Previously, an middleware software was needed to integrate the HSU hotel ACS with the PMS Fidelio Suite or Opera. FIAS (Fidelio Interface Application Specification) support is now natively added to our software. You can use Fidelio and Opera directly to issue electronic hotel keycards.
The implementation was carried out on the FIAS 2.20.24 specification. The following features are now available:
- Establishing a connection in the asynchronous and Full duplex modes. The Full duplex is required for connecting to old versions of IFC (Fidelio / Opera external interface controller.)
- Issuing new keycards and copies of guest ones.
- Issuing guest keycards by reservation that start functioning in the future.
- Reading guest cards from PMS.
- Checkout.
- Writing additional access areas directly from PMS on the card (to use this feature, an additional IFC option is required to be set up.) Setting extra areas makes it possible to provide access for guests to specific premises based on the guest's status, tariff, or payment made. A sauna, wellness center, parking lot, beach, and any other areas, access to which is controlled by HSU equipment are some examples of such areas.
- Transferring the issued card number (Mifare UID) to the PMS or recording a unique second track on the card transferred from Fidelio / Opera. This feature is required for smooth integration of Fidelio with third systems based on providing a guest card (an additional IFC option is required to be set up.)
- Accepting the name of a keycard holder and saving it in the hotel ACS HSU database, including in a national encoding determined by the integration server setting. In particular, 1250 Central European and 1251 Cyrillic encodings are supported.
- Recording the operator's name who has issued the guest keycard in the hotel's ACS to the database.
- Adding extra doors to be opened with a particular keycard. This function is often used in so-called Connect or Family rooms, when the same guest card has to open both doors of the adjoining rooms (to use this feature, an additional IFC option is required to be set up.)
The following FIAS commands are now supported to implement the described above features:
- KR - Key Request – A request for a key from the PMS to the hotel ACS;
- KA - Key answer – The result of processing the received KR command for the ACS transferred to the PMS.
- KZ – Key Read – Reading a keycard on the encoder, from the PMS.
- KD – Key Delete – Guest checkout.
Like in all previous updates, the ACS database is synchronized with the PMS database to make security reports of the hotel ACS with all usual data, including the name of a guest and the name of an operator.
The implemented interface for integration with PMS version 4.0 has been successfully tested in conjunction with Fidelio in a 350-room hotel in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and in an over 500-room resort hotel in Egypt.
Bugs fixed:
- When transmitting a long operator's name exceeding 20 characters, provided for in the protocol, the interface used to show an error due to the impossibility of entering the operator's name to the hotel ACS database. In particular, the error occurred when integrating with 1CHotel PMS, which often uses long usernames in the national language.
