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: Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure, Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property
It's imperative to keep your cleaning staff in the loop about guest departures or to remember to document the state of your property prior to the check-in of your next booking! Similar to the Remind Cleaning Staff About an Early Check-in and/or to Document the State of the Property, you can use message triggers in OwnerRez to set this up for individual bookings.
Here are the steps for how to set up a template and trigger for this scenario:
- Create a Booking Template to Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property
- Create a Trigger that Applies to a Booking to Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property
Create a Booking Template to Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property
Go to Settings > Templates to configure the message you want to send. Since this template will be used for bookings, 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 cleaners' contact information to send the message to. For instance, if you want to send an SMS message, you'll need your cleaners' 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:
Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property Email Template
From Name:
{MYCOFULL}
From Address:
{MYEMAIL}
To Name:
Cleaner Name
To Address:
Cleaner email address
Subject:
Scheduled Cleaning Reminder for {BDEP} at {PDISPNAME} for {BNGUEST} guests
Body:
Hi Cleaner name,
Just a reminder about the departure and scheduled cleaning on {BDEP} at {PDISPNAME} for {BNGUEST} guests.
Please remember to do a quick video to document the state of {PDISPNAME} prior to the next guest check-in. Thanks!
{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, departure date and number of guests, so it will match the guest booking. 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 remind your cleaning staff about guest departures and to document the state of the property prior to the next check-in. If this template is used for a guest, the message body would be confusing to your guest. Similarly, if you do not include the {BDEP} departure date field code in either the Subject field or body of the email template, the cleaner will not see booking dates displayed.
If you use the {BCLEANDATE} cleaning date field code that is manually set in individual OwnerRez bookings, you could include that as well.
We are now armed with a solid email reminder for cleaners about scheduled cleanings after guest departure. But what about sending an SMS message to remind cleaners about scheduled cleanings after guest departure and documenting the state of the property after guest check-out?
Notifying by SMS
If you have your cleaners' cell phone numbers, let's put them to good use by notifying them about guest departures.
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:
Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property SMS Template
To Phone Number:
Cleaner cell phone number
Body:
Cleaner first name, just a quick reminder about today's {BDEP} cleaning at {PDISPNAME} with {BNGUEST} departing guests. Please be sure to do a quick video to document the state of {PDISPNAME}. Thanks! 🎥
Once again, smack that Preview button to see how this looks live! SMS templates 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 template in that it is much shorter. Instead, it's a quick sentence to notify your cleaner about the scheduled cleaning and to document the state of the property. 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 Booking to Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property
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: Scheduled Time
- Event: 0 days after Booking has departed at 8:00 AM
- Action: Email Templates > Remind Cleaning Staff About Guest Departure and Scheduled Cleaning, and Document the State of the Property Email Template
Now, let's talk about what the above settings mean!
The Type and Event fields will make the trigger run to send your email template on the day of guest departure at 8:00 AM.
But what if you have more than one property, and each property has a different cleaning staff? Clearly, you'd have to add the Condition of "Property is Only" and select those specific properties to ensure that the correct cleaning staff is notified for the properties that they maintain only.
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, 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 a 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. And we manually entered our cleaner'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 remind your cleaning staff about a scheduled cleaning on the day of guest departure and also document the state of the property!