1. Tourwriter will provide you with a backup copy of your existing online database (.bak file). This will be sent to you via email as an attachment.
2. Save the .bak file to a location on your computer e.g. Desktop. This should be the computer you will be installing Tourwriter onto.

If the computer you receive the backup email on, is not the computer you will be installing Tourwriter onto, you can transfer the .bak file using a USB drive.
IMPORTANT – At this point your online database should not be accessed by yourself, or other staff, until the offline database setup  (detailed below) has been completed.

Setup New Office Server (performed by the client):

1. On the new computer / server, download and install Tourwriter: support.tourwriter.com/download
2. When Tourwriter starts, (if you see Tourwriter Login window here, click Setup, then..) select Office Database
   
3. Click Install Server Software
4. Click Advanced Options
5. Click the Choose my backup button and browse to the backup file (.bak) provided above
6. Click the Install button at the bottom of the window and follow the prompts to complete the install. This process may take up to 10 minutes to complete
7. Click the OK button
8. At the Tourwriter Login window, click the Setup button
9. Click Office Database
10. Click the Search button and select your new Server Name.
11. Click the OK button
12. You can then login with your existing username and password.

Following this, connect each staff member’s Tourwriter application to your new locally installed database by completing the steps detailed below:

1. On the staff computer(s), download and install Tourwriter: support.tourwriter.com/download
2. Open Tourwriter
3. At the login screen, click the Setup button
4. Click Office Database
5. Click the Search button and select your new Server Name.
6. Click the OK button
7. You can then login with your existing username and password.

Relocation or Creation of the TourwriterData Folder

You will also need to relocate or create your TourwriterData folder, which is used to store any customised email templates, reports and images.
For existing customers, locate the TourwriterData folder and copy all files to a location on your Server. You will need to relink your TourwriterData folder to your Tourwriter database, refer Step 2 from this article.
For new customers, who do not yet have a TourwriterData folder, please follow steps provided in this file for setup info: TourwriterData folder setup instructions.
Once you have completed all of the above steps, and you have logged into your Office Database, please contact your Tourwriter Customer Success Executive to ensure your online database is switched off and our billing records are updated accordingly.

The post Tourwriter Offline Database Installation appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.

The TourwriterData folder is a storage folder for all Tourwriter documents such as email templates, images for reports, and customised report files (e.g. Voucher, Client Pricing and Quotation).
Tourwriter will also save a copy of all emails sent from the system here, as soon as you start sending booking requests to your Suppliers.
Your TourwriterData folder sits outside the Tourwriter database. Once created, you must link your Tourwriter database to your TourwriterData folder.
It is important that in the initial setup stage you ensure that the file path of the TourwriterData folder is accessible by all users from all PCs within your organisation.

Step 1: Setting up the TourwriterData folder

1. On your shared / network drive, create a new folder called TourwriterData.
   Tip: If you have an Online Drive, you will create your TourwriterData folder within that folder on your computer.
2. Within the TourwriterData folder, create the following Subfolders:

Images Subfolder
The Images folder will be used to file any Supplier images used on Quotations, Itineraries and any other documentation produced from the system that include images. IMPORTANT – Before you can start attaching images to the Tourwriter database, ensure you’ve established a good folder structure within your Images folder.

Reports Subfolder
The Reports folder will be used to file custom Report files such as Voucher, Client Pricing and Quotation. Save a copy of any existing Tourwriter custom reports here (.rdlc files)

Templates Subfolder
The Templates folders will be used to file custom Email or Accounting export templates. Instructions on how to save files to these locations will be provided to you during your Tourwriter training and / or as your report development takes place.

Step 2: Linking your TourwriterData folder to your Tourwriter database

IMPORTANT – You only have to update the Folder settings in Tourwriter on one person’s Tourwriter. Once saved these settings will be updated for all users.

Once your TourwriterData folder and subfolders have been created above, please follow the below instructions to link your TourwriterData folder to your Tourwriter database:

1. Log into Tourwriter
2. Go to Tools > Setup > Folder settings.
3. Click
4. Navigate to the TourwriterData folder you have created (select the TourwriterData folder name).
5. Click OK. Your Default file location will now say e.g. X:\TourwriterData (where X = your chosen drive letter for your company)
6. Save this change in Tourwriter (Ctrl + S, or the Save button on the toolbar)
7. The TourwriterData folder setup is complete.

The post Tourwriter Folder Settings appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.

System.ArgumentNullException: Database connection string is not initialized.
atTourWriter.Info.Services.ConnectionString.GetConnectionString(Nullable`1timeout) in
c:\dev\Tourwriter.App\Tourwriter.Client\client\TourWriter.Info\Services\ConnectionString.cs:line 65
at TourWriter.Info.Services.ConnectionString.GetConnectionString() in
c:\dev\Tourwriter.App\Tourwriter.Client\client\TourWriter.Info\Services\ConnectionString.cs:line 59
at TourWriter.Info.UserSet.Authenticate(String username, String password) in
c:\dev\Tourwriter.App\Tourwriter.Client\client\TourWriter.Info\UserSet.cs:line 28
at TourWriter.Info.UserSet.AuthenticateRemote(String connectionString,String username, String password) in
c:\dev\Tourwriter.App\Tourwriter.Client\client\TourWriter.Info\UserSet.cs:line 19
at TourWriter.Forms.Login.Authenticate(DbConnection connection, Stringusername, String password) in
c:\dev\Tourwriter.App\Tourwriter.Client\client\TourWriter\Forms\Login.cs:line 109

Resolution

This error message suggests that you have created too many Tourwriter Databases, which is why you are unable to login.

Please follow the steps below to resolve this issue:
1. Open Tourwriter
2. Click  on the Setup button
3. Click on the Online Database button
4. Re-enter your Tourwriter Connection Key below and click OK ( note – these settings will be remembered for next time).
5. Login with your Tourwriter username

The post Database connection string not initialized appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.

Connection error when trying to login to Tourwriter.
“Failed to connect to your Tourwriter database on computer: (online server).”

Detailed connection error message:

Resolution

This error is shown when you are using an old version of Tourwriter. To fix this issue please download and install the latest version of Tourwriter from http://support.tourwriter.com/download.

The post Error Message – Connection Error appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.

1. On the login screen, click the Setup > Office Database.
   
2. Replace the existing database server name with “DO NOT USE THIS DB” or anything similar as shown in the image below and click OK.
   
3. Users will now see this message as their Database name, warning them to select the correct Online database using the dropdown menu as shown below.
   

NOTE: The above steps have to be performed on each Tourwriter user’s computer.

If you would like to completely prevent access to a database, please contact support@tourwriter.com. The support team can provide in-depth IT instructions on how to remove access.

The post Warning Against Accidental Logins appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.

Before you begin loading any supplier contract, take time to interpret the contract and to ensure that it contains all the Supplier information you need in order to load the contract data into Tourwriter.

Make sure you understand the contract and that you have answers to the questions below before you start loading data:

1. Are the rates provided net rates?
2. What is the applicable markup or commission level?
3. What currency are the rates in?
4. Do the rates include all applicable taxes?
5. Are there any room types I don’t need, or any seasons I won’t sell?
6. Are the accommodation rates provided on a per room, per person or per group basis?

Be selective with regard to what you decide to load

Some supplier contracts are complex (i.e. they have a large number of Services and/or Seasons), in which case you could spend hours loading a single Supplier into your database if you were to load the entire content of the contract into your Tourwriter database. We strongly recommend that you only load the data you need and that you will use regularly.

Consider applying the ‘20/80’ rule.
Do you book 20% of your Suppliers 80% of the time? If so these are the Suppliers you should load first.
Do you book 20% of Services 80% of the time? If so these are the Services you should load for this Supplier.

Utilising these recommendations will help your team enormously and ultimately you will be using Tourwriter sooner!

General Rules

IMPORTANT – Load all of the relevant data in all of the Subtabs (i.e. Rates, including all Seasons and all Pricing options, Configs, Details and Warnings) for one Service before you copy it and use it as a base for another Service. This will save you a lot of time, as all of this information will be copied and can then be adjusted as needed, rather than having to manually load the relevant information each time.

Be consistent with the use of capitals particularly under Name and Option fields as this data will appear on your Vouchers, Invoices, Supplier emails etc.

Pricing options for selected season

1. You cannot have the same Pricing Option name on any two lines, even if the Type is different.
2. If the Charge is Group the Pricing option Type is left blank and all of the Pricing Options should be ticked as the Defaults (see example above).
3. If the Charge is Room the Pricing option Type default is always Double (only one Pricing Option Type must be selected).
4. If the Charge is Pax the Pricing option Type default is always Adult (only one Pricing option Type must be selected).

Suggested Abbreviations

1. Always state, in brackets, the age range for the Child and Infant Option, together with whether the age is inclusive.
   Examples: Child (2-15 yrs inclusive) or Infant (0-2 yrs inclusive)
2. When describing the number of people that can be accommodated, write as 2A + 3C instead of 2 adults and 3 children
3. When describing the number of nights for a tour etc. use 5 nts instead of 5 nights
4. When describing the room configuration use K for king, Q for queen and S for single, so 2 queen beds would be abbreviated to 2Q, and one king bed and 1 single bed would be abbreviated to 1K+1S

The post Database Loading Guidelines appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.

Allows you to manage and maintain the actual database. Here you can back up or restore data from a back up.

NOTE – If your database is online, your database backups are maintained by TravelMesh. The database server disks are imaged every 30 minutes, and full backups are done every 24 hours and copied to another physical location. If you have an offline database, we recommend you perform regular (daily/weekly) database backups.

Database Backup

This will create a single backup file of the entire Tourwriter database. Choose the backup location and file name, and click the backup button. By default the current date and time will be added to the file name, to make it easier to manage your backups.

IMPORTANT – Local paths are relative to the computer that the database is running on, eg if you enter C:\Backups\ on your computer, the database will back up to C:\Backups\ on the database computer (server).

IMPORTANT – You may get a permissions error when performing the backup. This is due to the restricted permissions of the default Windows account that the database service runs on, which may limit it to saving backups only to the C drive (of the database computer), or even only the database specific folder on the C drive (typically C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\… ). Doing the backup to this location should always succeed. You should never change the permissions on this account, rather you could set up a new account for the database service to run on that has permission to write say to a remote drive for backups – please see your system administrator for this.

Database Restore

This will restore the entire Database to that of the selected backup file (just click the Restore button and follow the prompts to select the backup file, and there are WARNING prompts along the way!).

WARNING – All current database values will be overwritten, reverting back to the values at the point of the backup that you have chosen to restore from. For safety, you should always perform a last minute backup of the database before restoring it from an older backup file.

Backups

Backups must be performed daily if hosting the database offline on your server. If hosting the Tourwriter Database and TourwriterData folder online with Travelmesh all backups are performed automatically.

Backups – If Hosting Tourwriter Offline
If the Tourwriter Database is hosted offline, it is the responsibility of the Tourwriter user to backup the database once each day. We recommend that this takes place at the beginning or end of the day, and not while Tourwriter is in use by any other staff members.
One person should be responsible for performing a TW backup each night. The backup can be made either on Tourwriter on the server machine – or from the Tourwriter user’s own PC. Either way, Tourwriter saves a copy of each backup file to the nominated file as below.
If the TourwriterData folder is hosted by the Tourwriter user, it is the responsibility of the client to backup the folders once each day. If in any doubt, we recommend that a dedicated IT Administrator is used to assist with this.

Backup Instructions

1. Open Tourwriter
2. Go to Tools > Setup > Database
3. Select a file path where the Database will be backed up to
4. Tick to add a date/time to file names if required
5. To perform a backup, click the backup button

• The last backup file and last backup date are displayed in this window.
• The backup file path will be pointing to a location on your server. For multi-user offline clients where Tourwriter is installed on the office Server, in order to access the backup (.bak) file you will need to locate this file on your Server computer.
• If you are a one-user and have installed Tourwriter on one PC, that computer is also your Server. You will be able to locate your .bak file on your PC’s C: Drive.
• We recommend that a copy of the backup file is copied across to an external hard drive or USB stick for safe keeping.

If you are required to send a copy of your .bak file to a Tourwriter staff member, please zip/compress the file before emailing it, to reduce the overall file size. You can do this by right clicking the filename and selecting Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.

The post Tourwriter Database appeared first on Tourwriter Knowledge Base.