that it will be printed on the roster. The pickup time would go in the customer notes field, so that they would get the information later, along with the invoice.

In addition, invoice e-mails can include the trip name. You may also specify CC and BCC addresses to share the trip details with customer friends or keep an in office record.

Note: If you want to have the customer notes and trip name inserted into your invoice e-mails, make sure an administrator changes your invoice e-mail template to include these two new fields. If you use the default invoice e-mail template, we have already made the change for you.

Update (10-18-2006): Administrators can now specify descriptions for the different note fields. The descriptions instruct the booking agent what details to include in each of the note fields. To change these descriptions, go to the new reservations tab on the system settings page.

First Season With Arctic - A Job Well Done

2006-09-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to take a minute to say what a great job you've done with Arctic. We just finished our first full season using the system and want to point out a few of the highlights.

We ran 173 more guests down rivers in Oregon and Idaho with the same staff. The system makes us more efficient

Our mailing costs have almost gone to zero. We don't mail invoices anymore because it is so easy to send them by email and 99% of our guests want them that way.

I was able to check reservation system from Idaho instead of bother the office. Easier for me and them.

The photo site has been a big hit. Guests really appreciate it and it saves us from having to deal with the all the pictures our guests take.

I'm looking forward to analyzing our evaluation information that is already entered into a database. We used to enter (by hand) all of our evaluations into a spreadsheet each fall so that we could analyze them. With the online evals, we'll be months ahead of the marketing game.

Thanks for all your hard work and your responsiveness to new ideas.

Find Invoices

2006-08-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

Want to find or print a number of invoices? Whether you want to search by payment status, creation date or due date, a new invoice tool helps. The Find Invoice feature allows you to search by a number of criteria. Results will then either be returned in a table listing all matching invoices or will be prepared in a PDF document, which you can print directly (along with mailing labels, of course).

This feature can be found under the new "Invoice" section of the menu.

Customer Selection Window

2006-08-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend, an upgrade has introduced a new way of having "internal windows". This update will allow you to be able to do multiple things on one page. With time, you will see these internal windows on more and more pages. But to start with, we are going to do a very specific test to ensure proper function and cross browser support. To see the new customer selection window, create a new inquiry. The process has been consolidated down to one page, where you can do everything from creating a new customer to editing an existing customer while creating the inquiry.

As always, we love to hear feedback on new features. Just use your support page to tell us about ideas or problems with the new internal window feature.

With time, expect to see this technique used on more pages (such as the new reservation page).

Credits; Downloads

2006-07-31T18:22:00.000-07:00

Two new features!

Credits - You can now credit people on their invoice. If you want to remove a charge and have a record of removing it, just credit the amount. This is an addition to the item types that you can have on an invoice (charge, discount, payment, refund and now credit). In addition, now when canceling a reservation or a reservation guest, the software will allow you to credit all charges associated with that reservation.

Downloads for Sale - If you use the Photo Site module to allow guests to share photos after their trip, guests now have the option to purchase a download of all photos from the trip so that they can have a local copy. This is meant to complement the existing opportunity to purchase CDs with all trip photos. Downloads are prepared automatically and delivered by e-mail, usually within the hour of the purchase.

Launch Openings

2006-06-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

A new feature has been added to the "new reservation" page meant to assist with monitoring the number of reservations per launch, especially when it comes to sublaunches. After selecting a trip, a table with the number of openings, reservations and remaining free spots will appear allowing for you to visually confirm the proper number of openings before proceeding with the reservation.

New Trip Field

2006-06-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

A new field has been added to the trip editor that allows you to select a river. Although only a few rivers are listed now, selecting a river allows you to access reports and forms specific to that river (for example, BLM Manifest or Forest Service Registration Form). With time, the collection of supported rivers will grow, making it easy to prepare reports specific to your trip.

In other news, big pages (such as the home page and the launches page) have been optimized for much faster loading. Although the speed was not an issue before, this will ensure Arctic Reservations ability to scale to larger amounts of information.

Great Job

2006-05-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

I'm headed to Idaho for the summer and just wanted to say thank you. You've done an amazing job with the reservation system and I really appreciate your openness to suggestions, your hard work, and dedication. I'm looking forward to your six day chess lesson on the Middle Fork next month.

Trouble Tickets for Support

2006-05-07T19:31:00.000-07:00

This weekend brings an upgrade to the support system. Now when you use the contact support page of the site or e-mail support@arcticreservations.com, a new trouble ticket will be opened. This helps us organize support requests and keep track of which requests have been handled. With time, you will be able to see open trouble tickets from within Arctic Reservations.

Please make sure you contact support using one of the two methods described above. This will help to expedite your request.

Update: The trouble ticket system just did not work. Most customers found it easier to e-mail their questions in or call. And occasionally, trouble tickets would get deleted or ignored. So the system has been removed. Hopefully we will role out a better trouble ticket system later... but until then, keep calling and e-mailing!

Minor Changes

A new user permission level allows you to hide financial information from a read only user. This is good for guides who want to access reservation and launch details, but do not need to see pricing information.

Upgrades

2006-04-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend brought many new updates that have been in the works for the last couple weeks.

Reports are now managed according to trip river. When you create a new trip, select which river it is from our listing. When you select the river, reports associated with that specific river (ie, BLM permits or boater registration forms) will instantly be available to you. Since this is a new feature, there are only a handful of rivers, but with continued feedback from our customers this will grow as more rivers and more reports are added and maintained.

The Overview report has been upgraded to include financial information, regarding how much has been billed, payments that have been collected and other helpful tidbits. And with this new information comes a much nicer visual layout. In addition, information from the overview report now appears on individual launch detail pages. Now you can see the user days or financial information for a specific launch easily.

WebFest: First Place

2006-04-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

The Arctic Reservations Software has won first place in the commercial category for this year's WebFest Competition. WebFest is a USC sponsored program that gives awards to the best projects in four different categories. This year marked the most submissions yet, so the announcement of first place comes as quite an honor. Thanks to all our great customers for your excellent feedback and suggestions!

This was back in March... I was waiting in hopes that they would update their website to show the winners for the different categories, but it does not seem like its going to happen for a while.