The Partner Dashboard provides an engine for matching rules to user groups.
For example, a company may have a travel policy that allows executives to fly business class, while non-executive employees are allowed only to fly coach or economy class.
Groups make it possible for you to assign different rules to different types of users. A user’s access to services and other options is determined by the groups to which the user belongs.
This topic walks you through the mechanism that assigns rules to groups, so that you can navigate from a user group definition (such as VIPs or Everyone) to the actual configuration settings and policy choices in order to make changes.
You can find out how travel policies and display configurations are set up for travelers by clicking the Service Rules link under the Rules tab. You can then edit the service (in this case, Travel) for a specific group of travelers. The entire process is described in Service Rules, but the following are quick examples.
You might want to set travel policy to allow an executive to book a business class seat on a flight, but show business class as “out of policy” to a regular employee, as shown:
The following steps show how you would navigate to that policy to view it or change it:
As you can see in the above figure, the Business Class Policy is set to "Yes" for the US VIP group. This is why their business class flights are not marked as "out of policy". For details about seating class policies, see "Setting Seating Class Policies" in Adding or Editing a Travel Policy.
To recap: Each group can have different sets of travel policies. In this case, we have a VIP Policy set that we can assign to groups such as US VIP, and a Default Travel Policy set that we can assign to the Everyone group.
The policy sets have within them lists of policies, such as the Business Class Policy. For more information about travel policies, see Adding or Editing a Travel Policy.
The display configuration controls how the system displays policy information to the user. You can control some of the options that appear for flight, hotel, and other services, and configure search results, show certain fare types, and so on. The entire process is described in Adding or Editing a Display Configuration.
For example, for most employees, you can show hotel search results separated into tabs in order to direct them to preferred hotels. On the other hand, for executives, you can mix the hotel results into only one display to make choices easier.
The following steps show how you would navigate to that display configuration to view it or change it:
As you can see, the Hotel Shopping Display Configuration is set to Option 1 for the US VIP group. This is why hotels show up under one tab.
Each group can have different sets of display configurations. In this case, we have a VIP Display set that we can assign to groups such as US VIP, and a Default Display set that we can assign to the Everyone group.
The display configuration sets have within them lists of display configurations, such as the Hotel Shopping Display Configuration.
These are described in detail in Adding or Editing a Display Configuration.
An organization typically needs more than just the Everyone group, which includes all of the organization's employees. You might need a subset of Everyone for executives (such as the "US VIP group" in the previous section). You might need a different subset that uses a different agency configuration, such as one set up for a different country or a different global distribution system (GDS) such as Sabre or Apollo.
You want to apply rules to everyone, but also create groups with rules that are different. Since everyone is automatically in the Everyone group, the groups you create can be prioritized to decide which rules will be applied when a user is a member of more than one group. In other words, if you are a VIP, you are probably a member of the VIP group as well as the Everyone group; however, the VIP group is prioritized so that when you book travel, the rules of the VIP group apply to you.
The Priority column appears to the left of each group. All employees are members of the Everyone group. Other groups are ordered by the lowest number to the highest number.
When a user creates a travel booking, the system checks to see if the user is in any of the groups, working down from the highest priority number to the lowest. For example, if a Canadian-based executive (a member of the CA VIP group as shown above) creates a booking, the system would use the rules for the CA VIP group.
When a US-based executive (a member of the US VIP group) creates a booking, the system checks to see if the user is in any of the groups. Since the executive is in the US VIP group, the system uses the rules for US VIP group.
When a regular employee (a member of the Everyone group) creates a booking, the system checks to see if the user is in any of the groups higher in priority, and since the employee is not in any of those groups, the system uses the rules for the Everyone group.
The following is a step-by-step example of how you can set up rules for groups, and why you would set up one or more VIP groups in a certain priority above the Everyone group:
Now that you understand why you would create groups and prioritize them, you can start creating groups as described in Groups Tab for Managing Groups, and assign rules to the groups as described in Rules Tab for Managing Rules. |