Property Management Systems

Also:

http://www.msisolutions.com Multi Systems WinPM is based on Crystal Reports.
http://www.visualonesystems.com/explorer/products.htm Microsoft Windows NT with an MS-SQL Server database. "...takes advantage of the latest Microsoft products such as MS Word (for mailing lists), MS Excel (for creating graphs and charts) and even Microsoft Fax for sending reservation confirmations to guests. " "All of Visual One's data is available to you, the user, for creating customized reports using, for example, Seagate's Crystal Report Writer" over 1500 clients.
eForms support for Visual One is easily provided by editing the Crystal Reports RPT files to include an eForms font.
http://www.autoclerk.com DOS program with a Windows front end. Runs on NT Server 4.0. uses Windows 98 or NT Workstation clients. PCAnywhere v.9.2 or later must be installed on ALL AutoClerk stations and the server. No integration for customization of reports. About 350 customers. Data files compatible with MS Access so some flexibility in reporting or forms layout might be achieved by custom programming in MS Access.
"While AutoClerk does not sell or support hardware, all of our technicians are trained on the Okidata 320ie and 320 Turbo. Almost every property that uses our program has at least one, and most have two or more. Printers are one of the most mechanical parts of the system and are very prone to failure. These failures tend to happed during the middle of the night during the audit when the most printing is done. Our ability to help them over the phone is very valuable.
There must be a default printer (should be local) configured on Station 1. This printer will be used for night audit. Spooling should not be enabled, with the spool mode set to start printing at the end of the first page.
Currently the only printer driver we support for specialized printing tasks, such as registration slips, travel agent commission checks and other special size forms, is the Epson FX-80. Ensure that the registration slip printer is either an Epson or set to emulate an Epson, and that the Widows Epson FX-80 printer driver is installed."

They do not sell pre-printed forms.
- http://www.form-3.com/ Main paper forms supplier. Web site starts in large letters with "Welcome ... AutoClerk clients and prospective AutoClerk clients! " and goes on to say:
  "We first met Gary Gibb and Ed Bear of AutoClerk in the late 70's. They were developing a computer system for hotels, motels and inns based on their experiences on the job behind the front desk. We supplied paper for their testing. We designed the formats for the printed output of the system that are in use today. Their success has been our success, and we now do the printing for over 125 properties, with the number growing monthly."
- http://www.westernbusinesssolutions.com also supplies pre-printed forms.
Opera Windows based program by Micros / Fideleo. Oracle based?
ImagInn http://www.mcorpinc.com/support/cd2000/ImagInn.htm *nix program with character based terminals. Report Layout module has pre-defined setups for different printer types... one for HP LaserJet. Only a few items are controllable like Bold, Compressed print, etc...

There is a screen to define which terminal prints to what system printer and an option to allow the operator to select the printer at any time so we should be able to do the simple Unix integration. Unfortunately, this will require the operator to actually select the report twice...For example: once to tell the PMS to print the folio and again to tell the PMS to print it to the folio printer. There does not appear to be a way to tell the system that when a folio is printed from the front desk, it should print on the folio printer. I guess they have to switch paper a lot or use a generic preprinted form?

I would guess that customer support should be able to add a new printer definition for each form so that rather than their being one option for HP LaserJet, there would be HP LaserJet Folio, HP LaserJet RegKey, etc... each with a different setup string which would include the macro overlay command. It would appear that there would still be the issue of having to select with printer to print to each time (as above).

They may want to add data encoding to their field list in the Report Layout module (look under Forms Configuration in Chapter 10 of the user manual)

Questions for the PMS support person:
- Is there a way to tell the system that when a folio is printed from terminal 1 it should print to printer x and when a registration is printed from that same terminal it should print to printer y? How?
- Can you setup new printer types? Is there a setup string that is sent to the printer at the beginning of each job that can be different for each new printer type? Can the customer do this or do you have to? How much would it cost?
Private: Questions for an ImagInn exec
- How many properties do you have? if properties > 1000 then: Are you interested in being able to overlay electronic forms when your customers use a laser printer and make money doing it?