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BookingBuilder Desktop Dialogs Task Tray Icon The task tray icon tells you the current status or state of BookingBuilder Desktop by changing colors. When you hover your mouse over the icon, you will see additional information. These are all the possibilities: When BBD first starts, you get a yellow icon and a message telling you it is retrieving information from our server: Once it finishes retrieving information, it goes into Standby mode, waiting for a GDS to open. The icon is yellow, and if you hover your mouse over it you will see:
When it detects a GDS, it then waits 10 seconds and connects to it. When connected to a GDS, it is Active and the icon is green:
If you hover your mouse over the green icon, you will see:
When BookingBuilder Desktop is busy, such as when the Availability Dialog is open, the icon will be red, and hovering your mouse over it will show:
If BookingBuilder Desktop is unable to reach our server, you will see:
If you click the icon in this state, you will see:
In order to operate, BookingBuilder Desktop must communicate with our server. If you have changed your network configuration, click the Test Communications with Web Services button. If your internet connection is down, click OK and wait for it to come back up. BookingBuilder Desktop must communicate with our server on a regular basis so it can download its configuration, supplier city pair lists, and other required data. If you have a proxy server, additional configuration might be required. When BookingBuilder Desktop runs for the first time, it tries several ways to communicate with our server, including any proxy settings used by Internet Explorer. In most cases it will be successful, and will not require any additional configuration. However, if it is unable to determine your settings, or if your proxy server requires authentication, you will see:
In most cases you will use Proxy Server Type "WEB Standard", and if authentication is required, "Basic" authentication. If those don't work for you, try the other options until you find settings that are compatible with your proxy server. Each time you make a change, click the Test button. It will tell you when it is successful. Whenever you enter an availability in your GDS that matches city pairs flow by airlines in BookingBuilder Desktop, you will see the Notification Dialog or Prompt:
It will go away with the next GDS entry, or after 30 seconds. If you click on it or press the hotkey combination, the Availability Dialog will open. Note: Some GDS emulators are not compatible with hotkeys. In those cases, the hotkey text will not appear in the Notficiation Dialog. Whenever a GDS fare quote response is received (Amadeus FXC; Apollo $BBQ and FS; Sabre WPNI; Worldspan 4PLI) BookingBuilder Desktop recognizes that and displays this Notification Dialog:
Clicking it or pressing the hotkey combination will bring you to the Availability Dialog with the options filled in based upon the GDS fare search results. The Availability Dialog is where you enter the travel dates and city pairs. In most cases, it will already be filled in from either an availability command, GDS fare quote or existing itinerary. As you change the information in it, the list of airlines will change automatically, showing only those that fly corresponding routes to the dates and city pairs entered. Just above the list of airlines, you see "Web Sites to Check - 4 total". If there are more sites than fit on this screen, you can scroll down to see them. If you make this screen bigger, it will remember that and appear the new size the next time it appears.
To set options for the various airlines, click the "Additional Options" button next to each one. You can enter usernames, passwords, default confirmation email addresses, and other information. If the airline has a corporate ID, such as Company Blue or SWABIZ, you can select the appropriate ID by clicking the List button. When you click that button, you will see the list of IDs entered in the Configuration Website as well as any entered locally. You can add and remove IDs locally, but those changes will not be reflected on the website. We strongly recommend only using the website to manage your IDs, but you have the flexibility of managing them locally as well. When you click "Open Selected Web Sites" all of the selected sites will be opened, you will be logged in to each one, and the availability request will be filled out. When you click "Get Fare Quotes from Selected Sites", Instant Fare Quote will be started. Click here for detailed information on Instant Fare Quote. Next to the dates on this screen are up and down arrows to allow you to easily increment and decrement the dates. There are also calendar buttons. When you click one of the calendard buttons, you will see:
The calendar shows an entire year, and the currently selected date is highlighted. Click the date you want, and the calendar will go away and the selected date will appear in the blank on the Availability Dialog. For a one-way trip, check the one-way box. By default, Round-Trip is checked, and when you fill in the first city pair, the second is filled in with the reverse. If you start entering a third leg, Round-Trip will automatically uncheck, or you can manually uncheck it. Since most trips are round-trips, this is a convenience. When BookingBuilder Desktop reads profile information from your GDS, it displays it in the Profile Dialog. Since you might have multiple phone number, addresses and email addresses in your profiles, you are given an opportunity to select the correct ones for each booking. In the below dialog, you would select the appropriate address, phone number and email address:
All names in the PNR are listed under "Card Holder", so you can select the appropriate one. If your GDS has a place for the cardholder name, that will be read and will in the drop-down list. Next to each name if the FF Number column. If it says, "None" it means that none was found, so you can click None and enter the appropriate one. If more than one is found for the site on which you are making a booking, click the number and select the correct one. If you did not have the correct profile displayed, click "Display Different Profile". BookingBuilder Destop will prompt you to display the correct profile and click OK. Note: Even though this is called the "Profile Dialog", the information is read from a PNR. It was designed this way so that if you have multiple travelers, you can copy all the relevant data into your PNR and BookingBuilder Desktop can read it from one place. It also ensures that you have a "shell" PNR set up to receive the confirmation details when the booking is complete. Whenever you complete a booking on a supplier web site, BookingBuilder Desktop reads the details and displays the Confirmation Dialog:
This dialog shows the flight and fare details, the name(s) and other information. When you highlight a name, below it you will see the fare ladder for that name and the ticket number, if available. Many web sites do not show the ticket numbers on the confirmation pages but send them via email. To enter them here, select the correct name, and enter the ticket number in the blank below the name, then click "Set". The ticket numbers will be saved with this confirmation and will be entered into your PNR according to your GDS entry settings. At the bottom of this screen are some options you can set with each confirmation. By default all options are checked, so you will get remarks, air segments, non-air segments and the pricing record entered into your PNR. If you want only air segments, for example, uncheck Non-Air Segments. Note: Suppliers periodically change their websites. We do our best to keep BookingBuilder Desktop fully up-to-date. However, sometimes changes are implemented without our knowledge, and the confirmation details may not be read properly. If you notice that the information on this screen does not match the information on the web page, click the "Page Does Not Match" button. This will capture the web page and send it to us so we can update the programming to read it properly. All confirmations are saved until departure so they can easily be re-entered later if necessary. To access them, right-click the task tray icon and click Open Saved Confirmation:
That will display a list of the saved confirmations; open the one you need. BookingBuilder Desktop has been designed to keep nearly all the configuration options on the web site. However, there are two settings that can be configured locally. When you right-click the task tray icon and click Configuration, you will see:
The first blank contains the location where confirmations will be saved. If you want all of your agents to be able to view all confirmations, change this to a shared folder. When you change this location, you will be asked if you want to copy any existing saved confirmations to the new location. If your proxy server settings have changed, click "Test Communications with Web Services" to reconfigure the proxy settings in BookingBuilder Desktop. If you contact the Help Desk due to a problem with BookingBuilder Destop, you might be asked to click "View Error Logs". BBD writes certain information into those to help with troubleshooting. Whenever BookingBuilder Desktop contacts our servers, it can be given an updated list of servers. As we add additional servers, BookingBuilder Desktop needs to know the complete list so if there is a problem with one it can switch to another. This list is stored in the registry, and if it somehow gets corrupted, BookingBuilder Desktop might not be able to contact our servers. In that case, our Help Desk might ask you to click the "Clear Server List" button. |
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