Creating and editing bookings

When you first enter the booking main screen, input focus^3.1 is in the ``Routes'' window. Pressing ``Enter'' or ``+'' key is enough to create the first voyage. New line of the voyage entry appears in the ``Routes'' window. You have to enter following information here:

• Dep.Date - departure date
• Shp - three-letter abbreviation of the vessel
• Line - short abbreviation of the ferry line
• Time - departure time (taken from the schedule later on)

First voyage departure date is set to today's date by default, but you can change it. So called ``open date'' is implemented by pressing ``Space'' key while being in the departure date field. Next field is the vessel abbreviation (``Shp'' field) . You may leave this field blank if this vessel is unique for the ferry line. In case of incorrect value entered or after pressing ``F1'' - the list of vessels shows. Next filed is the ferry line abbreviation (``Line'' filed). It consists of two pairs of port abbreviations - one for departing port, second - for arriving port. Line abbreviation is entering without the separator (dash). For example, to choose 'Klaipeda - Stockholm' line you have to type ``KLST'' abbreviation in. In case of an incorrect input you will get the list of all possible lines. Same happens when pressing ``F1''. After line code is entered, you will get the list of all available voyages for that line, starting from entered departure date. You must choose one of the available voyages by pressing the ``Enter'' key. At this moment you still can change your mind and change the voyage date by pressing ``F1''. If the voyage date you chose is desirable - press ``Enter'' one more time, - and here you'll get the ``Places'' window, filled out by available places by cabins' categories. Note: You can brake up the voyage entry at any time by pressing ``F4/Esc'' key.

In order to enter the second (backward) voyage you must press either the ``+'' (plus) key, or <New> button below. To delete voyage information - press the ``-`` (minus) key or <Delete> button. You are also able to edit voyage information by pressing ``Enter'' key or <Edit> button. You may change any information (even change ferry line) when editing a voyage, - all previous voyage's places will be released and new ones will be reserved after the booking save. You may get a dialog box with message to approve the change of the voyage.

When forming a voyage with ``open date'', you have to know, that no actual place reservations are made. Instead you have only booking information saved to the database for future use. Note! Only one voyage with ``open date'' can be entered in each booking.

The next step would be making the reservation itself. You usually move to the ``Places'' window (by pressing``TAB'' key) in order to do that. Then place the browse marker with ``Up'' and ``Down'' arrow keys to the desired cabin category and press the ``Enter'' key. You'll get two fields for entering numbers of places. Now you may enter the number of passengers for that category into the first field and press ``Enter''. Second field is used for ``exclusive'' places only. It is the amount of fully reserved cabins included (not in addition!) into first field's amount. Usually you can leave this field blank and mark exclusive cabins later on in the passenger window. After entering of both amounts the same amount of blank lines are generated in the ``Passengers & Cars'' window (new blank lines won't be generated for the other voyage, - old lines are updated instead). You can repeat this process for all other categories. You must enter amount of places for both voyages if they exist. You can press ``N'' key or <Next> button to go to the next voyage, not necessary to go through ``Routes'' window and back. Also remember, that you can always get back for entering additional places at any time in the future. Only additional amount of places are entered in that case.

When entering amount of places in the first field you may (and usually should) enter additional ``special marks'' (hints) for reservation algorithm. All marks must follow the number of places. Some marks may have internal meaning between your reservation agents. Other marks are specially designed for this system and are fixed in the ``TROLIS'' system. They cannot be used in other meaning:

Special mark	Description	Acts on tariff	Acts on reservation algorithm
C	cruise mark	yes	causes system to choose the same cabin for both voyages
V	specail tariff mark	yes	no
S	student tariff	yes	no
G	group mark	no	forces reservation algorithm to begin with new free cabin and continues consequently for all persons in the booking
N	new cabin mark	no	begin reservation from the first free cabin
H	hotel mark	no	no
Pn	passengers per cabin	yes, 'n' - is number of passengers in cabin for correct tariff	no
Dnn	discount value	yes, 'nn' - percent value of discount	no
!	special care mark for passenger	no	no

All marks can be entered in any order, for example: '2CGP2D30!' or '3GC'. All these marks also can be entered beside of each passenger in passenger edit dialog (see later below).

One additional symbol exists and can be entered only when entering amount of places. It is ``+'' symbol. It must be entered as last entry in field. This symbol tells system, that you want to force generation of new passenger entry, even if you entering the second voyage place count.

Note! The authors of ``TROLIS'' system leave the right for themselves to add new special marks in future releases of the system.

After you have finished with the creation of places, you may pass to the next step - entering information about each passenger. Press ``Tab'' key to enter the ``Passengers & Cars'' window. Each line in this window is for one and only one passenger. Information is entered and changed by pressing ``Enter'' key (or double-clicking the mouse) on the passenger line. Following information is shown on the screen (see figure):

Figure 3.2: Passenger information dialog

Some fields in the dialog may be inaccessible (disabled), depending on voyage count and reservation system tuning. You can edit all fields in dialog, including category and place count fields. Reservation system will take care of you changes automatically after booking save. As the result of change of categories, the system may release some places and reserve new ones. Some fields are closely related to the registries. These fields have a question mark icon on the right. The list of particular registry is activated by pressing ``F1'' key or pushing ``?'' icon by mouse. This list also shows when an incorrect value is entered. Such fields are marked by ''*'' in the description below.

Passenger information dialog consists of three logical parts.. In the first part you can see information about voyage(s), categories, cabin number and number of places in the cabin. The second part holds all information about passenger. Third part is for entering passenger car information. Below is a description of all fields in the passenger dialog:

• Cat* - cabin category; in attempt to enter non-existent category of cabin, system will show the list of valid categories for that voyage. Entering spaces or clearing this field is interpreted as you want to exclude this voyage for that passenger. The case when both of categories are empty also may take place, but you'd better have to delete this passenger from the list in the main screen of booking.
• Plcs - number of places, taken by passenger in the cabin
• Cabin - passenger cabin number. Cabin number changes is not implemented in this version of ``TROLIS''. These changes can be done in the ``Places'' window, and only when per-cabin reservation mode is set.
• L/F Name - Last and First names of the passenger (strictly in this order). Names may be entered in either keyboard register, they are automatically converted to uppercase.
• Native Name - last and first passenger names in the native (for passenger) language. This field is needed only for agent's reference, and doesn't show in any reports.
• Sex* - passenger sex.
• Age* - age category of passenger - is essential for obtaining right tariff value
• Nation* - passenger nationality (citizency)
• DoB - date of birth
• Personal ID - passenger personal ID or passport number - this value later is printed out to the passenger
• Remarks(Tel,...) - any comments on a passenger for future references
• Car to (Car from)* - passenger transport unit code. Note! You must clear this field if you want to delete transport.
• Length - transport unit's length. By default is filled out by the standard value.
• Model - transport model
• Car Numb - transport registration number
• Trail.Numb - transport trailer registration number (if exists)

When entering data into passenger dialog you can quickly finish dialog by pressing ``F2'' key, while being in any place of this dialog. After the dialog is completed - all corresponding values in the ``Passenger & Cars'' window will be updated as well. The number of places in the cabin is shown in the ``Cabin'' columns, separated by the slash character. To delete all information about the passenger together with reserved place - press ``-`` key or <Delete> button.