About Profiles Configuration

The OPERA profiles configuration options (Setup>Configuration>Profiles) offer you the means for selecting and customizing the kinds of data collected by the OPERA profiles (individual, account, agent, group, and contact). Ultimately, your profiles setup controls the way the profiles screens and features appear to users and determines the kinds of management and sales data available to staff.

OPERA profiles are collections of information about your guests and the businesses you work with. This information includes not only names and addresses but other details such as voice, fax and cell phone numbers, email addresses, guest preferences, languages, and loyalty program memberships. Profiles are also the basis for gathering indispensable management data such as stay histories and revenue statistics. Because information about guests and business clients is of special interest to your Sales force, the OPERA profiles configuration features also cover areas such as sales territories, sales lead management, and sales potentials.

Profiles configuration options include:

Preferences - Set up preference groups and preferences that can be attached to guest profiles and carried over to reservations for the guest. Preferences might include smoking/no smoking, floor, room features, and personal interests.

Geographic Data - Set up "geo-specific" information categories such as languages, regions, countries, and nationalities which may be applied to profiles. This information can then be used for many purposes throughout OPERA such as preparing folios and letters in guest languages, identifying target groups for sales campaigns, and preparing reports.

Titles - Each individual profile and contact profile contains a field for the person's Title (e.g., Mr, Mrs, Herr, Dr, etc.) on the Profile screen. The titles available when you select the Title field down arrow on the Profile screen depend on the language selected for the profile in the Language field. Extended Titles allow you to add more business titles, such as Dr and Captain, in the guest's preferred language.

Relationship Types - Set up relationship categories to express affiliations between guests, and between a guest and a company, travel agency, group, or source. A relationship is sometimes used to qualify a guest for special rates and can be made between profiles that allows for rates to be shared or for financial and statistical reporting.

Memberships - Set up memberships features to define and record the types of memberships or loyalty program your hotel supports. Loyalty club memberships are used to reward repeat guests and companies that do regular business with a hotel.

Classes - Membership Classes are used to classify Membership Programs. They can be identified as Airline Programs (Frequent Flyer Programs) or Loyalty Programs (Property Guest Loyalty Programs).

Types - Membership types are "brands" of loyalty programs that will be managed by OPERA. Use the Membership Types screen to view and edit membership types that have been set up and/or to configure new membership types.

Transaction Groups - Membership Transaction Groups are used with rules for Membership Types. Within a rule, you may specify if points are calculated by a Transaction Group. You can identify which Transaction Codes belong to the Transaction Group so that OPERA calculates points based on the codes entered here.

Market Groups - Market Groups are used within the setup of rules for Membership Types. Within a rule, you may specify if points are calculated by a market group. You can identify which market codes belong within the market group so that OPERA calculates points based on the codes entered here.

Rate Groups - Allow you to select specific rate codes and group them together to be used in validating rules on Membership Types.

Property Groups - Membership property groups are "sets" of property codes that are treated as a unit. This is convenient when points calculations are based on the property which originated the business or when back to back stays are flagged for Membership Transaction Exceptions.

Export - This function is used to export membership data from the OPERA database into files.

Communication Types - Configure the types of phone and electronic addresses that can be specified on profiles. Communication addresses may be email addresses, various phone numbers, and web addresses. OPERA supports multiple addresses of each type.

Address Types - Configure the types of mailing addresses that can be specified on profiles, for example, home, business, courier, shipping, etc. OPERA supports multiple addresses of each type.

Address Formats - Postal regulations for different countries determine acceptable address formats for mail being sent to that country. This feature allows you to set up multiple address formats that can be automatically applied to address information depending on the country.

Mailing Action Codes - Profiles can be associated with one or more mailing action codes that will determine which mailing lists they belong to. This way, you can easily generate mailing lists for specific events and special offers.

Awards - Set up features to manage the benefits that can be given to members of a loyalty program in return for repeated stays or for revenue generation.

Account Types - OPERA provides the ability to collect statistics about revenue, room nights etc. by account type. Use account type setup to configure account categories that reflect the type of business that is being generated (e.g., local, international, etc.).

VIP Levels - Set up VIP levels that can be associated with guests and shown on reservations.

Business Segments - Set up codes for market segments so that you can analyze trends on how a specific market uses your property.

Company Types and Travel Agent Types - When the Profiles>IATA Company Type application function is set to Y you can set up company and travel agent categories that can be assigned to account and agent profiles. Account types may be used to classify statistical information such as revenue and room nights by the type of business (for example, local or international).

Keyword types - Keyword types can be set up to allow you to collect virtually any kind of profile information. A keyword type can be used, for example, to hold Social Security Numbers, driver license numbers, or other IDs.

Inactive Reasons - Profile types can be inactivated by un-selecting the Active check box and selecting an inactive reason code from the list of values next to the Active check box. Making an account or profile inactive can be done for a number of reasons. Inactive reason codes are particularly helpful in identifying profiles that are inactive for either a temporary or a specific amount of time. Inactive reasons are configured from the Inactive Reason screen (Configuration>Profile>Inactive Reasons).

Sales Information - Set up features that can be used to manage the efforts of your sales staff. For example, you can set up scopes and scope cities that can help designate sales responsibility for accounts; industry codes that can classify accounts by type of business; and competition codes that can be used to identify competitors for account business.

Potential Sales - The Potential feature enables Sales Managers to define the potential revenue and room nights expected of a client during specific periods of time, and, if applicable, for specific destinations. Use potential sales types to monitor sales, use potentials as targets for comparison with the actual room nights and revenue generated from the client.

Types - Use this feature to assign labels to groupings of potential sales 'types' and monitor to see forecasts of specific groupings.

Frequency - Use this feature to assign time variables by which to measure potentials (i.e., weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.).

Forecast Types - A potential forecast type is a "tag" that can be attached to a prediction of the business activity and/or revenue expected from a client in one or more specific revenue categories in a given period.

Quick Address Setup - Set up the software that provides the time-saving Quick Address feature. When creating or editing guest profiles the Quick Address feature locates and completes the City and State fields automatically, based on the country and postal code you enter.

Address Doctor Setup - Addresses entered into OPERA profiles are compared to the global AddressDoctor database of postal address information. Used online, AddressDoctor enables verification of address data in near real time, as it is entered. For each address it checks, AddressDoctor returns a list of suggestions that match or come near to matching the address that was input into OPERA.

Direct Bill Batch Types - Set up categories that can be applied to profiles that have direct bill (AR) accounts. Then, based on the batch type and when invoices were last printed for the guest, you can periodically print blocks of invoices.

Requests - Request definition is the process whereby you set up embedded HTML email messages that can be sent out immediately to the guest in response to a request for email information. Once configured, these request definition email messages must be attached to request types that use the EMAIL send method. When the request type is selected for a profile, you have the option of sending the embedded HTML email immediately or processing it at a later time as an email or via a data extract (mail merge). Request types can be associated with request templates which allow you to set up templates that provide information such as data source and field list, language, web URL and other details to simplify processing of the request type.

External IFC - External interfaces allow for the external manipulation and distribution of merge rules, profile regions, character conversions and disabled broadcasts as described below.

Merge Rules - Set up the rules that will help you identify possible duplicate profiles so they can be merged.

Profile Regions - Profile merge rules are validated based on profile type and region. Regions only have to be configured in ORS to define merge rules differently for various property groupings.

Character Conversion - Allows you to define special characters showing the character's properties, such as length and byte count.

Disabled Broadcast - Allows you to start and stop broadcasts for a specific property and profile type by configuring chain code and profile types.