Customer Booking Portal Advanced Portal Profile Scenarios


This article describes advanced scenarios when setting up your Customer Booking Portal Profiles.


Audience: CEO, Owner, Manager, Developer
Read Time: 15 Minutes

 

This document is part of a Customer Portal Document Series:


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Overview

We discussed previously how Portal Profiles are used to configure and customize your booking workflow. In this document, we will provide a series of examples of how to extend your Customer Portal to leverage additional Portal Profiles, effectively creating multiple workflows and booking process scenarios for your operation. You do NOT have to follow each of these directly. instead, review the options they represent and determine if one in particular or perhaps a combination of settings supports the workflow you are trying to build.


The scenarios described in this document include:

  • Default Portal Profile
  • Multiple Branded Company Portals
  • Custom Booking Types (Airport transfer, City Bus Tour, etc.)
  • Group Booking Links
  • Promotional, limited-availability marketing links with special pricing


Portal Profile Settings

Portal profile settings are available both in Ultimate Desktop and InVision Web.

  • In Ultimate, these settings are available in Global System Settings -> Internet Reservations tab.
  • In InVision, these settings are available under the Left Menu -> Customer Portal Settings


You can view the current list of Portal Profiles and/or add your own as needed to support the scenarios below.

Advanced Portal Profile Scenarios

The examples below are only a few options specific to real-world examples. They do not represent all options available. Instead, they are meant to describe what is possible. You should mi and match various settings to support your specific operational workflow.


Default Portal Profile

As discussed previously, the "Default Profile" drives the workflow for the three primary Trip Types in the portal; arrival, Departure and Ground. You can customize some aspects of this workflow by modifying the Default Profile in your profile list. This was discussed in the Customer Booking Portal Setup guide and will not be discussed here.


Multiple Branded Company Portals

Some operations have multiple companies setup in FASTTRAK and would like to separate booking portals for each company. This Customer Booking Portal allows you to have independent companies for each. There are a couple different ways to do this. 


Scenario 1: Brand your Default Profile for the second company

If you want your second company to leverage the same booking workflow, pricing, etc. as your primary company, you can simply pass a different company ID in the URL when marketing or linking to your Customer Booking Portal. This modified URL uses the Company ID value to lookup your second company and provide branded images from the Company profile in FASTTRAK. You can upload custom Company images into your Company profile using Ultimate Desktop or InVision Web.


Example Company 1:

https://www.mytripcenter.com/?sys=YOUR_SYSTEM_ID_HERE&company=1


Example Company 2:

https://www.mytripcenter.com/?sys=YOUR_SYSTEM_ID_HERE&company=2


Note: System ID is specific to your database and can be copied in settings form the default URL.


Scenario 2: Create a new Portal Profile specific to the second company

If you want to offer different pricing, booking requirements or any other incremental workflow differences, you can create a new Portal  profile for that company. Within that Portal profile, you can target the second company for branding and leverage various settings to adjust pricing, verbiage, limitations, etc.



After selecting the Target Company, you can enable the Direct Link option from the Direct-Link Options tab and copy the URL for use in branding, site links, marketing collateral, etc. 


Developer Note:
The link itself has two components that make this happen. the link includes the Target Company ID and the Target Profile ID in addition to the operators System ID value.

Example
https://www.mytripcenter.com/?sys={SYSTEM_ID}&pp={PORTAL_PROFILE_ID}&company={COMPANY_ID}


Custom Booking Types (Airport transfer, City Bus Tour, etc.)

By default, your  portal support Arrival, Departure and Ground Trip Types. The user will make this selection when initially searching for a trip. This selection dictates the Portal Profile (and underlying pricing, settings, workflow, etc.) that will be used to book that trip.


You can add additional Trip Type options to this drop-down by adding additional Portal profiles. For example, if you want to add an Airport Transfer option to this list between two specific airports, you can do this. 

For this scenario, we will use a Custom Portal Profile enabled as a Trip Type with Limited Pick-up/Drop-Off locations.


Add a new Portal Profile

  • Check to enable the Portal Profile
  • Enter an Internal name for the profile 
  • Set your Target Company 
  • Enable the profile as a Trip Type and Enter user-friendly name
    • This exposes the Trip Type as a selection in the portal
  • Click on Limit Pick-Up/Drop-Off Locations and enter supported Airports
    • This limits the options available to the user when entering Pick-up/Drop-Off
  • Modify additional settings as necessary
    • Pricing, verbiage, availability, etc.
  • Click save



Once configured, the Custom Trip Type will show as an option in the Service / Travel Type list. When the customer selects this option, the Airport Transfer Portal profile will use the custom settings to driver the Portal Workflow for the user.


There may be times where you want to allow an external person the ability to enter travel details but not create a specific reservation in the system. For example, a corporate retreat where you will need several sedans, sprinter van or some other vehicle type depending on the number of riders and location of pick-up and drop-off locations. In this case, you would want to capture information ahead of time but build reservations once all passengers have entered their information. You also want to put a hard deadline on the booking link availability so you can determine vehicle needs and reservations ahead of time. Lastly, you want to lock down this link so a password is required to access it.


For this scenario, we will use a Custom Portal Profile with the Group Booking Target option, In addition, we will enable an external booking link with Limited Link Availability and Limited Pick-up/Drop-off locations.


Add a new Portal Profile

  • Check to enable the Portal Profile
  • Enter an Internal name for the profile 
  • Set your Target Company 
  • Click on Limit Pick-Up/Drop-Off Locations tab and enter supported Pick-up/Drop-off locations
    • This limits the options available to the user when entering Pick-up/Drop-Off
  • Click on Booking & Customer Options tab
    • Select the Group Passenger target and select an existing Group in FASTTRAK
      • Passenger information will be saved to this Group in FASTTRAK. 
      • Once entered, you will use normal Group processing to build resulting reservations
    • Enter a Subject and Body for the confirmation email sent when a passenger has entered trip information. 
      • Since this is not a real reservation yet, a simple email confirmation will be sent.
  • Enable Direct-link option in Direct-Link options tab
    • Enable Limit Booking Link Availability and enter dates
    • Enable password option and enter password
  • Modify additional settings as necessary
    • Pricing, verbiage, availability, etc.


Trip Search Options Tab


Note: You will notice many options are disabled once the Booking Target is set to Group. This is because the Group Target does not book a normal reservation or expose pricing details in the Customer Portal. It is mainly used as a data collection method for external passengers.


Booking & Customer Options Tab


Direct-Link Options tab

In this scenario, we want to provide special pricing for marketing reasons. Perhaps you want to target special customers with special pricing for the month of December. For this scenario, we will instead use a special link on our website that targets a special pricing plan and will configure it so it is only available December.


Alternate Ways to Adjust pricing (not detailed here)

  • Adjust Default Pricing plan
  • Set Default Portal Profile to special pricing plan (impacts all prices)
  • Add Customer-level discounts
  • Add Promo Code to be entered by user
  • Adjust global discounts in System Settings


Add a new Portal Profile

  • Check to enable the Portal Profile
  • Enter an Internal name for the profile 
  • Set your Target Company 
  • Click on Trip Search Options Tab
    • Check to override the target pricing plan and select your special pricing plan for December
  • Enable Direct-link option in Direct-Link options tab
    • Enable Limit Booking Link Availability and enter December dates
    • Enable password option and enter password
  • Modify additional settings as necessary


Trip Search Options Tab


Direct-Link Options Tab


You can copy the special pricing URL from the Direct-Link tab or from the Portal Pricing list directly.


Customization Summary

There are a variety of options to customize your Booking Portal. Feel free to mix and match various options, constraints, links, etc. to support your operational needs. There is no limit to the number of profile you can create so the options are endless.



Click here to open the legacy Portal Profile Configuration Guide.

Not updated for new portal but does provide a deeper dive into Portal Profiles and the underlying workflow.