As communicated in December 2022, we have enabled the combined inventory feature for some of our customers who are participating in the BETA phase of the feature delivery. We expect to roll out this feature to all accounts approximately around mid of February.
As our app partners, this feature would bring in certain behavioral changes for multiple APIs that you might be using already. Therefore, we encourage all partners making use of the inventory API to take part in testing this feature, try the changes early, and adapt anything on your end, based on your observations.
For this, you can access our NSFW version of APIs. To highlight a few changes, here is what you can expect predominately:
Inventory NSFW APIs:
https://api.apaleo.com/swagger/index.html?urls.primaryName=Inventory%20NSFW
- GET /inventory/v0-nsfw/units to retrieve units (new "expand" value "connectedUnits")
- POST /inventory/v0-nsfw/units allows to create connecting units
- GET /inventory/v0-nsfw/unit-groups to retrieve unit groups (new "expand" value "connectedUnitGroups")
- POST /inventory/v0-nsfw/unit-groups allows to create connecting unit groups
IMPORTANT! Besides the Inventory API, you can expect some behavioral changes on the below APIs.
Availability APIs: https://api.apaleo.com/swagger/index.html?urls.primaryName=Availability%20NSFW
Please understand, the availability is calculated and adjusted automatically to handle the dependency between connecting units.
- If all the connected units are sold, then the property can no longer sell the connecting unit.
- If you have 2 suite rooms on a property, each of them with a combination of 2 double units. On a given day, if only 3 doubles are available, then the sellable unit count of the suite would become 1 but not 2.
- Also, If a suite is sold, then we also deduct 2 units from the double unit group.
Booking APIs: https://api.apaleo.com/swagger/index.html?urls.primaryName=Booking%20NSFW
- Assign / Unassign operations would have an impact on unit status and availability of unit group when involving combined inventory.
- When a connecting unit is assigned to a reservation, its connected units will also be marked as occupied=true, however, the reservation details are always present on the connecting unit.
- When one of the connected units is assigned to a reservation, the parent is partially occupied. Thus we also mark it as occupied=true; However, the reservation details are always present on the child unit in this case.
- It is possible to use blocks for combined inventory like any other regular inventory.
Operations APIs: https://api.apaleo.com/swagger/index.html?urls.primaryName=Operations%20NSFW
Please be aware of the dependency between connected units when handling maintenance, housekeeping, and night audit operations.
- Maintenance set on the connected unit would automatically be applied to its parent. If one of the connected units is on OOO, then it would make its connecting unit also as OOO.
- Similarly, the connected unit’s unitcondition would carry over to its parent. If a connecting unit consists of 3 connected units A, B and C. If unit A is dirty, B is cleantobeinspected and C is clean. Then their connecting unit would reflect the status of “Dirty” being the most impactful unitcondition.
- A combined unit doesn't carry any individual unitcondition of its own.
Potential use cases:
As an APP partner, integrated on Apaleo, what it means for me to have this functionality of Combined Inventory?
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As a Mobile guest journey app, if I offer a custom functionality of unit auto-assignment to my users when I check in a guest to a combined unit, I need to adjust my logic considering the impact on the combined unit and its underlying connecting units.
Similarly, when I check in a guest to a regular unit, which is part of a combined unit, I need to understand that it would impact the availability of assigning the combined unit to other reservations.
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As a Revenue Management application / benchmarking application / BI application, I need to understand how to handle the combined inventory when it comes to various metrics like availability, SoldUnitCount, occupancy%, RevPAR, and so on. I understand that revenue generated on the connecting units won’t be carried to the underlying connected units. Though, we mark them as sold but don’t mark any revenue in case the parent is sold.
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As an app that optimizes room assignments,I need to understand how to manage the unit auto-assignment when a property has a combined inventory. And the preferences of keeping combined inventory to be available to the maximum extent when assigning the rooms (connected vs non-connected) for the reservations. For this, I need to adjust my logic considering how an assignment of a connected unit impacts its combined unit’s availability.
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As a Housekeeping app / Task Management app, I should be aware of how to treat a combined unit and how to display them. For example, how do I want to handle guests coming in for combined units —> say, to keep the connecting door open or I need not repeat certain stuff in both rooms, etc.,
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As a Key Management app, I need to know how to generate and revert keys for the combined units. For example, when guests come in for a family suite, I need to issue keys for both connecting rooms. Or key management for beds in case of hostels, etc.,
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As a PBX / IPTV / In-room tablet / Room control app, I need to understand how to assign revenue or activate devices in several units when I receive a reservation on a combined unit, etc.,
Please test and observe how the dependency is handled between the combined units at various flows of operations with your integrations.