Triggers give you a powerful way to communicate automatically. You can respond to guests with personalized messages or notify third parties without lifting a finger! To read more about triggers, check out our Trigger overview support article. We've created a small library of trigger examples to help get you started.
In this example, we're dealing with a booking for the following scenario:
Scenario: Notify Property Owners of a Cancellation
Keeping your property owner in the loop about cancellations is imperative! You'll want to notify your property owners about cancellations as fast as possible. OwnerRez can do that for you with message triggers.
Using our Property Management premium feature, you can notify property owners directly using PM Owner field codes. For both of these examples, we will include both the PM Owner field codes and just regular Names, Email addresses and Phone numbers for co-hosts.
Here are the steps for how to set up a template and trigger for this scenario:
- Create a Booking Template to Notify Property Owners of a Cancellation
- Create a Trigger that Applies to a Cancellation to Notify Your Property Owners
Create a Booking Template to Notify Property Owners of a Cancellation
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the message you want to send. Since this template will be used for booking cancellations, create a "Booking" type of template.
There are two choices for the type of template you can create - email, and SMS. These are the delivery methods that will be used for your response. To send these types of templates, you'll need your property owner's contact information you can send the message to. For instance, if you want to send an SMS message, you'll need your property owner's cell phone number.
Notifying by Email
First, we'll create an email template, so go to Settings > Templates > Email tab > click the Create Email Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open an email editor with some sample field codes filled in. For detailed information about how email templates and field codes work, check out the email templates overview article and field codes articles.
Copy and paste the following values into your new email template.
Name:
Notify Property Owner of a Cancellation Email Template
From Name:
{MYCOFULL}
From Address:
{MYEMAIL}
To Name:
{ONAME} or Property Owner Name
To Address:
{OEMAIL} or Property Owner email address
Subject:
Cancellation Notification for {BARR}-{BDEP} at {PDISPNAME}
Body:
Hi {ONAME} or Property Owner Name,
The {BSOURCE} booking, {BARR} to {BDEP} at {PDISPNAME} for {BNGUEST} guests, was canceled.
Booking amount was {BTAMT} minus {OCOMM} commission and expenses.
{MYFIRST}
If you're wondering what those field codes do, check out the field codes support article or use the "Preview" button on the template to take a live look.
Here's a quick preview of what the above email message looks like:
Notice how clean and personalized the content is. The subject line is dynamic to the property, and original dates booked, so it will match the original guest booking. It includes the property {PDISPNAME}, booking dates {BARR} to {BDEP}, number of guests {BNGUEST}, and the listing channel source {BSOURCE} field codes. In other words, it looks like a hand-written manual response, even though it wasn't.
After copying and pasting the above subject and body into your template, feel free to play with the words and styles to make it your own. However, remember that we are creating a message specifically to notify your property owner of a cancellation. If this template is used for a guest, the message body would be confusing to your guest. Similarly, if you do not include the {BARR} arrival date and {BDEP} departure date field codes in either the Subject field or body of the email template, the property owner will not see the original booking dates displayed.
Are you a co-host? Notice the use of the {ONAME} Owner Name, {OEMAIL} Owner email address, and {OCOMM} commission PM Owner field codes. If you are not using the Property Management premium feature, you can still manually enter your property owner's name and email address into the Name and Address fields, and manually enter your commission percentage into the body of the email template.
We are now armed with a solid email notification for property owners of any cancellations. But what about sending an SMS message to notify property owners of cancellations?
Notifying by SMS
If you have your property owners' cell phone numbers, let's put them to good use by notifying them of cancellations.
Using our SMS premium feature, you can notify them directly via SMS to their cell phone. For detailed information about how SMS templates work, check out the SMS Templates and field codes support articles.
To create an SMS template, go to Settings > Templates > SMS tab > click the Create SMS Template button > select the "Booking" option. This will open an SMS message editor with some sample field codes filled in.
Copy and paste the following values into your new SMS template.
Name:
Notify Property Owner of a Cancellation SMS Template
To Phone Number:
{OPHONE} or Property Owner cell phone number
Body:
{ONAME} or Property Owner Name, the BSOURCE} for {BNGUEST} guests, {BARR} to {BDEP} at {PDISPNAME} was canceled. Booking amount was {BTAMT} minus {OCOMM} commission and expenses. 😓
Once again, smack that Preview button to see how this looks live! SMS templates are similar to channel templates in that they are plain text with no colors or formatting options, but you can still dress them up with personalized field codes and light-hearted emojis.
Here is a quick look at how the above SMS template looks in preview mode:
Not a fan of emojis? No worries, edit that part out!
You'll notice that this SMS template differs from the email templates in that it is much shorter. Instead, it's a quick sentence to notify your property owners of the cancellation. If you'd rather say something else - that's totally fine.
Now that we have some message templates created, it's time to configure the trigger that will send them.
Create a Trigger that Applies to a Cancellation to Notify Your Property Owners
Since each trigger can only send one message template, you'll need to create a trigger for each type of message you send. Above, we crafted messages for email and SMS, so we'll need to create two triggers to send each one.
First, we'll create a trigger to send the email message. Navigate to Settings > Messaging > Triggers > and click + Create Trigger to pull up the new trigger screen.
Here is a list of all the settings the trigger needs to have:
- Type: Immediate
- Event: Booking is canceled/deleted
- Action: Email Templates > Notify Property Owner of a Cancellation Email Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run as soon as any cancellation is received or recorded in your account. Remember that cancellations can be received or recorded in different ways.
This trigger has no Conditions applied to it because we want to notify our property owners of every cancellation.
You may want to add other conditions, but for now, this is enough to make our trigger send the email message to notify property owners when cancellations come in.
But what if you have more than one property, each with a different property owner? Clearly, you'd have to add the Condition of "Property is Only" and select those specific properties to ensure that the correct property owner is notified for only the properties they own.
Finally, the last thing we select is the "Action" for the email template we want to send. Since this trigger is supposed to send an email message, select the email template and be careful not to select the SMS template.
At this point, your trigger should look like this:
Nice and simple!
These actions do exactly what they say.
That's it! Click Save, and now you have a trigger ready to go.
But we're not done. You created a template for an SMS message, too, so now you need to create a trigger to send that.
Using the instructions above, create one more trigger with the same type, event, and conditions, but select the SMS template as your "Action" instead of email.
There is no "Phone Number on File" condition, but that's okay because the trigger won't send an SMS message if there's no phone number to send it to. If you didn't use a PM Owner field code, you manually entered your property owner's cell phone number in the Phone Number Field. The trigger will silently skip sending a message if there is no way to send it.
All done! You now have active triggers in place that will automatically notify your property owners of a cancellation!