May 24, 2022 K2 Release

Discount and Pricing Group Photo Management

We are pleased to release the development on a project that has been in the works for several months – Discount and Pricing Group Photo Management.

• Our primary goal with this project was to change how images are stored behind the scenes but we also wanted to address issues users had with uploading large image files, naming files, and address the limited ability to edit or crop images once they were uploaded.
• Additionally, we wanted to improve the screens in K2 where a user can select images for Pricing Groups and Discounts.

Update Overview

1. The first thing to note is that photos and floor plans will no longer be uploaded directly into K2. The “KOA.com CMS” folder in Operation Setup has been removed.
   Photos will now be uploaded and maintained solely in the KOA.com CMS (Content Management System) Media Library. The Media Library has a robust set of tools to manage images and will resolve many of the issues users face uploading images into K2.
   
2. Photos will be made available in the Pricing Group and Discount setup screens in K2. The photo selection tool will show the user a thumbnail of the image that can be used to link the Pricing Group (or discount) to that image.
   
3. Behind the scenes, the actual images will no longer be stored by K2, but will instead be stored by the CMS in the Media Library.

Pricing Group Setup Updates

• The Pricing Group setup page has been updated. The Floor Plans section has been separated out from the Pricing Group Photos section. Two new rules are in place for floor plans: the user can only select one floor plan per Pricing Group and floor plans are now only allowed on Accommodations and Tent site classes. These rules were added to provide consistent use of floor plans across the system and align with the purpose of the floor plan.
  
• Note: In the past, some images were mistakenly marked as a floor plan by the user, but they were actually just photos of the site, etc. This may have been because the photo selection screen was not easy to understand. Moving forward, these images have had the ‘floor plan’ flag removed. The images still exist, they just unmarked as floor plans.
• Custom floor plans were migrated to the Media Library under the album named: “Custom Floor Plans”
• Standard floor plans are still available for use and can be found under the album named “KOA Stock Floor Plans”
• The Select Photo screen has been improved to be more intuitive and easier to use
  • The modal has filtering options: list view or grid view:
    
  • There is a Check All/Uncheck All option
  • The list can be filtered by categories. These ‘categories’ are actually the names of the photo albums as set in the Media Library.
• The Display Order button, which was previously released, offers a ‘drag and drop’ functionality to easily reorder how you want the site photos to display. The image at the top of the list is the “default” image and will be the one that displays on main search results page on Step 2 of the reservation process on KOA.com.
  

Discount Setup

• Discounts photos have been limited to one in the setup screen. KOA.com only used one image but we allowed multiple to be selected.
• The UI has been improved
  • Manage Photos button brings up a selection modal
    
  • Modal has filtering options Filter lists represents albums from the Media Library
  • The modal has filtering options: list view or grid view
    

Other Development

Reassign Rates Performance Improvements

The Reassign Rates functionality is extremely helpful when working with your Rate Plans to make sure the correct rate is attached to the reservations you have on the books. The heavy lifting for this work is done behind the scenes as the system evaluates each reservation within the Site Class you selected and makes the rate changes necessary.

For this release, we looked at the Reassign Rates process to improve the performance. This process is one that we monitor closely because it uses a high level of computer power on our servers. For example, before the changes, reassigning 1,000 reservations took approximately 1 hour and 42 minutes. After the changes, the same 1,000 took less than 3 minutes! If you haven’t used this functionality in a while because of the time it took, try it again!

Check Out Bug

An error was happening when an on-site guest was checked out on one user’s screen and also checked out on another user’s screen. The status was updating correctly to “Checked Out” but the KOA Rewards points to be rewarded multiple times. This has been corrected.

Guest Search Performance Improvements

In an effort to bring more functionality and consistency to Guest Searches, work was done to make several other guest searches similar to the Guest Search on the Home page. These other areas include: Short Term reservation form, Long Term reservation form, Walk In reservation form, stand alone KOA Rewards sales screen, and the Waitlist.

• Users will continue to be able to use normal search terms such as:
  • Last Name
  • First Name Last Name
  • Last Name, Zip
  • Multiple First Name, Last Name
  • KOA Rewards Number
    
• There will now be and Advanced Search drop-down where the user can specify which terms they’re looking for:
  • Last Name
  • KOA Rewards Number
  • Phone Number
  • Email
  • Notes (*Guest notes only)
    
• We’ve added the Advanced Search Shortcuts which can reduce search time and improve accuracy:
  • e: = Email Address
  • l: = Last Name (guest)
  • n: = Notes (guest notes, not reservation notes)
  • p: = Phone Number
  • v: = KOA Rewards Number
    
• Lastly, we changed the guest matching model which looks at First Name, Last Name, Zip, and Email to also include the first line of the Address. This will improve the time it takes to return search results as well as accuracy.

Paw Pens Attribute

For those operations who have Paw Pens, we’ve added a new Site Definition Attribute.

KOA Rewards

Work continues on the KOA Rewards project as we prepare to move the programming off of the old KampSight system onto the new platform. Our work has been laid out into seven different milestones which allow the development team to focus on individual parts of the whole picture. From now until it’s released, KOA Rewards will take up most of our development bandwidth.