JReserv: We finished the requirement phase

09 June 2009 Published in Blog

We are pleased to announce that we have completed the requirements phase of JReserv project. Here are the features that we will implement in the first version.

Management:
1. Resources Management
2. Packages Management
3. Prices and Availabilities Management
4. Clients Managements
5. Agents Managements
6. Configuration Managements
Services that would be offered to visitors:
1. Resources Catalog and Packages
2. Online Booking

1 Resources Management:

The system will allow the management of resources, allowing to Create, Read, Update y Delete (CRUD) them. The system must store relevant information about it including: title, description and images.

Also should allow to classify the resources in a flexible manner in order to be suitable for any business allowing the proper adaptation of the tool to any environment. A resource would be associated to a bookable category which will be associated with one or more than one category. At the same time, a category can be classified in other parents categories. For example, for a resource of a hotel called “101 room” could be associated to a bookable category called “Double Room”, which may be associated with the following categories “Caesar Hotel” to define that it belong to this hotel. At the same, this hotel may be associated with “Santa Fe” to identify to which city belongs.The category “Caesar Hotel” may be a children of another category called “Emperors Chain” to identify which chain owns the hotel while “Santa Fe” is the children of “Argentina” to determine to which country it belongs. As you can see this is very flexible and could be adapted to any business.

A bookable category may be associated to one or more addons. These addons can be purchased at the same time of the booking. For example, by booking a “Double Room” we would be able to add to our order a “Dinner Menu”. It is possible that the addons impact on the price of the reservation.

Picture 1: Entities associated with resources

Bookable categories and categories would also have associated properties that represents its characteristics. Having this information in a separate entity will allow to perform searches of resources and categories which have these characteristics in common. As an example, the resource “Double Room” could have assigned properties “Jacuzzi”, “Private Bath”, “Air Conditioning”. Then if you’re interested in making a reservation for a room with Jacuzzi you could make a filtering to obtain a list of all the rooms that have those features and then choose between them.

2 Packages Management:

The system would have CRUD of packages. These packages consist of a set of resources and addons and let us create special offers. For example in one package “Weekend in Santa Fe” we could add 2 nights of “Double Room” with an addon “Santa Fe City Tour” and offer it at a price of $500.

The packages may also have associated properties that detail their characteristics. As well as images which are used to show it to potential customers.

Picture 2: Entities associated with packages

3 Prices and Availabilities Management:

The system should allow setting the price of bookable categories and packages as well as their availability. The system must consider the possibility of setting different prices according to seasons. In the same way must allow to apply different discount depending on the month of the year, day of the month, day of week or hour of day. Also offer discount on longer period reservations. The system also would let the administrator to set the availability of the resource in order to prohibit its booking in periods that its not available.

Picture 3: Entities associated with prices and availabilities

4 Client Management:

The system should have features that allow CRUD of customers as well as the create order for a client, this would be useful for an operator to take telephone bookings from customers. It also may allows to manage the orders placed by customers, allowing the follow-up throughout the sales process.

Picture 4: Entities associated with clients and orders

5 Agents Management:

The agents are the users who use the system to manage resources, bookable categories, categories, packages and customers. The system needs to allow to current administrator or agents with sufficient permission to perform CRUD of agents. It will also enable the management of permissions which are then allocated to agents. This will limit the access of agents to the functionality of the system, allowing to perform only those task permitted based on their profile within the company.

Picture 5: Entities associated with agents

6 Configuratin Management:

The system administrator can modify the settings of the software. In this way would be able to set the rates of currencies, payment methods, taxes, among other parameters used.

7 Resource Catalog and Packages:

The system should displays all the information detailed before to visitors. The catalogue shall provide sufficient information in an orderly fashion and ensuring an enjoyable experience for the potential customer.

Should allow to perform searches on resources by identifying the desired characteristics, period where the visitor in interested on making the booking as well as its price. Visitors may also browse the entire catalog by visiting the various resource, packages and categories, reviewing the characteristics of each.

8 Online Booking:

When the potential customer finds a good or service in which is interested on making a booking then the system must also provide a simple process to make it. The visitor should have no problems in signing up as a client, set the start and end date of the reservation as well as all the special features of it. The system also must have an easy payment procedure.

JReserv: We finished the requirement phase

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