Revolution Release 1.12.3

Optimization and improvement of the CRX site continues, to bring you more reservations. The Revolution Manager interface is more user friendly, through a ton of improvements. We have expanded our development team to allow faster development and software release cycles.

Car Rental Express - CRX

• CRX is now using Google Analytics to improve SEO and web traffic.

• You may find your Agency featured at CRX! The Homepage has been updated and now includes dynamic data for top agencies, cities, ratings and content updates.
• The Specialty Vehicles pages are updated, with new content.
• Credit Card Deposit text has been clarified: It is tied to Pickup time, unless an Agency specifically wants to take a deposit right after booking.
• Location Specific thanks messages are now displayed for reservations.
• The Travel Guide, accessed from the footer, has been updated and simplified to have only two layers: The top page and the city pages themselves, for faster navigation.

Global Traveler Program - GT:

• We have changed the way Rate Codes are setup for GT – An Agency needs to create all post-paid rates as dependant on a Base Rate. This allows an agency to opt out of post-paid reservations, if they choose.

• Vehicles names are now being built from the Image Gallery. This creates consistent make and model name displays at GT, which looks better to airlines, and others booking your vehicles.
• Vehicles information now includes Number of Passengers, Baggage and Doors.

Traffic Exchange Program and Partners

• Interface improvements have been made for BookingBuddy.com and OneTime.com. Those traffic sources have been resumed, as of December 2011.

• Hotwire comparisons have been setup, generating more quality Traffic to agencies participating in the program. Search a city for car rental, to see the comparison options at the top and bottom of the results listing.

Kayak Program

• When an agency participating in the Kayak program creates new locations, notifications allow these locations to be submitted to Kayak.

• Locations can now add extra notes and a phone number to every Airport Shuttle setup. This improves renter information available at Kayak.
• RentCentric: Sending of vehicle data to Kayak has been enabled.

Revolution Manager

The Revolution Manager interface is more user friendly, through a ton of improvements. We have expanded our development team to allow faster development and software release cycles.

• Better Navigation: Manager’s top menu is updated and displays sub-menus for every item, which allows users to go the needed destination faster, without additional page loads.

• Age Ranges can now be setup to be Location Specific (every Location can have its own Age Ranges, with its own Vehicle restrictions).
• Extra Products limitations in OTA codes are removed. Now the same OTA codes can be assigned to extra products or coverage, as long as the extra product’s rate codes and/or vehicles are not overlapping.
• The Default “minimum time to book in advance” is set to 1 day, instead of 0 days 0 hours.
• Seasonal Rates now have two buttons to increment / decrement prices, instead of having to enter new values.
• Checking agencies for Locations that don’t have Latitude / Longitude setup is now faster, meaning faster loading times for Manager.
• Added a “Remember Me” option on Manager Login page, to remember user’s email.
• Multiple images for vehicles are allowed to be saved.
• Created a page for Agencies that displays all reviews and comments in Manager.
• A Location’s Address and Country are now mandatory when creating a Location.
• The Car Sales module allows ordering of vehicles now.
• Pickup / Dropoff Locations: Now orders locations as defined.

Revolution Release 1.12 - New Distribution Programs

The main focus of release 1.12 was to develop programs to build additional traffic for Car Rental Agencies using the Revolution reservation system.. This included updates to the Traffic Exchange program, the Global Travel program, and updates to our Partner Trial program. You can read more about the great new Distribution Programs here on our website.

There were many other new features for Car Rental Express.com and Revolution Manager. Find out about these great new features and functions by reading these release notes. A breakdown of the major features that are included in this release are as follows:

Distribution Networks

Global Traveler

This program brings an entirely new set of renters to ExpressITech Car Rental Agencies, through a large partner distribution network. A lot of work was put into developing reports, and tools in Manager to handle the Global Traveler program. This includes items which make the progarm easy for client agencies to use, such as no show reporting and handling of Pre-paid vs Post-paid reservations. We added usage sending to aria billing systems, and convenient reports for revenue and no shows. In addition, the distribution connector was re-tested to ensure are all capabilities are still working.

Traffic Exchange

A lot improvements were made to theTraffic Exchange program functions. As well, new reports were built for statistics and agency tracking of reservations. Transition code was built to automatically send selected trial partners to the traffic exchange endpoint for cities and airports we have activated.

Traffic Partners

Sojern

ExpressITech has exclusive Car Rental advertising with this channel. We constructed a dynamic Ad that is being used by Sojern on airline’s electronic boarding passes. This Ad has gone through several design revisions. A few updates to our Airline ID were made tables to enable this partner. Sojern works with a number of large US carriers, like Delta airlines. ExressITech is looking forward to bringing visitors from these sources to Traffic Exchange agencies.

Hello Metro

HelloMetro is an organization with 1,200+ hyper-local websites, of the form HelloChicago.com. ExpressITech has exclusive Car Rental placement on this channel, for the top cities in the US. An iframe was created to generate dynamic page integration with the Hello Metro website. That is, City comparison pages for Traffic Exchange agencies (and CRX agencies in some locations) are shown directly on the HellMetro city websites, located at the Car Rentals tab.

Car Rental Express.com

Underage Drivers Directory

This is a directory of all agencies that rent to customers under the age of 25. It is very similar to the comparison guide, in that it shows a build out based on location. On the given city page for the directory all agencies that rent to underage drivers are listed, along with their underage policies and a map showing all the locations. Car Rental Express.com has many young visitors and we want to make their reservation experience as convenient as possible.

Comments and Ratings Re-Enabled

Comments from user ratings are now enabled on the website and will show prospective renters latest ratings for agencies. We have required all reviewers who contribute to Renter Ratings to leave a comment in order to participate. This ensures that a balanced set of rental review comments will be published. You will see a new Review tab on the Rental Center, next to Profiles, Locations and other tabs.

Call to Action

A call to action was created for the mini rental center to help boost the prominence of it. Every page on Car Rental Express.com has a rental center capability and we wish to promote access.

Content Addition

Loads of content was added to the site. Comparison guide places pages, travel guide articles, tips and resources all had a boost in content. There have literally been hundred of new content pages added to the Car Rental Express.com website since its relaunch in June 2010. Local transportation, hotels, restaurants, and theatre and events are all featured, to assist our visitors to many locations.

Revolution Manager

Modify Reservation

We have added the ability for an agency to modify a reservation from Revolution Manager. This was an often requested feature from our agencies and we are pleased to include it as a new feature.

Airport or POI Requests from Agencies

Agencies now have the ability to request which Airports or POI’s they would like to associate with their locations. This request is then forwarded to support who can either accept the request or decline it.

Locations Latitude Longitude Requirement

We are now requiring agencies to have to enter latitude and longitude information for their locations. If they have not entered this information they are forwarded to the location that has blank information, to allow completion. This is much better than being found at zero lat/long, off the coast of Africa, where few website visitors actually want to rent cars.

Requests Removed

Reservation requests have been removed from the system. Requests (without confirmation) were a cause of much confusion to our renters, and sometimes for agencies, so we have removed them from our system. Agencies can now only accept confirmed reservations or inquiries.

Shopping Cart Update

The Revolution product and services shopping cart at ExpressITech.com has been updated to display all products in the recommended products section, for the convenience of our Car Rental Agency clients. This allows clients to more readily add additional products and services, without having to hunt through the ExpressITech website.

Google Maps

Maps in Manager have been updated to utilize Google Maps instead of Yahoo! Maps.

Report Printing

Printing of reports in manager was not working as expected. Full report printing has not been correctly installed. It is also possible to download a spreadsheet or CSV version of most reports.

Minor Fixes

Loads of minor fixes were made in Manager to improve saving information, report accuracy and completness of data. Presentation glitches has been cleaned up. Some discounts were not being displayed as expected. This was corrected too.

Rate Code Key Updates

Rate code keys when entered will now only display rates for that given rate code. In the past if a cheaper rate code was found it would display the rates for that rate code instead. This caused a lot of confusion and has now been corrected.

Release 1.11 was released December 5, 2010.

Much of Release 1.11 is work dedicated to the June re-launch of CarRentalExpress.Com. In addition to bug fixes, a review of the site was completed to better position the site for search engine positioning. New features were also added to the site to make it more convenient and meaningful for users:

• State and Country comparison guide pages
• Airport Directory
• Auto approval of Renter Rating comments
• Addition of rich snippets to comparison guide places and agency profiles
• Addition of lots of new content
• Performance improvements
• Styling fixes for IE6

Traffic Exchange Program

The traffic exchange program was created to allow traffic-supplying partners to deep link into the Revolution Reservation System to more quickly display rates from participating agencies.

An overview of the Traffic Exchange Features:

• Revolution Manager admin pages
• A Partners endpoint to view participating agencies’ vehicles and rates
• System to track clicks and reservations
• Agencies’ and Administrators’ reports
• Manager area for partners to view stats, edit accounts details, and help on program integration
• Partners data feeds for cities and/or airports to show agency representation

Mobile Private Label

Previously released, the development of this excellent product is part of Release 1.11. Our Revolution Private Label and CarRentalExpress adopters are greatly benefitting and showing cutting edge acceptance with Mobile Private Label.

Mass Rates Matrix Updater

The Mass Rates Matrix Updater allows agencies to quickly and easily alter their rates for all vehicle and rental periods for a given rate code. The Updater can be found under Revolution > Rental Center > Rate Administration > Mass Rates Updater.

Rate Search Location Report

A new Revolution report was added to give insight into which cities and airports are under represented by CarRentalExpress member agencies.

Booking Buddy, Low Fares and Leap Concepts

The integration of these 3 traffic partners into our website was concluded. In addition, changes were made to the rate search results to ease the integration of these and future partners.

Comment Moderation

Completing the moderation filters of Renter Rated comments in manager now allows the user/renter to easily read previous renters’ comments, favorable or not.

Billable Reservation Report

In our continuing work to make our products, either administration or reservation driven more user friendly, the billing report was updated to display reservation billing information based on an agencies current reservation plan.

Billing Changes

Usage sending issues were corrected, to allow agencies to pay their monthly invoices by check, and to still use a credit card for their PPC purchases without having their entire outstanding invoice paid on their chosen PPC credit card.

Deposit vs. Payment

Payment method has finally been renamed to what it truly is, a Deposit Method. And agencies now have the ability to hide this field for reservations on their private label websites. This can be done via the setting in Revolution > Rental Center > Rental Center Options.

We are proud to announce the release of Revolution 1.8. Features were developed to better serve your needs.

New Pro Image Gallery (by eVox)

You now have access to over 1,500 new model, showroom quality images, available in all colors in our Pro Gallery. These are professional, up-to-date and uniform vehicle images, which will enhance the look and feel of your representation on the Internet. You can access them by visiting your Vehicles page in Revolution Manager. You can browse and then upload the images that you like best.

New CRX Payment Options

Now you have the option of being charged $12.50/reservation at Car Rental Express.com OR $4.00/reservation/day, to a maximum of 5 days (for any length of rental). This way you can choose to be billed the best way that suits your company. Changes are made only at billing cycle boundaries, like the first of the month. Please contact Robyn Moreno at robyn@expressitech.com to ask for a change in this CRX payment option.

New Partners Added to Our Site

While working towards the completion of this release, we have been communicating closely with two new partners that will allow for increased revenue for your agency:

• 1. Rate Highway - a great way to actively manage rental rates
• 2. Compare Car Rentals.com - a new distribution channel, like Kayak

These new partner services will be available at our next Revolution release, and you can read previews about them at ExpressITech.com. Rate Highway is currently completing beta tests.

Improved Internal Systems

We have made many internal changes to better organize the running of our day-to -day operations. We now have Project Time Tracking, Billing System improvements and Domain Name Management.

Revolution 1.7 has kept our development team busy since December. We are happy to unveil a batch of new features to our Revolution clients.

Revolution Manager - New Look

The first thing you will notice is that Revolution Manager has a new look! The color scheme has changed, and the layout is now wider, giving you more space to administer your Revolution configuration.

Revolution Manager - Now Speedier!

For release 1.7, we focused heavily on improving Manager’s performance. You can now load and edit your information with greater speed and ease. We will be continually optimizing Manager’s performance, but we’ve made a huge leap forward with this Release.

Discounts and Rate Codes Report

In Manager, you can view a report of reservations that were made using special rate codes and discount codes.

Find it here: Reports » Other Reports » Discount Report

Module Enhancements

Vehicle Sales Program

You can now choose “call for pricing” instead of setting a dollar value for each vehicle.

Find it here: Revolution » Modules » Vehicle Sales

Corporate Program

You can now edit the email to which your corporate applications are delivered.

Find it here: Revolution » Modules » Corporate Program

Affiliate Program

You can now customize the service agreements that your affiliates agree to when they enroll in your affiliate program.

Find it here: Revolution » Modules » Affiliate Program

Reservation Phone Number

You can now create a phone number exclusively for your reservation confirmation email (a call center #, for example). This will replace your location and company default phone numbers.

Revolution™ 1.6.1 was released Monday, Dec 15th. It is a minor release, but includes some noteworthy features:

Learn By Example in Manager

Revolution™ Manager is a large administration system, with many powerful features to help you configure Revolution™ to your business’s requirements. You can now learn by example, with a one-click option to view our demo company “Basic Example Agency”.

In Manager, you will see a link in the sidebar “View a Demo Company”. Click on the arrow icon, and you will be taken to the same page as you are currently editing, but with the demo company’s data. You can navigate through the demo company, preview their Revolution pages, view reservation reports, etc. When you want to switch back, simply click on “Return to Your Account”.

Find it: Manager » [sidebar]

Daily or Weekly Rate Instead of “Rental Rate”

Revolution now allows you to show your renters the Daily or Weekly rate on the rate search results, instead of the calculated Rental Rate. Revolution chooses the largest rental period, and will display this to the renter (e.g. a 9 day rental will show Weekly, whereas a 2 day rental will show Daily).

Find it: Manager » Revolution » Rental Center » Rental Center Options » Rate Options

Reservation Reports and Notifications

Reservation requests now have a unique subject line: REQUEST FOR RESERVATION - REPLY IS REQUIRED to differentiate them from regular reservations.

The reservation report in Manager now paginates your reservations, and holds the correct page after canceling or replying to the renter. You can also now search from reservations over any date range (ignoring the calendar filters)

Find it: Manager » Reports » Reservations

Support Phone Call Report

If you are subscribed to our telephone support service, you can view you phone call log in Manager.

Find it: Manager » Support » Phone Calls

Revolution™ was released today, with some notable new features.

Revolution™ and Email Marketing from Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the web’s leading email marketing solution, enabling you to send high-impact e-newsletters to your customer list. Revolution™ now integrates with Constant Contact, making your mailing list maintenance completely automatic:

• Export your Revolution™ customer list, for easy import into Constant Contact
• New emails addresses from Revolution™ customers are imported nightly to your Constant Contact account
• Send e-newsletters to your customer list through Constant Contact’s secure and powerful admin panel

If you use Revolution™ on your website, and are interested in activating the Constant Contact Module, contact our support department.

Have Your Customers Read Your Rental Policies?

Misunderstandings at the rental counter are frustrating for everyone. Now you can ask your customers to read your rental policies before they submit their reservation. If you enable this option, on the renter information form, the following message will appear

“I have read, understand and agree to the Rental Policies”

with a checkbox, and a direct link to your rental policies page (in a popup, so they don’t navigate away from the reservation). The renter is required to check-off this field in order to submit their reservation.

Find it: Manager » Rental Center » Rental Center Options » Messages

Kayak Program: Free Clicks for your Clickbank

If you are part of our Kayak Program, you will now receive 3 free clicks for every 100 purchased. This allows you to periodically test your Kayak listings, and click-thru to your landing pages without incurring the click cost.

Find it: Manager » Network » Kayak Program

Updates for WebLink Clients

There are a couple of notable enhancements available for WebLink clients.

Rental Length Restrictions and Pickup Time Margin

Create minimum and maximum rental length restrictions for selected vehicles. Renters will be informed of the restriction when they submit their itinerary, so they understand why a rate quote is not being returned.

Find it: Manager » Rental Center » Rental Length Restrictions

You can also now set a minimum pickup time margin; the length of time the renter must book in advance. If the renter’s pickup time is under this cut-off, they will be prompted to call your rental location for rates and availability.

Find it: Manager » Rental Center » Rental Center Options » Itinerary Options

Policy Conditions

Rental policies can now be given location and vehicle conditions. When after the renter has chosen a their rate quote, only the policies matching these conditions will display.

Find it: Manager » Rental Policies

Revolution 1.5 brings a heap of new features and enhancements to your online reservation system, providing that you’re using the best system available on the web… Revolution. Here’s a summary of the heavy hitters:

Seasonal Hours of Operation

Do your locations’ hours of operation fluctuate from winter to summer? In Revolution Manager, you can create multiple hours of operation for each location, and specify date ranges for each. When a renter has submitted their itinerary, Revolution will first try to find a set of hours that matches their pickup date. If there are no special seasonal hours, it will use your “Base Hours”.

Drop-off hours can also be made date specific.

The Locations Module will show your current hours of operation (based on today’s date) and will also look forward to the next set of hours in the future, and display those to the renter.

Find it here in Manager: Revolution > Hours of Operation

Manager Site Map

If you find yourself lost in Manager’s extensive configuration menu, you can now turn to the “Site Map”, found in the top-right of the navigation menu. The Site Map will show you your current page, as well as previous pages that you have visited recently.

Rate Code Date Range Spans

Need to know what rate codes will apply on a particular pickup date? See you seasonal rate codes at a glance in Manager’s Rate Code editor. A colored graph is displayed showing each date range and the rate code it relates to.

Find it here in Manager: Revolution > Rental Center > Rates Admin > Rate Codes

View Modified Reservation History

Now in Manager, while viewing a reservation, you can see if the reservation was modified from a previous reservation, or whether it has since been modified. The reservation view panel now contains a “View Modification” link that will click through to the modification details.

Find it here in Manager: Reports > Reservations

Renter Vehicle Preference

In previous versions of Revolution, when the renter choose a vehicle preference, they were shown a detailed quote for that vehicle only. In Manager, you can now choose to show the renter other vehicle options, but “highlight” their preferred vehicle at the top of the search results.

Find it here in Manager: Revolution > Rental Center > Rental Center Options > Rate Quotes

Location Module Enhancements

Now renters can see all hour locations at a glance on a dynamic Google map, and search for the location nearest to them. Click here to see an example.

When a Week is not a Week

Instead of the default time unit for each rental period (per week = 7 days) you can now override this setting, and set the number of days and hours for each rental period’s time unit. Recommended for advanced users only…!

Find it here in Manager: Revolution > Rental Center > Rates Admin > Rental Periods

Not using Manager yet? It’s time to switch. You can easily set up your Manager account through the CRX Administrative Workstation.

Revolution 1.4.3 includes some important features for our clients. Here’s a brief overview of some of the changes and enhancements:

Combined Rates Administration: Seasonal and Rates Matrix

Does your company need the flexibility of tailoring some rates for a competitive market, while other rates can remain constant over longer periods of time? It’s now possible to administer speciifc rate codes under the Rates Matrix, which varies by calendar day, yet have the other rate codes as Seasonal Rates.

You must be using Revolution Manager to take advantage of this new feature. On the rate code administration page, choose which rate codes you want to administer under each management tool. If you are not using Manager yet, contact us and we will setup up your account.

Maps and Directions in the Locations Module

The Locations module now includes a location overview map, and interacting driving directions to each location (provided by Google™ maps). All Revolution Core and Pro clients that use the locations module will see this addition to their websites in the upcoming weeks.

Reserve a Vehicle or Request More Information

In Manager and the Workstation, you have had the option to allow vehicles to be reserved, or for the renter to request for information, or both.

Now on the detailed rate quote page, the renter will see either/or/both buttons, and continue to submit their reservation or inquiry.

ExpressITech is pleased to announce a joint venture partnership with Kayak, the web’s premier travel search engine.

Participating car rental agencies will be listed on Kayak.com and Sidestep.com’s search results.

Read about our Kayak Program and it’s advantages.

According to Kayak, the conversion rate from clickthru to reservation is between 10% - 12%. The cost of the program starts at $2.25 per clickthru, and there are no further charges. You pay only for the clicks to your website, or standard reservation page (if you do not use Revolution on your website). You receive 100% of the revenue from all Kayak sourced reservations.

If you sign up before Monday July 14th, we will credit your click bank with 25 free clickthrus with a minimum purchase of 25 clicks.

Click here to get started.

Revolution 1.4.1 is a minor release. Here are a couple highlights:

Support Tickets

Manager users can now create support tickets directly from any page in Manager. Click on “Submit Support Ticket” in the sidebar, and enter your ticket. The current Manager admin page, and your user information are automatically submitted with the ticket.

Tickets can be viewed and administered in the Support section of Manager.

Classic Menu

Clients who were more familiar with the CRX Adminstrative Workstation can now click on “Classic Menu” to view Manager’s pages in the style of the previous menu. We hope this helps our clients navigate Manager more smoothly!

Revolution Trial

Now prospective clients can sign up for a Revolution Trial, where they can test drive Revolution and Manager for 14 days.

We are happy to announce that Revolution Version 1.4 has been released. Here’s a brief description of the new features available to Revolution Core and Pro users.

Multiple Product Reservations

Enable your customers to book multiple vehicles in one streamlined booking process! This Revolution Extension allows the renter to choose the number of vehicles they would like to reserve from your vehicles and rates page. The rate quote summary shows a sum-total price of all the vehicle quantities that the renter has booked.

Revolution Manager’s availability matrix allows you to control the maximum number of vehicles the renter can rent (by calendar date, or a fixed number for any day of the year). If you are a TSD WebLink client, you can use RezCentral’s utilization calendar to dynamically control availability for each car class.

Each vehicle is booked as a unique reservation, with a separate confirmation number. All the regular reporting features apply, as if the reservations were booked independently.

For more information on enabling this extension, contact ExpressITech Support.

More Enhancements and Updates

View Reservation Emails. From Manager’s Reservation Report, view all past email correspondence associated with any reservation, including new confirmation emails, replies from your company, modification requests and cancellation emails.

Availability Matrix. The availability matrix has been upgraded to include filters for pickup date or over the whole span of the rental length.

Blackout Dropdown. In Manager, toggle between blackout periods using the drop down navigation.

Dependent Rates Unit. A default unit ($ or %age) can now be set for dependent rates. When you create a new dependent rate code, it will automatically set the values to vary from their parent by this default. It can be changed from the default setting for any vehicle or rental period.