On this day in 1918, Margaret Owen set a typing speed record of 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter. Imagine that! Owen briskly followed up on that success by authoring the wildly popular book, The Secret of Typewriting Speed, in 1919.
Ok, maybe not "wildly popular", but there are still a couple of copies floating around on eBay if you are looking for one. While you are waiting for your copy of to arrive, read all about our October 21st release with 5 updates and October 14th release with 4 updates detailing Batch Tag editing feature and SMS Branding. No speed reading allowed!
New Features
Bulk-Update Tags for Contacts, Inquiries, Quotes, Bookings, Properties, and Owners
OwnerRez users can add tags for all kinds of things for Contacts, Inquiries, Quotes, Bookings, Properties, and Owners. But, rather than editing individually, OwnerRez users also have the ability to set tags for multiple properties, bookings, quotes, inquiries, guests and owners all in one quick process.
For this example, we will demonstrate the process in the booking area but the procedure remains the same in the properties, quotes, inquiries, guests and owners areas. Setting multiple tags in the bookings area is only available in the List view.
In the Bookings list view, users can select individual bookings (or properties, quotes, inquiries, guests and owners) by clicking in the individual checkboxes on the first left column as shown below. Note that we have selected and will edit seven of the bookings that have no tags because we want to add the same tags for all bookings selected.
Users can also Select All by clicking on the green icon on the top left column as shown below.
But we are going to set tags for just these seven bookings to add ,
and
as shown below. Users also have the option to Select All or Clear tags in this dialog window. Click on Save.
Tags are only limited by your imagination. Learn more about this topic with our Batch Tags support article.
Enhancements & Tweaks
Handle SMS Standard Brands Additional Requirements
Sending SMS messages is highly regulated. An "SMS Brand" is basically just a profile (ie. business name, phone, and address) that you provide to carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile that identify you when they are sending your SMS messages to their customers. It's basically like Caller ID for SMS.
Creating an SMS Brand will allow OwnerRez to manage your sending reputation, but we are required to collect and verify some additional info about you and your business. We currently only offer SMS brands for businesses with tax identification.
Want to learn more? See our SMS Brands support article.
Bug Fixes
Apply Damage Protection on Calendar Sync Bookings. Bookings that synced via an iCal-based calendar importing and exporting process did not have damage protection applied even if the OwnerRez user had damage protection turned on. Damage Protection will now be properly applied for all bookings based on the OwnerRez user's preferences, regardless whether properties are API Integrated or synced via an iCal-based calendar importing and exporting process.
Booking.com Detailed Guest Counts. When we originally implemented occupancy, booking.com didn't have much info on guests and guest counts for bookings not showing the correct party size in OwnerRez. This could cause confusion for cleaners. We got in touch with booking.com support and we have adjusted the parsing logic so that guest counts are correctly populated in OwnerRez as expected.
Don't Blow Up on Preview of Bounce System Alert. OwnerRez has tweaked the alert preview for the "Email Message Bounces" so that users see the bounce alert rather than the email. We also optimized the query to promptly locate and display email bounce alerts for users to preview.
Fix eProcessing Network Security Deposits Interpreted as Sales Instead of Holds. OwnerRez security deposits place a hold against a guest's credit card prior to guest arrival - not a charge, just a hold. It came to our attention that some eProcessing Network Security Deposits were being run through as a sale rather than an authorization only (hold). And some transactions were not refunded at all. We have resolved this error so that eProcessing Network Security Deposits will process correctly.
Fix Issue Where Charge Cannot be Edited on iOS 16 iPhone When PM is Disabled. An October 9, 2022 update to the system generated a bug affecting iOS 16 iPhones only. Charges could not be edited/changed on iOS 16 iPhones. OwnerRez has resolved this issue.
Make Photo Captions That Start With # Not Freeze Page. An OwnerRez user tried to put # at the start of some photo captions indicating what property/unit it was. Doing so made the page freeze periodically and the photos didn't rotate properly. Also, when viewing the full-page photo carousel, the caption did not display at all. We made some adjustments so that # is able to work at the beginning of captions with refactoring to ignore it where needed.
Transform Arrival Date to Stay Date Criteria on Vrbo Percentage of Subtotal Fees. We realized that when users created a season with a surcharge rule, the rate generator to combine arrival date criteria into stay date intersect criteria wasn't actually syncing. This has been resolved.