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Learn about how to get started with our products, common concepts you may hear in the travel industry, and other guides to help you along the way.

 

Sabre Work Area

Learn about the Sabre Work Area and how/when to store versus clear it.

What is the Sabre Work Area?

When you get a session token, your Sabre session is allocated and your Sabre Work Area is initialized.

Your Sabre Work Area (also known as the Agency Assembly Area or "AAA") is much like a temporary shopping cart that allows you to talk to and keep information for a given passenger name record "in your Sabre cart" for as long as your session token/session is valid. Therefore, you must refresh the token, else you’ll lose items in your cart.

You can only use your Sabre Work Area to build one passenger name record at a time.

How to clear the Work Area

Call the Ignore Transaction API. This action clears and removes any changes made to a passenger name record since the last time a record was ended.

Note: Certain tasks, such as issuing or voiding a ticket cannot be undone via the Ignore Transaction API. If you attempt to clear the work area for such tasks, the Ignore Transaction API will return an error.

When to clear the Work Area

Your session token manager should clear the work area when it reuses an existing session token.

How to store transactions to the Work Area

Call the End Transaction API. This action is used to complete and/or store changes made to a passenger name record.

We have a subset of orchestrated APIs that can end a transaction on your behalf. See also: Intro to orchestrated APIs​ for a list of our most popular orchestrated APIs.

When to store transactions to the Work Area

You should store transactions to the work area once your workflow is complete. For example, when you book a hotel or upon the creation of a passenger name record.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Do I always need to clear my Sabre Work Area before reusing the session token?
You should. Call the Ignore Transaction API to discard any content that remains from a previous session that used the session token.

What happens if an airline times-out the Sabre Work Area before my token expires?
An airline may time out a Sabre Work Area before the session token expires. Each airline has their own time-out values. Airlines can cancel air segments that are not in a closed passenger name record (PNR) if the Sabre Work Area is left open-ended. When you book an air segment, the airline confirms the availability of that space. If you keep that space for an undetermined amount of time (for example, 30 minutes) without closing the PNR, then the status of those segments becomes "unconfirmed." Therefore, you must cancel the segment and resell it; it will (probably) still be valid.

What happens if I already booked a car or hotel for the traveler?
Car and hotel bookings do not require a ticket to be issued. Therefore, letting the Sabre Work Area content expire might turn out to be a charge for the customer, and may be interpreted by the vendor as a no-show. You should complete the passenger name record (PNR), cancel it, and be sure you have a cancellation number that confirms the segment was canceled successfully by the vendor. Not just in the Sabre PNR.

What happens if my application crashes or we experience a network outage while a Sabre session is active?
The content that was retrieved during the session remains in your Sabre Work Area until it times out. If the client or network is brought online before the time-out period expires, the content from the Sabre session should remain.