This is an interesting assignment - show how bi-directional integration between Oracle Hospitality and Oracle CPQ could work. In this case, CPQ is being used as the hotel call center reservation app. Here is a component overview -
Think of a chain of hotels, leveraging CPQ in their call center as their room reservation tool. Commiskey Hotels has 7 properties, scattered across the northside of Dublin city, and I need to get their room rates into CPQ, so that my call center folks can start providing visitors with the holiday of a lifetime.
The base data for the reservations - room availability - is stored in a CPQ Data Table, format is as follows -
The reservation UI, surfaced in Oracle CPQ, leverages this data for finding the right room for the guest.
Data Tables are used to store product and commerce data. They can be accessed from any part of the Oracle CPQ application where BML is used. BML = Big Machines Extensible Language - Oracle CPQ's scripting language.
Finally, a BML script will be used in Oracle CPQ to invoke the OIC integration to create the room reservation in Oracle Hospitality.
OIC interfaces with Oracle Hospitality via OHIP (Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform). Check out the posts here for an introduction to OIC and OHIP.
Integrations - Oracle Hospitality to CPQ
Here I have 5 integrations -
- getRoomRates
- invokes the OHIP api to get rates
- invokes the integration - updateCPQDataTable
- updateCPQDataTable
- invokes the CPQ REST api to update the Data Table with the daily rate info.
- deployCPQDataTable
- invokes the CPQ REST api to deploy the Data Table, essentially making the data live and visible in the reservation UI.
- getRatesForProperties
- invokes getRoomRates for each property.
- updateOHIPToken
- This is a scheduled OIC integration that updates the Authorization token (stored in an OIC Lookup) every 45 minutes.
Firstly, a short discourse on the subject of room rates. Hotels have different types of rooms e.g. king Room, 2 queens room, suite, junior suite. Room types could also include a reference to such things as views e.g. King Room with Lake view etc. Net, net, hotels can have many room types.
Each room type can have different rates. You have probably heard of the rack rate - this is the price that a hotel charges for a room before any discounts have been applied. This can often be set artificially high, to make discounts sound really compelling.
Room rates can differ for a stay in the same room. We are all used to business hotels charging less at the weekend, so a stay from Thursday to Sunday could include different room rates.
Room availability and the relevant rates are retrieved using the OHIP api -
{{OHIPHostName}}/par/v0/hotels/{{HotelId}}/availability?roomStayStartDate=2021-09-01&roomStayEndDate=2021-09-02&roomStayQuantity=1&adults=1&children=0&limit=20&includeClosedRates=true
Note the parameters - limit - specifies the number of records to be returned, includeClosedRates will ensure that rates for unavailable rooms (e.g. already booked) are also returned.
I try the availability api in Postman to get a handle on the data structure returned - here I check for a room from 01 to 05 October - essentially for 4 nights 01, 02, 03, 04 October.
As you can see, the Rack rate for a Superior room for the 4 nights 01 - 04 Oct is $400.
The target Data Table in CPQ has rates per night, so for the above, I would need to create 4 rows with the same rate amount in the CPQ Data table. As discussed above, we could of course have multiple rates for this stay period.
In this particular scenario, I need to sync rate data between Oracle Hospitality and CPQ. I will need to do this for more than 1 hotel, and, per default, syncs will be executed with start and end dates being within the same month. The latter is for the POC only, making date processing easier for me.
In the OIC integration, I will need to do some array processing, i.e.
Within roomStays
- For Each set of room rates
- For Each set of rates
- For Each rate...
But this is simple to design in OIC.
Next step is to insert the room rate data into the CPQ Data Table. This functionality is not currently covered by the CPQ adapter which focuses on supporting the CPQ Commerce api.
Therefore I use the OIC REST adapter and invoke the CPQ REST api directly.
Step 1 is to create a new REST adapter based connection e.g. OHIP-REST-CPQ. I provide the CPQ base url and enter my CPQ username / password.
I consulted the CPQ REST api docs - finding the Create Data Table Row api. The endpoint is as follows - /rest/v12/adminCustomYourDataTableName.
As usual, I try this REST invoke in Postman then "transcribe" it to OIC.
Once the data is in CPQ, the data table needs to be deployed. This will ensure data changes are reflected in the UI. Again, same modus operandi - try out in Postman, transcribe to OIC - creating a separate integration for this functionality.
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I mentioned earlier the need to process multiple properties. I create a separate integration for this, it accepts an array of properties and invokes getRoomRates for each property.
Finally, I also have a scheduled job that updates the OHIP token every 45 minutes. The token is used for authorization purposes in each call to OHIP. This scheduled job, retrieves the token from OHIP via -
It then invokes the OIC REST api to recreate the lookup table (AA-Hospitality-Lookup) that includes the Bearer token value.
I also have a couple of other lookups -
For example, each hotel will have it's own rate plan codes. Room types have a code and a description e.g. code ABCD may equate to Classic King Non-Smoking.
Integrations - CPQ to Oracle Hospitality
Very simple integration here - create a reservation in Oracle Hospitality -
Check my previous post for details on implementing the Reservation integration.
This integration will be invoked from CPQ - all we need is OIC endpoint and credentials, naturally I could put OCI API Gateway in between to mask the credentials. This invoke is implemented in CPQ BML -
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