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Digital Connect 23.03 Release Notes

Release Identification

Release Version Type (Version, Update, or Patch) Date Approved by Description of Change
23.03 Version March 2023

 

 Software updates

Enhancements

Digital Connect introduces the following enhancements:

  • Returning of booking type and pseudo city code by the PNR service
  • Support for SSR free text in Passenger APIs
  • Automatic Exchange & Refund enhancement in Change Itinerary flow
  • Purchase service performance improvements
  • Apple Pay extended availability
  • Enhanced Seat Map optimization
  • Dynamic Rewards Ancillary Refunds

Enhancements

Returning of booking type and pseudo city code by the PNR service

With this enhancement, the PNR service returns the booking type and booking pseudo city code for all PNRs. This element will be used by the airline UI to determine if it is a redemption PNR or a revenue PNR. As part of this feature customers will be able to redirect to either DCP flow for exchanges or DC flow for exchanges based on the introduced bookingType element. Booking pseudo city code will be used by the airline UI or direct DC customers to access DCP services based on pseudo city code.

We have enhanced the PNR service contract to return booking type with the following values:

  • Fixed_Award
  • Mixed_Award
  • Dynamic_Award
  • Revenue (for Book Now Pay Later PNRs)

This enhancement applies to the following workflows:

  • INIT PNR Service for post booking flows
  • MYB:CI
  • MYB:CR
  • MYB:CPD
  • MYB:MTO
  • MYB:FFY, FQTU
  • MYB:BNPL

Prerequisites:

None.

Limitations:

None.

Support for SSR free text on Passenger Edit Page

Airlines customers often lose sight of passenger specific-information they wanted to add in the passenger edit page since they need to wait till they reach purchase page to be able to do so. This can cause loss of crucial remarks pertaining to a passenger thereby increasing servicing time.

With the Free text functionality, it is possible to add free text for Special Service Requests (SSRs) on passengers API and also to perform validation on the provided free text. (minimum and maximum length and disallow special characters). This functionality is available in the booking flow and post booking flow Change passenger details  (MYB-CPD and MYB-CI). Other flows were also updated to keep consistency, returning SSR description in all "passengers" elements.

This enhancement applies to the following workflows:

  • Shop and Book
    • api/passengers
    • /purchase
  • MYB:CPD
    • pnr/passengers
  • MYB:CI
    • pnr/exchange/passengers
    • pnr/exchange/products/seats
    • pnr/mto/products
    • pnr/exchange/purchase
  • MYB:CR
    • pnr/cancelAndRefund
  • MYB:MTO
    • pnr/mto/ancillaries
    • pnr/mto/products/seats
    • pnr/mto/purchase

Prerequisites:

Since this feature is an addition to current SSR functionality present in passenger service "specialRequests", SSR must be enabled/active in downline.

Limitations:

DC does not perform validation of SSR Codes, except to its length.

Automatic Exchange & Refund enhancement in Change Itinerary flow

This enhancement addresses an issue with different Automated Exchange & Refund (AER) responses for different passenger types, e.g. Refund for an infant passenger type, and Add Collect for the adult. In such a scenario DC was throwing an exception with a "AER Breakdown has add collect and refund results. Cannot handle." message. The enhancement applies to the Manage Your Booking: Change Itinerary flow (MYB:CI), with changes done to the following services:

  • GET pnr/exchange/products
  • GET pnr/exchange/paymentOptions - response
  • GET pnr/exchange/purchase - response

The /paymentOptions response was adjusted to return the correct amounts both for an additional payment as well as a refund amount.

The response contains "paymentProducts" with the correct additional payment amount, "refundDataModel" with a list of all refunds to be handled and a total of those refunds, and also "result" node which consists of three fields:

  • "paymentRequired" (boolean) - set to "true" if any additional payment is required, either on VCR or on EMD document.
  • "refund" (boolean) - set to "true" if any refund needs to be processed, either on VCR or on EMD document.
  • "vcrChangeType" - set to one of: "ADD_COLLECT", "REFUND", "EVEN_EXCHANGE". It takes into account only VCR documents' payments. It is set to:
    • "ADD_COLLECT" if the total of additional payment and refund on the VCRs is a positive value
    • "REFUND" if the total of additional payment and refund on the VCRs is a negative value
    • "EVEN_EXCHANGE" if there is neither additional payment nor refund on the VCRs

The "payment" node in the /purchase response was updated to return the complete list of all refunds and the additional payment. After this update, the payment list always includes all refunds (from VCRs and EMDs) as separate elements even if paid for with the same Form of Payment, and also includes a total of additional payments that need to be collected per each Form of Payment.

Prerequisites:

None.

Limitations:

None.

Purchase service performance improvements

We have improved the performance and customer experience of the purchase service by updating the orchestration flow, adjusting downline services being called, and adjusting the flow steps to reduce the response time. We have reduced the use of SabreCommandLLSRQ where possible by replacing its usage with dedicated services/APIs instead of pass-through commands.

Changes to Payment service include:

  • Replacing multiple reservation update calls when adding remarks with a single call
  • Replacing the stateful update reservation call with a stateless call
  • Using the QueuePlaceLLSRQ with multiple queue node within a single call instead of separate calls for each queue.

Changes to Fraud Check include:

  • Replacing the stateful update reservation call with stateless when adding remarks.

These enhancements apply to the following workflows:

  • B2C: RBE
  • B2C: BNPL

Prerequisites:

None.

Limitations:

None.

Apple Pay extended availability

Digital Connect version 23.03 extends the Apple pay functionality introduced in DC 22.07. Apple Pay is now supported as a single form of payment (SFOP) and multiple form of payment (MFOP) in the following post-booking workflows:

  • MYB:CI
  • MYB:BNPL
  • MYB:MTO
  • MYB:FFU
  • MYB:CR

In addition to B2C and B2C:BNPL flows supported previously.

Prerequisites:

None.

Limitations:

Alternate forms of payment (AFOP), such as gift cards, Poli, PayPal, ZIP are not allowed as multiple forms of payment (MFOP) and thus are limited to single form of payment (SFOP).

Enhanced Seat Map optimization

As an improvement to the Enhanced Seat Map (ESM) feature, we have introduced a unique segment reference number for each segment in the itinerary. Passengers get this reference number after selecting flights, products and seats, and DC passes the segment id to get seat maps for each segment.

This enhancement applies to the shop & book flow in the following DC microservices: air, product, seat, passenger.

Prerequisites:

None.

Limitations:

  • This enhancement does not apply to post-booking flows.
  • If the session expires, the passenger needs to reselect the desired flight. A new segment ID is assigned each time the passenger selects a flight.

Dynamic Rewards Ancillary Refunds

Digital Connect ensures compliance with US Department of Transportation requirements by allowing passengers to receive a refund to the original form of payment for fully unflown bookings that have ancillaries paid for with points. The points used in the reservation are returned to the Loyalty Management System (LMS) in both EMDs and VCRs, and the monetary amount is returned to the form of payment that has been originally used, depending on the fare rules.

For partial refund of fully unflown reservations, assuming the ancillaries are refundable, if the ticket was paid with cash or points and ancillaries paid with points, the following scenarios are supported:

  • Ticket is fully unflown and ancillaries require refund.
  • Ticket is partially flown, and ancillaries require refund.  
    • If a single EMD is associated with a single coupon with “OPEN/OK” status, an EMD with outbound and inbound coupons and outbound is used. A refund of fully unused EMD for inbound coupon is in scope.

The enhancement applies to the following workflows:

  • Manage Your Booking – Modify Trip Options (MYB:MTO)
  • Manage Your Booking – Cancel and Refund (MYB:CR)
  • Flat Fee Upgrade (FFU)
  • Frequent Traveller Upgrade (FQTU)

Limitations:

  • This enhancement only applies to ancillaries paid for with points, it does not affect the use of other forms of payment.
  • Partially flown redemption tickets with or without are out of the scope of this enhancement.
  • Exchanges of redemption tickets with or without ancillaries are not supported.
  • Non-sequential refund of unflown segments are not supported.
  • EMD’s issued with MFOP Refund is not supported.