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Incoming API - Advanced configuration
NOTE THIS IS AN ADVANCED TOPIC
The TourCMS incoming API system enables a TourCMS to check availability / pricing with a 3rd party reservation system
If you need to discriminate your answer between distribution partners (e.g. giving differing pricing / availability) and where this knowledge is held in your 3rd party reservation system then there are two approaches:
- Check availability webhook - contains agent_id - and use that agent_id to determine who the travel agent is what what your reply may like to be
- Store specific agent credentials / details on a per travel agent basis (see below)
Travel agent specific credentials
On each each travel agent record (in travel agent manager) is a field (textarea) that can contain a value (or multiple values - e.g. in a JSON snippet). Set this value to be what you wish. E.g. you could use it for holding an accounting reference for your 3rd party reservation system, you could hold your 3rd party reservation system API credentials such as username and password
This value will be sent to the Check Availability webhook, and returned by the Show Booking and Search Bookings API methods. i.e. whenever TourCMS is connecting to your 3rd party reservation system via code, we can tell the intermediate code the value and this can be used by your code in ways useful to you
A default value can be set in Configuration & Setup - Travel agent general settings
Channel specific credentials
Some accounts run a reservation system that expects the agent credentials in a format no other integration understands. That makes it impossible to connect a second integration on the same account, since both would have to share the one credentials field.
To allow this, a channel can be configured to keep its own agent credentials, entirely separate from the account wide and agent wide ones described above. This is an internal setting configured by Palisis, however you can load the credentials yourself once it is enabled for a channel.
For a channel configured this way, the value sent is resolved as follows:
- The credentials loaded for that travel agent on that channel
- If empty, the account default credentials loaded for that channel
- If empty as well, nothing is sent
The account wide and travel agent wide credentials are never used for these channels, not even as a fallback. An empty value is a valid outcome.
Once a channel is configured this way it stops appearing in the normal agent credentials boxes and gets one box of its own, in both Configuration & Setup - Agent credentials (for the account default) and on each travel agent record (for that agent). The setting can also be read and managed through the Show Channel, Create Channel and Update Channel API methods, as channel_specific_agent_credentials.
Example
Retail travel agents - do not set on a travel agent by travel agent basis - but use the default. i.e. all retail travel agents use the same value
Large online retailer - set a value (such as a JSON snippet containing API credentials for that specific retailer) on a per TourCMS travel agent perspective