How You Set Up Travel Itinerary Validation Rules

Your reliance on accurate travel data to make strategic, company-wide travel decisions is essential.

To improve the accuracy of travel data and to provide visibility of policy violations to approvers and auditors, you can enable validations that act on itineraries when you import them or run validation process.

You can setup itinerary validation rules on the Manage Travel Itinerary Validation Rules page. You can enforce them by assigning them to a travel partner or to a specific booking site.

The application executes two types of itinerary validation rules:

• Validations that always occur

• Validations that you can enable

Validations That Always Occur for GetThere

The Import Travel Itineraries process has validations that identify:

• Invalid itineraries to reject

• Itineraries with critical validation errors

Itineraries that are rejected and didn't import are displayed in the Itinerary Import Failures dialog box by clicking on the nonzero value of the Itinerary Import Failures count for a process shown in the Travel Itinerary Import Requests table in the Travel Administration work area. They can have any of the following errors:

• The itinerary status is Null.

• The last modified time stamp on the itinerary is null or is an invalid format.

• The itinerary has an Invalid reservation, where the reservation confirmation number is null.

• An unexpected error occurs while attempting to import the details for an itinerary.

Note: Validations that always occur don't require any setup.

Trips aren't created for itineraries that failed import and you can't access their details for correction. The Import Travel Itineraries process attempts to reimport failed itineraries for the number of days past the initial failed import specified by the process parameter.

Validations That Always Occur for Third-Party Travel Partners

As a travel administrator, you post travel itinerary data from the third-party travel site in the specified format using REST services. Itineraries aren't created or updated in these conditions:

• A required field isn't available.

• A field doesn't follow its defined data format or length restrictions.

• A field doesn't follow its validation rules.

• If duplicate records are posted.

Itineraries are rejected if value for any of these data fields is missing or invalid:

Segment	Data Field
Itinerary	Travel Partner Trip Number
Itinerary	Itinerary Record Locator
Itinerary	Travel Partner Name
Itinerary	Booking Site Name
Itinerary	First Name
Itinerary	Last Name
Itinerary	Booking Date Time
Itinerary	Status Code
Reservation	Reservation Type
Reservation	Currency Code
Reservation	Amount
Air	Item Confirmation Number
Air	Departure Date Time
Air	Departure City
Air	Arrival Date Time
Air	Arrival City
Rail	Item Confirmation Number
Rail	Departure Location Name
Rail	Departure Date Time
Rail	Departure City
Rail	Arrival Location Name
Rail	Arrival Date Time
Rail	Arrival City
Hotel	Confirmation Number
Hotel	Start Date Time
Hotel	End Date Time
Hotel	Base Rate
Hotel	Hotel City
Vehicle Rental	Confirmation Number
Vehicle Rental	Start Date Time
Vehicle Rental	End Date Time
Vehicle Rental	Pickup City
Vehicle Rental	Return City

Itineraries are rejected and errors are displayed when these validations fail:

Segment	Data Field	Validation
Itinerary	Travel Partner Name	The travel partner name in the itinerary must match the assigned travel partner name.
Itinerary	Booking Site Name	The booking site name in the itinerary must match the booking site names created for the travel partner.
Itinerary	First Name	The first and last names mentioned in the itinerary must be present in the existing employee records.
Itinerary	Last Name	The first and last names mentioned in the itinerary must be present in the existing employee records.
Itinerary	Employee Number	The employee number, first name, and last name must match in the existing employee records.
Itinerary	Booking Date Time	The time stamp on the new record of an itinerary, which is posted or patched, must be later than the booking date time of the existing record for the same itinerary
Itinerary	Status Code	The status code in the itinerary must match the expected status codes, such as active, ticketed, or canceled.
Reservation	Reservation Type	The reservation type in the itinerary must match the expected reservation types, such as air, rail, hotel, or vehicle rental.

Some validations are performed when itineraries are posted or patched using REST services. If any error is found, the itinerary is rejected and you need to resolve the errors and send the itinerary again.

For successfully posted itineraries, you must run the validate process to create corresponding trips. If any validation errors are found, you need to fix them from the Travel Administrator work area and run the validations again.

Fixing Validation Errors

Itineraries with critical validation errors that require you to fix them before a trip can be created include those with:

• Missing or unmatched employee numbers

• Missing pricing information, such as amount and currency, for one or more reservations

• An unexpected error while validating an itinerary

You can fix itineraries with critical validation errors in the Review Travel Itinerary Import Results page. Clicking the nonzero value of the Critical Validation Errors count for a process shown in the Travel Itinerary Import Requests table in the Travel Administration work area, navigates you to the Review Travel Itinerary Import Results page displaying those errors.

Trips are also not created for itineraries with critical validation errors. For itineraries created with GetThere, the Import Travel Itineraries process continues to revalidate all itineraries with validation errors and create a trip for itineraries once critical validation errors are fixed. Similarly, validations for itineraries created by third-party travel partner ensure that trips are created only after the critical validation errors are fixed.

Validations That You Can Enable

To enhance the quality of trip data, you can enable a set of itinerary validations. The following itinerary validations require additional setup as described:

• Policy violation validations

• Merchant validation

• Location validation

• Ticket's air class validation

• Currency code and amount

• Date and time

• Flight or train number

The following table describes the validations that you can enable with their associated setup steps.

Validation	Steps to Enable Validations
Policy violation validations	The Import Travel Itineraries process and validation process validate policy violations provided by your travel partner against the policy violations specified as the source lookup assigned to the policy violation validation rules on the Manage Travel Itinerary Validation Rules page. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the following to navigate to the Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types page.: Offering: Financials Task: Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types Navigate as follows: Setup and Maintenance > Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types task > Go to Task icon > Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types page. Configure the lookup codes in the EXM_POL_VIOLATION_TYPES lookup type to include the violations provided by your travel partner or create a new EXM lookup type and codes for booking violations. Define the lookup code meaning to match the policy violation meaning provided by your travel partner. If you receive policy violations in languages other than your base language, you must set up language-specific text for the lookup code meaning to support policy violations in different languages. For example, your company has two booking sites, US and France. Your travel partner provides policy violations in the regional language, which is French. Both booking sites enforce a policy violation if the lowest fare isn't selected. If an employee doesn't select the lowest fare, he must justify the policy violation using the following reason: Needed a direct flight due to time constraints. To enforce the lowest fare policy for itineraries from both sites during itinerary import or itinerary validation, you must define the policy violation message as the meaning in English, as well as in French. Itineraries with policy violations that don't exist in the application are tagged as an Unmatched Value validation error.
Merchant validation	To add missing merchant codes to merchant reference data, navigate to the Travel Administration work area. Click the Manage Merchants Codes link. Download the spreadsheet, add new merchants, and upload. Itineraries with merchants that don't exist in the application are tagged as an Unmatched Value validation error.
Location validation	A location validation is performed against the geography data stored centrally in the Oracle Fusion Applications Trading Community Architecture. To add or change a missing location to reference data, first review the values in the Review Travel Itinerary Import Results page. Define missing locations in Oracle Fusion Trading Community Architecture. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the following to navigate to the Manage Geographies page: Offering: Financials Task: Manage Geographies Itineraries with locations that don't exist in the application are tagged as an Unmatched Value validation error.
Ticket's air class validation	Validation of a ticket's air class is performed against the EXM_TICKET_CLASS lookup type. You can configure the lookup type to add new classes of air tickets. To add a missing ticket's air class to reference data, first review the values in the Review Travel Itinerary Import Results page. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, use the following to navigate to the Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types page. Offering: Financials Task: Manage Travel Policy Lookup Types To add a missing ticket's air class to reference data, create a new lookup code for the lookup EXM_AIR_CLASS_OF_TICKETS and define the same meaning provided by your travel partner. If you use a company-defined lookup code for the ticket's air class validation, add the new code in this lookup. Itineraries with air ticket classes that don't exist in the application are tagged as an Unmatched Value validation error.
Currency code and amount	Setup isn't required. The currencies from Oracle Fusion General Ledger are used for validation.
Date and time	Setup isn't required. This is a standard date and time validation.
Flight or train number	Setup isn't required. The application validates that the flight or train number is present.

Note: For itineraries that fail the validations that you can enable, the application creates trips. The travel administrator can correct the validation errors and the itineraries as needed.