nfm.ca

1. nfm.ca Step – by – Step For Consolidators

2. Introduction • Different levels of Access • Consolidators have two profiles: 1- Consolidation Control Panel and 2- A Travel Agency with Staff IDs (in order to make bookings.) • Agencies also have two levels: 1- Control Panel and 2- Staff (to identify booking owners.)

3. Separation! • This is where this presentation will start splitting off for: • Consolidators; this one’s for you. • Agents (have another presentation).

4. A brief aside here:for Consolidators in the MallScans & Hits ??????? • We are working with Sabre’s Web-services. • Hits are reduced because: • GDS(P): Public fares are obtained only once per request (for now NFM’s JJ0C absorbs this scanning). • GDS(N): Each Consolidator’s IPCC scans for their own Nets • Con: Then the engine looks at each Consolidators Con (i.e., uploaded ,csv files) paper fares • We end up showing each fare basis from all these results only ONCE with the minimum markup applied by any Consolidator. • This means that our first FQ display is tremendously reduced (minimal hits) and no multiplication of the same fare (for each Consolidator). It is vendor-neutral at this point. • When a specific Airline and FB is chosen, only then do we show which are the Consolidators offering this particular fare.

5. Overview • Consolidator’s and Agent’s Control Panels look alike but have different powers. • Each staff member belongs to an Agent and has her/his profile within that Agency. • A Consolidator’s control is basically about enabling or disabling Travel Agencies, setting mark-ups (or discounts) and Controlling the Consolidator environment. • In order to actually make bookings, a Consolidator has to request the creation of a Travel Agency access profile and then create Agency staff who can book as if they were a separate Agency. The rest of this presentation deals with the Consolidator aspect. For Agency stuff, we need to look at the step-by-step for Agents presentation.

6. Consolidator. The log-in boxes or screens look the same for Consolidator or Agent or Staff. The Power is in the ID you use.

7. You’re “IN” The program will remind you that you’re “IN” as a Consolidator (or an Agent or an AgentStaff).

8. Staff logged in • System reminds you if you’re logged in as Super-Powerful Consolidator or as Agent (Superman -Agency) or AgentStaff (Superstaff). • Please do not try to book if you’re in as a Consolidator or as an Agent (Agent = Agency in this case). • Log-in as Staff i.e., Maria or Joe or Superstaff of the Agency

9. GDS’s? Attention GDS personnel: This module can be enabled/disabled • Each Consolidator can select one or more GDSes (coming soon. For now, it’s Sabre) and provide the access codes for the engine. • You (the Consol) also get to select to which Queue in which Pseudo-City and with which remark (PIC for Sabre) newly created PNRs get sent. • Also, for payments applied after the creation of the PNR, there’s a different (or the same, if you wish) queue. • You can also de-activate/activate any GDS (if applicable to you).

10. Fare Loading Tab • View, Copy, Delete, Load. It seems simple, but that’s where all your paper (or .csv) contracts reside and will be: Viewed, Copied (be patient), Deleted or Loaded (and Edited, if need be).

11. View Con fares You can narrow down your view to: Airline, From, To, cities or contract name. Clicking on the contract ID (circled), you open the Control Panel for that Contract

12. View a Con contract You have different tabs for different areas (ticketing, routings, Hi-Lo, rules,etc…) of a contract. It’s just a different view from that one contract’s line in the .csv file You can view the .csv file by clicking on “view Fare Sheet” View Fare Sheet Yes it “is” a bit faint. It will be corrected

13. View a Faresheet So, we have clicked on “View Fare Sheet”. It’s the same Excel.csv file that was uploaded for the whole contract containing the fare we’re looking at. This sample below happens to be a two-line contract. Some are 500 or 600 lines, or more, long . It’s easier to make changes in a spreadsheet view than in GUIs for different parts of each line. So………..

14. Edit Faresheet I have opened a View Fare Sheet and made a change to it. When I try to close it, I get offered: Save changes or Discard or Keep the document Open. If I choose to Save: see next screen where (and how) your data is protected

15. Save and Edit Faresheet Having clicked “Save”, the engine lets me save the changed .csv file on my own local hard drive, where I can edit it to my specifications and then upload it to my own database on NFM.

16. Fare loading tab We have seen the View Fares and its ramifications. Delete is self-explanatory Copy and Upload: Every Con fare uploaded by anyone is available to ALL to copy (instead of having to create the spreadsheet themselves) and then edit to your liking, Or, you can create the spreadsheets yourselves and upload them to your database, where they’ll also be available to be copied by any Consolidator who needs them. It’s a common pool to start with, but the copies of the Copied databases are linked to the engine of the Consolidator who copied them. N.B. After you have copied a contract, it will no longer be shown to YOU as a Contract-to-be-copied. This will avoid confusion. Yes you can’t see much here, but this is a Taj page showing some Alio fares that were NOT copied but are available to this Consolidator.

17. Uploading your own .csv files If you have previously used Openfares’ s spreadsheets, 110 or 154 column formats, then you have nothing new to learn. Our system accepts them and transmogrifies them to our nfm.ca formats. And whatever you upload will be available to all other Consolidators to copy (and v.v. thus saving a lot of you the trouble and expense of loading your own paper contracts.) Naturally, you’ll have to edit them to make sure that they conform to your policies, markups, remarks, special handling, etc…

18. Mark-ups (and discounts) Under Markups, you can manipulate by Fare, by Airline, by Price or establish a general default. The Airline one is the most important one.

19. Markups (Airlines) • Search by Airline, To, From and/or Class to view (in order to view or edit or delete). • Adding new markups is where it gets “interesting”.

20. Add New Markup(s) • Quite self-explanatory • One Airline at a time • Multiple From, To and Classes. • Markups or discounts + or – $ amounts and/or %ages. • Per Fare Type: GDS(P) or GDS(N) or Con. • OW and/or RT separately or together, as per policy. Flexibility and Control

21. Reports, Search for bookings • Even though Consolidator staff prefer to search in their GDS, the facility exists here. • Search by RecLoc has been implemented in the Agents’ module. It will be implemented here soon (but is not an urgent item.)

22. Reports • Will show details of each booking (even though, as we said, consultants would much prefer to work in their GDS environment).

23. Agents (The Consolidator’s clients, in the Mall) • Any Travel Agency that applies to “join” the Mall, upon being OK’ed and registered by the Mall admin, is automatically enabled to access and book ALL Consolidators. An email is sent to All Consolidators apprising them of the fact that Agency ABC has been registered. • Any Consolidator can then choose to disable that Agency from seeing and booking their fares (and can re-enable it at a future date, depending on circumstances.) • Searching for a specific agency is done using any string (in their name or telephone number), or by going to the appropriate initial number (1…0) or letter (a…z) anchor point.

24. .csv list of Agencies • From the details of the Agencies, the “Download CSV” tab allows a Consolidator to download —in *.csv format— the list of ALL the Agencies on the Mall. • To build or add to their (e-)mailing lists or just to have 

25. The “Other” Tab • Delivery Methods (and costs) • Consolidator’s Profile (This one’s important enough to merit its own Slide). • Statutory Holidays. Not for fun but so as not to have a 7TAWddmmm/ fall on such a date. • Weekly timings. Hours during which the office is open and can accept bookings UP to the times (per day of week) shown. • Contract Bulk Airlines. Those Airlines for which we know we need to use CB and PJCB; so as not to waste resources using these codes for non-CB Carriers.

26. Kill 2 birds with 1 stoneor as we prefer to say:One is the Other……. • The Consolidator Booking engine can be a Standalone. • The Same engine can integrate the Consolidator into the nfm.ca Mall • And conversely if the Consolidator starts in the Mall, the same engine will be his Standalone.

27. The “Other” Tab Consolidator’s Profile (This one’s important enough to merit its own Slide, which is THIS one). The Consolidator ID number is the Identifier in the DB, but, notice where it says Time Zone. This is so that Ticketing Time Limits are indicated according to “real” Consolidator local “Office Open” times ...and that's it, folks...!