Room Number Translation

The 7.00 provides the ability to translate from the room (or extension) numbers sent by the PMS to the mailbox numbers it uses, and vice-versa. This is done using a translation table that maps the room number directly to the mailbox number using simple substitution.

For sites with multiple PMS instances, there is a separate hospitality server instance for each PMS, each with its own configuration and translation table.

The configuration of PMS translation tables is discussed in the System Configuration / Hospitality / Translation section of the manual.

On receipt of any message packet from the PMS, if the message contains a room number the system will perform a forward lookup in the translation table. If the given room number is found, it will be replaced with the associated mailbox number before the command specified by the message is processed.

The PMS translation table provides a many-to-one relationship for room numbers to mailbox numbers. This means that every room number maps to one and only one mailbox number, but multiple different room numbers can map to the same mailbox number.

For example, the following translation table is entirely valid:

In this case, the room numbers 71101, 81101 and 21101 all map to mailbox 1101. This is valid.

In some cases, a room may have multiple physical phones, each with its own extension, and the PMS may be sending commands with extension numbers rather than room numbers. This can be handled using a translation table similar to that shown above. In this case, 71101, 81101 and 21101 are all extensions in room 1101 and the PMS may send a check in for each extension rather than a single check in for the room number. Using a translation table like this allows the VMS to map all 3 extensions onto one mailbox.

If a PBX link is also being used to pass phone control states, name changes, and so forth to the PBX, you would need to assign each extension to the MWI address fields in the mailbox as well, because translations are not supported for the PBX link.

In the example above, you could assign 71101 to the address MWI 1, 81101 to MWI 2 and 21101 to MWI 3, all in mailbox 1101. If there is a hunt group associated with the room, say 1101, then you should assign it to the Extension field on the owner settings page (which will also assign it to MWI 0 automatically). The Extension field is used when dialing wakeup calls, so it should always be assigned the extension (or hunt group) that should be dialed for the wakeup calls.

Whenever the system needs to send a message to the PMS for a room, it will perform a reverse lookup in the translation table to get all room numbers associated with the given mailbox number. A message will then be generated and sent to the PMS for each room number found.

Using the example in the previous section, if the system needed to pass a housekeeping status change on to the PMS for mailbox 1101, it would look for 1101 in the translation table (searching on the mailbox number field). It would find 3 entries, for rooms (or extensions) 21101, 71101 and 81101. It would then send a maid status update message for each one. The same process would apply for voice message count updates.

If no translations are found for a given mailbox number, then a single message will be sent using the mailbox number as the room number.