Tamara Export Setup

Contents

  1. Requirements
  2. Installation
  3. Configuration
  4. Change Log

Requirements

If any of the requirements below are not found, you will be prompted to install them and/or be redirected to links to download each component. Otherwise, you can install the components individually below from the links below.

  • Windows XP/2003/Vista/7/2008. Windows 2000 is NOT supported.
  • .NET Framework 3.5 service pack 1:
  • SQL Server Compact 3.5 service pack 2:
  • TRAMS Users Only: DataDirect ODBC driver for Interbase (downloaded from TRAMS’s FTP):ftp://ftp.trams.com/pub/updates/misc_exe/DataDirect.zip
  • 512 MB of RAM
  • 1 GB hard disk space

Installation

  1. Go to open the folder with the HIGHEST version number (for example if you see folders for v2.3.0 and v2.4.0, you would go into the v2.4.0). Next, download the “TamaraExportInstaller.zip” located in this folder and save it to a location you can access on your computer (i.e. My Documents, Desktop etc.):

  1. Once saved to your computer, locate the file and right click on it and choose “Extract All…”:
  1. The extraction wizard will now show. Be sure to check the “Show extracted files when complete dialog” and press the “Next” buttons to move through the extraction process. At the end of the extraction process, the extracted files folder will be shown.In the folder shown, double-click on the “setup.exe” program:

  1. This program will start and prompt you to install various components needed for the Tamara Export application. These components include the following:
  2. Data Direct Driver for Interbase - only required for TRAMS users, if not using TRAMS, you should cancel the installation of this component.
  3. .NET framework 3.5 service pack 1
  4. SQL Server Compact 3.5 service pack 2.

Please choose “Next” or “Accept” on the screens below to move through the installation process (the screens are not necessarily shown in this order):

  1. After installation has completed, you will see an icon on your desktop to run the Tamara Export application. *Note: if you do not see a desktop icon, go to Start > Programs > BCD Travel > GRO Export > GRO Export to run the application.

Desktop Icon:

Start menu entry:

Configuration

Steps 1, 4 and 5 apply to TRAMS users only -skip these steps if you use a different back office (Globalware etc.).

  1. (TRAMS only) Before configuring the Tamara Export, we must see if your TRAMS database is encrypted. You can figure this out by doing the following:
  2. Open TRAMS and login as the SYSDBA user.
  3. At the top of TRAMS, go to Help > Table Version.
  4. In the window that pops up, look in the “Key” column for “Database Encrypted”.
  1. If it says “Yes”, please contact TRAMS and request the access code to get your agency credit card encryption key. TRAMS will provide you with instructions on how to extract this this key. Once you get this key, proceed to the next steps.
  2. If it says “No”, then you can proceed to the next steps without contacting TRAMS.
  1. Run/open the Tamara Export application by either double clicking the desktop icon or running it from the Start menu as described in Installation step 5.
  2. Create Database Profile: After the application loads, we want to setup your agency settings. First, we must create a new Database Profile to extract data from the back office database.

If your using TRAMS and it was encrypted, choose “TRAMS Back Office Encrypted”, otherwise choose “TRAMS Back Office”. If using another back office, please choose that in the list and then click the “New…” button.

If you find your database listed in the “Databases Found” list, simply check it and it will pre-fill all the connection information.

Note if your back office is encrypted, you will want to enter your encrypted key into the “CC Encryption Key” field.

  1. (TRAMS only) If you DO NOThave any databases list under “Databases Found”, you will need to input your TRAMS database connection information manually from the Alias Utility in Start > Programs > TRAMS Back Office > Alias Utility

The Alias Utility contains a list of connections to TRAMS. You can use it to get the server and database path information to be input into the GRO Export application.

In the example above, the “127.0.0.1” portion is the server address and should be input into the “Server Address” field in Database Profile window. The portion containing the database path, “C:\Program Files\Trams\Database\airplus-tmc.ib”, should be input into the “Database Name/File Path” field. Note, there is a colon separating the server and the path, ignore this. Also note these values can be different than what is shown in the screenshot above.

  1. (TRAMS only) Next enter the username and password for the user you want to connect to TRAMS with. It can be any user who has access to all TRAMS data. The easiest way is to use the SYSDBA user login. Be sure to enter your CC Encryption Key if its needed. Hit the Save button when complete and you will have a database profile setup to extract data.
  1. Setup Agency Settings: Next we will setup the general settings for the agency, which includes the agency name, IATA number, Address, GDS etc. Please fill in this information with your agency’s info (if using the merchant export, please fill in the merchant information).
  1. Setup Customers to Extract: Next go to the Customer Setup tab and add your new customer names and their associated credit card numbers.

Note if you are using GDS Credit Card masking (i.e. Sabre Masking):

  1. Input the real credit card number into the “Credit Card Number” textbox.
  2. Input the masked CC number into the “Masked CC Number (optional)” textbox. The masked CC number is overlayed with zeroes except for the first 6 numerics and the last 4 numerics.
  3. Example: 192011000004444 where the highlighted 0’s are overlayed where the real numbers would be. Airplus cards are usually between 14 and 16 numbers in length.
  1. (Optional)Data Mappings:You can select a customer from the dropdown list and add Data Mappings for that customer. Data Mappings are simply UDIDs, departments, client remarks etc. that hold custom information pertinent to the customer.The ability to fine tune theData Mappings exists (i.e. grab the first 6 characters in a UDID via the Start and Length textboxes). The defaults are usually sufficient for most agencies.
  1. Export Tab: Next go to the export tab and we can use this to export the files for TAMARA specification.

Functions on the Export tab:

  1. Payment Dates: This is the payment date range to extract data on. When opening a payment up in the back office, this will be the date paid.
  2. Export Files Types: These are the file export types supported by the software. Please contact AirPlus support ( for which export types you should use.
  3. ARC/BSP Transactions: This extracts Air ARC/BSP bookings from the back office.
  4. Merchant Agreement Transactions: This extracts bookings where the agency’s card was used for the booking.
  5. Enrichment Transactions: This is used to capture any changes to data that was previously sent to AirPlus via one of the other export types.
  6. Include Previously Sent: Check this box to include anything you’ve previously extracted using the program (i.e. transactions you extracted last week and sent to AirPlus but now you want to send them again). When exporting the “Enrichment Transactions” file, you usually want to check this.
  7. Match Service Fees to Original Tickets: When checked, this attempts to match the service fee bookings/items to the ticket they are associated with (the lowest ticket number if multiple air/car/hotel bookings in an invoice and/or the first sale bookings in the invoice). This logic is used because most back offices cannot associate a service fees with a specific sale booking. AirPlus should advise if this option is needed for you. When unchecked, the ticket number/document number output to the TAMARA export files will be the ticket number stored with the service fee booking prefixed with “890”.
  8. Export File Output Location: This is where the exported files should be saved on the computer. Generally My Documents with an AirPlus folder in it works well for most agencies.
  9. Create Export Files (button): When clicking, creates the export files you have selected for the customers and date range input.
  10. View Exported Files (button): This starts the AirPlus Tamara Viewer program and loads the LAST exported files for you to examine/review.
  11. Open Web Portal (button): This opens the English version of the AirPlus website portal to allow you to upload the data files you have exported.
  12. Show Raw Data (button): This is used for debugging why data is not being extracted to the export files. It will query the back office for all export data and present it in a series of grids so you can examine if it’s a data issue with TRAMS or if it’s a TAMARA export engine error.
  13. Export History (list): This is a history of all the exports you have ran in the past with all the criteria you ran for each export.
  1. (Optional) Scheduler: Next, go to the “Scheduler” tab and we can setup an automated export and (optional) automated upload of the data to the AirPlus servers.
  1. (Optional) Create Export Task: To automate the export, you will first need to define an Export Task. Click the “New..” button and it will pop a window where you can setup all the settings to be used when the automated export is ran:

All fields are similar to the Export tab (see Configuration Step 9) except for the Payment Date Range dropdown list. This is a list of “pre-canned” date ranges that are calculated based on when the automated export runs.

Date Range options:

  1. Previous ARC Week: Previous week Monday to Sunday.
  2. Previous 3 Days:Previous 3 days date/time through current date/time.
  3. Previous Month: Previous full month (1st thru end of month).
  4. Yesterday: yesterday from 12am to 11:59:59 pm.
  5. X Days Prior:this will extract data for a SINGLE day for X days prior.
  1. (optional) Scheduling: After setting up the Export Task above, you can schedule it to run by click the “New…” button under the “Scheduled Export Tasks” list. This will open a new window that will allow you to create a new schedule by clicking the “New” button. You can schedule the Export Task you created to run for any time or schedule. Once your done filling in the scheduling information, click the “OK” button and it will add that schedule underneath your Export Task.
  1. (optional) Data Transfer: By default, when an automated exportis created, it will try to upload the data to the AirPlus servers. You can configure the data upload under the “Data Transfer Settings”. HTTPS data transfer type should work for all agencies. If you require SFTP or AirPlus has asked you to use SFTP, please switch the transfer type to SFTP. All Settings are usually fine on their default values, except you will need to input your username/password.

If you have any questions, please Kristina Hogan (), contact JoAn Erestain () or please see the airplus website for further information –

Change History

Documentation provided by GRASP Technologies Inc.

Revised: 1/25/2011–Chris Smith

  • Document created.