System Administrator Instructions

Updated 2024-05-09

Agent instructions are here.

Introduction

BookingBuilder NDC Butler™ consists of several components that work seamlessly together.  Just like a butler who appears when you need help, and makes everything seem simple, NDC Butler™ is always waiting for you.  When activated, NDC Butler™ takes care of the tedious work, making it seem simple and easy.

This guide is intended primarily for agency employees who have a technical understanding of supporting BookingBuilder products.  A streamlined user guide for agents who use NDC Butler will be coming soon.

Some of the components of NDC Butler™ are:

• For Sabre customers, we updated our Sabre Red App.  Details on how to ensure you have the correct version are found under Troubleshooting.
• There are several updated components of BookingBuilder Desktop™ and BookingBuilder Genie™ that allow NDC Butler™ to perform its magic.
• A new group of prompts,  NDC Butler™ Prompts (15720), has been shared with you.  These contain required components of NDC Butler™, including saving and remembering availability requests, displaying messages, and interpreting commands and sending the request information to the components that navigate the GDS and fill in the forms.
• Several new prompts that have been copied to your group that is using NDC Butler™.  These are described below.

Requirements

• To use NDC Butler™ with Amadeus, BookingBuilder Build 438 or newer is required.  It operates with Selling Platform Connect.
• To use NDC Butler™ with Sabre, BookingBuilder Build 437 or newer is required.  It operates with Sabre Red 360 on Windows.

In addition, certain prompts must be shared to your group, and a few prompts copied into your group.

Using NDC Butler™

• Butler remembers the last availability, so agents can type ‘NDC’ as a Sabre command at any time.  Butler now supports many options with the NDC command.  Type ‘NDC HELP’ as a Sabre command to see the options.  There are some videos at https://bookingbuilder.com/products/ndc-butler/ that show the functionality.  

• There is also an option to offer NDC at each availability.  To enable this, enable the "Trigger NDC From Availability" prompt in your group. By default this triggers for any availability response.  It’s important to have this trigger at a response and not a command, NDC Butler may send its own commands and things don’t work well if this prompt triggers at a command and then NDC Butler™ sends a command before the first response comes in.  Feel free to add conditions to this, such as only prompt when a certain airline appears in the availability.  You can create your own prompts to activate NDC Butler as well. They need an action of “Fire Actions From Named Prompt” with a prompt name of “NDC Butler Shop Script”.

• The NDC Butler Availability Box is brand new, and it can be really helpful for those who want to stay in graphical.  We'd love your feedback.  We're thinking it could be triggered from a hotkey - something like CTRL-SHIFT-N for NDC and the box pops up, making it far faster and easier than filling out the whole graphical form.  Right now the only way to trigger the box is to open the BB Configuration dialog, click Prompts, select NDC Butler Availability Box and click Fire Actions.  We'd love to hear your thoughts.  To see this in action, open https://bookingbuilder.com/products/ndc-butler/ and look at the Availability Box videos.

If you click the prompt or type ‘NDC’, Butler will check its settings to see if a profile is required.  If so, it will check to see if there are names present.  If not, it will prompt you to display a PNR or copy a profile.  It will then navigate your GDS to the air shopping screen and will fill in all the fields. The options to check for a profile and read other data are discussed in Configuration.

Please let us know if there is additional information you like added to the graphical Shop form.  We'll work with you to get those in there.

“Name Display” OTH Line

In Sabre, if there are multiple NDC bookings for the same traveler, when a list by name is displayed, the NDC bookings will often show no dates or city pairs.  One way to help with this is to add an OTH segment at the top of the PNR with the departure date and first destination.

NDC Butler™ can help with this.  Type NDC OTH (or NDCOTH).  It will display the itinerary, and add an OTH segment if there isn’t already one for the correct date and destination.  It will not duplicate the OTH segment, so there is no problem with typing NDC OTH more than once for the same PNR.

This segment can be customized with the Set NDC Butler Genie Options prompt.  Edit the actions, edit the Read Data from Variables Action and use “{GLOBAL_NDCSabreNameListSegment}” as the Expression and for the Variable:

/0/0OTH[AirlineCode]GK1[EndAirportCode][BeginDate:ddMMM]-NDC TICKET - SEE ITINERARY REMARKS

Please note that this requires “[“ and “]” instead of “{“ and “}” when you create the macro.  The available variables are:

{AirlineCode)  The airline code of the first flight segment

{BeginAirportCode} and {EndAirportCode}  The airport codes of the first origin/destination, all the way through connecting points.

{BeginDate} The departure date of the first flight segment

Automatic Prompting

There is a prompt called “NDC Butler Prompt For Name Display Line Sabre”.  It is disabled by default.  If you enable it, NDC Butler™ will look at each PNR that is displayed to see if there are NDC flight segments and no OTH segment.  If so, it will display a prompt offering to add the OTH segment.

Configuration

In your group there is a prompt called, “Set NDC Butler Genie Options”.  It fires at Prompts Loaded, and contains one action of “Read Data From Variables”.  You can enable or disable the profile requirement, set the command to display the Corporate ID information, and set the expression to read the Corporate ID information from the response.  These options are GDS-specific.  Please note that by default this prompt is disabled, so a profile will not be required and no ID information will be displayed or read.

Default to One-Way Instead of Round-Trip

By default when an agent types NDC, Butler™ defaults to a round-trip.  If you prefer that it default to one-way, set {GLOBAL_NDCAmadeusDefaultOneWay} or {GLOBAL_NDCSabreDefaultOneWay} to “True”.  The “True” is case-sensitive.

Use With Multiple Groups

Many customers create multiple groups for BookingBuilder software.  If all of your groups require the same configuration for NDC Butler™, such as the same name display OTH line, we recommend creating a group just for configurations.  Put all of your NDC Butler™ configurations in that group and then share the prompts in that group to all of your other groups.  This way when there are configuration changes or new options, you can set them in one place and all groups get them.

* Bonus *

We're barely through testing here, but we've enabled Sabre NDC fares in Instant Fare Quote for you to try.  You'll see it as "Sabre NDC", and the search results will show if the fare is ndc - you'll see (ndc) - or not.  You can limit it to only ndc.  This way you can see NDC and regular fares side by side.  IFQ is getting these right through your Sabre connection.  We haven't even shown this to anyone outside BookingBuilder yet.  We're really looking forward to your feedback.

NDC Butler™ Messages

NDC Butler™ will display status messages that look like this:

They go away after 30 seconds, or when clicking anywhere in the message.

Availability Box

The NDC Butler™ Availability Box allows agents to enter an availability command, and then NDC Butler™ will navigate the agent to the NDC Shop form and fill it in.  This can be used while already in graphical - just press the hotkey combination and the box will appear.  No need to go back to cryptic mode, or even to take your hands off the keyboard!

By default this is off.  To enable it, there is a prompt in your group with NDC Butler™ (or in a separate configuration group) called Set NDC Butler Genie Options.  Select that prompt, click Edit Actions, select Read Data From Variables (the only action in that prompt) and click Edit.  Look for the line with {GLOBAL_NDCAvailBoxHotkey} and click on the left side.  You can enter CTRL, ALT or SHIFT in any order, and then a single letter, which must be last.  For example, “CTRL ALT N” or “ALT SHIFT B”.  Then click Save, then click Prepare Prompts Only for Download to Workstations.

This is what it looks like:

When the hotkey combination is pressed (CTRL-ALT N, for example), the box will appear.

In the GDS, when you type NDC-SHOW, you will see if the hotkey script is running and what the hotkey combination is.  This makes it easy to ensure it’s working the way you want.  You will also see a hotkey combination that can be used to turn off the script; typically CTRL-SHIFT-ALT INSERT.

Troubleshooting

To see how NDC Butler™ parses commands, add -SHOW to your command.  NDC Butler™ will show a message with the information it has parsed, and will not proceed past showing the message.

Sabre

If NDC Butler™ doesn't work on Sabre the first step is to ensure you have the proper version of our Sabre Red App.  In Sabre Red 360, click Help then click Workstation Technical Information.  There is a screenshot below where you can see ‘com.bookingbuilder.lmredapp’ and the version.  Scroll through your display to make sure you have the version shown in the screenprint below:

Please do not hesitate to contact us at [e-mail] should you need any support related to BookingBuilder Butler. We, along with your new Butler, are here to serve you.;)   Thank you so much!