We are developing our hotel management system (PMS) for our hotel. There are a number of questions:
An example is the site booking.com. He has his own calendar for managing the hotel's load and prices. This calendar has the possibility of sending to the PMS system through the XML calendar. In the choice of admin panel booking.com as a hotel manager there is a PMS selection functionality which to send the calendar synchronization with booking.com. There are about 300 of them.
And on the other hand in the PMS of the external platform there is a choice of sales channels, such sites as booking.com and others. And when I send the calendar synchronization with booking.com to the PMS system there is a choice also inside the PMS system online travel agency Booking.com.
Total questions:
How can I become an aggregator as a booking.com site so that we can be selected in PMS systems as an aggregator channel.
How can I unload my calendar in two third-party mode. Through XML, what are the other options? How does this work?
I am not sure if I understand you clearly but if you want to be able to sync with booking.com
you have to register as affiliate partner with booking.com
then you can request for developer page access
once you get the access for developer page, you can get an API Key and you can see the full XML API documentation.
Then you can start developing 2 way request and responses according to their document.
For starters, I will recommend Agoda or HomeAway.com
I need help in sending notifications to alexa device of a user (echo, dot, etc.. not the other non amazon alexa devices) from alexa skill i am building. I see quote maker doing it but, how its doing it is a blackbox.
For example if the user ordered some item through my skill (say abc org). I would like to notify user on their alexa devices about the status of order proactively ( eg, item shipped, or item out for deliver today).
Amazon has this already for amazon shopping, but i dont see much information on implementing the same for skills.
I saw quote maker creating a notification for self, but how its doing it is a blackbox
I had the exact same question and am still not 100% sure about the answer.
As best as I can tell, the Notifications API never made it out of developer preview, and instead has been replaced with the Proactive Events API.
Unfortunately, unless your skill needs to send notifications about trash pickup or sports scores, you're probably out of luck. Here is the complete list of all notifications types that are currently supported:
Weather alert
Sports event update
Message reminder
Order status update
Reservation confirmation
Trash collection reminder
Media content availability notification
Social game invitation notification
I'm in the process of creating a Facebook Messenger chatbot using Chatfuel.
It is designed to collect all the information about a certain musical band together in one place. It allows users to play the bands music via links to spotify, and to buy them through amazon, using an affiliate link. See a biography, link off to merchandise, watch youtube videos etc....
I've just watched a video on the review process and it tells me.... (Udemy course)
No marketing or promotional messages.
No advertising, sale or product announcements.
No Brand advertising, branded content.
No Newsletters or announcements
No Upselling or cross selling of products or services
No Referral program or incentive promotions
Yet on the Facebook Messenger page it tells me
Raise Awareness
Get your business, product or service in front of more people.
Acquire Customers
Generate more leads and turn your conversations into conversions.
Enable Transactions
Incorporate account linking and purchase flows to enable more transactions.
Robbie Williams and Aerosmith have both just released chatbots, which effective promote and sell their album, tour and merchendise by sending the user to various web pages, they don't actually do it in the chatbot.
My problem is that I cannot actually find this information on the Facebook site. I've looked through all the documentation and review policies and there is nothing about these restrictions.
I am wondering if this video is referring to unsolicited messages (broadcasting) sent by the chatbot rather than user button clicking?
Can anyone point me in the right direction to find the relevant docs? I feel I may be wasting my time developing this and need some official confirmation.
Thanks.
You should have a look at official policy page, "Comparison of Messaging Types" paragraph is a good summary. Basically there are two tipes of messaging that your bot can make:
Standard Messaging (inside 24 hours window from last user interaction with bot)
Subscription Messaging and Customer Matching (allows messaging outside 24 hours window)
Standard messaging allows all use cases including promotional material. I think that Udemy video might be outdated, hence this quote:
The restriction on promotional content has been removed for standard messaging.
I want to build an app whose core functionality is essentially the same as Pinger and other free SMS apps - that is, it needs to allow for texting without going through your phone's service provider by sending the data over the web. But I can't find any APIs or explanations as to how this is accomplished.
Pinger assigns you a phone number to use, which I assume means it must also run its own SMS gateways. But I don't know how to do either of these things (assign valid phone number and create SMS gateways), or whether I can even do them on my own and purely programatically. Does anybody know where I can find this information?
TL;DR: Essentially, I need to know how to create my own Pinger/free SMS app. My app will be different, but will employ the same underlying functionality.
SMS messages are not free to send and this is why Pinger's business model is based on advertising when you send and receive their messages, see http://www.pinger.com/content/advertise.html
In order to do this yourself you would need to work with one of the companies that offers a SMS gateway. You could use a whole bunch of different providers, take a look at this post I previously made with some of them How to send SMS programatically in a professional and reliable way?
I also add, you would need to work out a suitable business model to pay for the SMS messages you plan to send :-).
I have seen a disturbing trend where websites are starting to require verification sent to cellphones by text message (SMS). Gmail and Facebook are two of them. What I want to know are the following:
Is it a good idea to start requiring cellphones instead of emails now?
How do I do it on my own website?
Edit
Here are some of my new questions on the topic in response to the answers:
I see that most of you are saying that SMS registrations is ok. But what about the people who don't have cell phones? And why is it accepted to give out your cell phone information freely?
Do those big providers really pay per message to a gateway service? Is it not possible to set up a server with the correct SMS software, or at least buy a subscription directly instead of having a middleman?
Most SMS Gateway services have some kind of API. An HTTP interface seems to be the norm.
Just make sure you sign up for a service that allows receiving of messages because not all do. It's more work for them since they have to send some kind of data back to you.
Some services offer send receipts too which lets you see if the receiver got the SMS.
Some examples follows.
Esendex API docs
TxtLocal
In regard to question number one, I think Commander Keen's advice is sound.
It is a good idea if you want to limit the number of fake accounts. I see it used lots in local newspapers here in Norway. I guess it makes people think twice before posting useless crap on their discussion forums.
But do you really hate your users that much? Gmail and Facebook are big enough now that people will accept jumping a few hurdles to use the service, but you need something really interesting to make the user accept this inconvenience.
SMS is the reason I can't use App Engine ().
The first problem is that some people do not have cell phone. I can use Facebook almost completely without validating cell, but uses CAPTCHA to get through certain actions. Therefore, CAPTCHA is one of the good alternatives.
I personally think, cell phone stuff belongs to cell phones and should not be in the Web.
What if every forum admins and newbie PHP developers in the world used SMS validation and someone hacked (cracked) into their database? Do you trust a small forum? Is anti-fraud measure required so desperately?
If your site is very large and popular, it may be good to get SMS validation.
As a member of CS Networks Support team. I am going to give you some answers.
People use their cell phones as a medium of verification, so the service providers can be sure that registered member is not a bot or something else.
Yes it is true. Big providers pay for SMS gateway services. Yes it is possible to have an infrastructure like that, but it is recommended that you have a team of people that are in this business for a long period of time.
The one main reason for using SMS as a way of authentication is that you link the account to a mobile phone, which effectively reduces the chance of fake user accounts by a very large margin.
To implement this feature, you will need to sign an agreement with a SMS Gateway that has coverage for the countries (and operators) that your customers are located in..
Most SMS Gateways can easily be integrated in your software, and will most often provide you with access to all the mobile operators that you require.
I would not recommend using an email to sms gateway if you can use an API, as these are most often less responsive than using a proper API to send messages, where you will get a live connection with the SMS gateway itself, not an email server in front of the gateway.
Examples of SMS Gateway providers:
PSWinCom - www.pswin.com (Note: I am employed in this company.)
Clickatell - www.clickatell.com
HSL - http://www.hslsms.com/
Answer to 1st question: One reason which I can think of that led Gmail and Facebook to follow this trend is the emergence of bogus accounts. Now-a-days, there are use-n-throw email availabe for free like www.10minutemail.com which gives u an email address for 10 minutes. So the use can take such an email address and start a new account in the site.
But in the case of 'sms'-registration, I dont know of any such use-n-throw service provider. So everyone needs to give his own number for registration. This leads to registration by legitimate users.
Answer to 2nd question: This depends on which language u are using. Moreover, you may need a SMS gateway to achieve this.
Since you dont care about the language, try to look for SMS gateway for sending sms through computer or your web server. Some of the cellphone network providers provide an email service to send sms to a phone. For example, you are sending an sms to +910123456789 of 'xyz' network provider, you just need send the sms in the body of an email with the to-address as +910123456789#xyzmail.com
'xyzmail' part of the mail address will change according to the network provider. Plus this option is not found to be reliabe.
check out TeleSign.com
they offer phone verification solutions that you can implement into your website
phone verification is a way to reduce fraud and spam significantly
There's a trust issue here that goes both ways. If you're the provider of a service that can be spammed, you can trust that your users are people and that their email addresses are legitimate. This is probably irrational. Or you can force your users to trust that you'll deal with their cell number information safely. Many users will feel this is irrational.
And then there are people without cell phones (I happen to be one). Most discussions on the web aren't very important, but if you're trying to foster a discussion on anything important, limiting the discussion to people that have cell phones and know how to receive text messages will limit your discussion to the viewpoints of the rich and technologically savvy. If you're providing an important service like email, a texting requirement sets up a barrier to entry and saps the democratizing power of the web. It amounts to shunting the cost of your spam problem onto the disadvantaged. To me, that's unacceptable. Again, though, if your site is just inane pop culture or a marketing exercise, as most are, who cares, go right ahead.