Communication History?

Hi all--Is anyone familiar with the "Communication History" screen? The address bar says you'd get to it via the inbox, but the inbox tab doesn't have any sub-tabs and I can't get back to it.

I'm a bit confused between the Inquiries tab vs CRM tab, and now this "Communication History" page which actually I think is the best of all worlds.  It could have a number notification button to show Airbnb people waiting for replies, Email (ie Vrbo) people waiting for replies, and actually have a place to enter the other sources of inquiries, whether they turn into actual reservations or not..   

@support  **Could the Inquiries tab and Inbox tab be combined into THIS tab**  

And actually, Esmeralda doesn't show up at all on the "Inquiries" page.  I wanted to actually see how many Adults/Kids there were and there's no info at all from the Airbnb channel. Only the emails I marked as inquiries from my Gmail inbox.

Any thoughts??  TIA!!

Note that there's a global Communication History view that shows everything (with the various categories in different tabs):

https://secure.ownerrez.com/inbox/history/emails

Why isn't booking.com communication (messages sent using the API integration) showing on this screen? 

For example, the above is from a booking.com guest. I can see automatic messages sent to this guest when I look at booking.com website for hosts (I believe they call it the extranet...welcome to the 90s, I guess) or their pulse iOS app (booking.com for hosts) but I can't find the messages (or response to messages) anywhere in OR

Is this a missing feature?

The Booking.com API does not yet support messaging; however, that is changing. Booking.com (BDC) is releasing a series of API upgrades over the next 6-9 months. OwnerRez will write to each upgraded option as it is made available. Messaging is the first and it is actually under development now.

Just for me to understand the terminology, what is considered "messaging" when you take into account the following screenshot from booking.com owner side ?

This is an OR template I'm using, triggered when a new booking is created. As you can see, OR is using the template to send a "message" to the BDC user. This is my confusion: I assumed the fact that OR sent that template means the messaging API implementation is already done on OR (and BDC?) and what is missing is just a place in OR for me to read/write messages from/to BDC users.

Based on what you just said, it sounds that's wrong, and what you meant by "messaging" is something different (different API that is not fully implemented in OR maybe?)

Not viewing your personal account, but if your guest has a 'proxy' email address, meaning it is not their real direct email, but rather an email address with someguestname@guest.booking.com then the OwnerRez email you send is being directed to/through the Booking.com (BDC) messaging system.

In the not-too-distant future, you would be able to set up a channel message that would show the host & guest discussion from the BDC guest directly in the conversation thread of the booking. This can currently be done for API Airbnb & Vrbo connections.

Got it, that makes sense. Thank you for the explanation

Hi!

Any update on this feature with BDC? I API connected with them a week ago and have now a few bookings and can see how (desperately) needed and beneficial this feature would be for OR users and channel messaging.

Thanks!

🙏

Booking.com (BDC) is in the process of releasing a series of upgrades to their API over the next 6-9 months. OwnerRez will write to each new module as it is released. The first update will be messaging, planned for early 2024 if BDC acts according to plan.

I am continuing this conversation as of March 8, 2024.

Please do correct my understanding from https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/booking-com-messaging. If I see in Inbox "via Booking.com," does it mean my account is using the new BDC messaging API (screenshot below) ? 

Also this

Yes, that's correct!

Thank you for confirming Ken.

Follow up question: what is the deal here?

the last screenshot from my previous post is _the_ message thread in question. I double and triple check that. to me it looks like a bug where a BDC message thread from Inbox is not linked to the actual booking messages

When was that booking made?  I bet it was several months ago.  Remember, our integration with Booking.com internal messaging is fairly new, and, my understanding is that older bookings don't connect to that - just new ones.

If that's not the explanation, please write in to the Helpdesk with the specific booking so we can investigate further.

Aah, that makes sense. I will keep an eye on new bookings from BDC