Notifications and teamwork

Travel Orbit tells your team when something happens, and gives each request and booking an owner, a conversation and a place for notes, so nothing waits without someone knowing. Editors and Admins can answer travellers and share the work.

Notifications

Every notification shows in the bell at the top of Travel Orbit and of Orbit, and most are emailed too. You hear about:

• new booking requests and new bookings
• cancellations, refunds and disputes
• payments received, and payments that failed, including automatic instalments
• a departure that is fully booked or guaranteed to run
• a request or booking assigned to you, and a team note that mentions you
• a traveller replying to your message, and a follow-up that is due
• a traveller changing their own details from your own account page

New requests, new bookings and departures go to every Admin and Editor. Once a booking is assigned, its payments, replies, cancellations, refunds and disputes go to the person it is assigned to. Viewers only hear about things assigned to them or where they are mentioned. You never get a notification for something you did yourself.

Choose what is emailed

Open Your notifications in the sidebar to choose what is also emailed to you, grouped under Bookings, Payments, Departures and Teamwork. The bell always shows everything. The choices are yours alone, for this organisation; your teammates choose their own.

Payments received, refunds, departures guaranteed and traveller details changed are not emailed until you switch them on. Everything else is emailed from the start.

Answer travellers

Each request and booking has a Conversation card. Under With Ingrid (the lead traveller's first name), write a message and select Send to Ingrid. Travel Orbit emails it in your brand, with a button to answer on their booking page. Whether they reply to the email or answer on their booking page, the answer comes straight back into the conversation, and the person it is assigned to is told. Replies by email show a small envelope. See Emails to travellers for where replies go.

• Templates fill in the traveller's name, the trip, the date and a link to book, in the language they booked in. Four come ready: Places available, Link to book, Ask for details and Fully booked. Admins write more, and change these, under Email templates; Edit under Email templates at the foot of the list opens it. See Emails to travellers.
• Draft with AI writes a reply from the conversation so far, in your brand voice, when AI writing is on. Write a few words first and the button becomes Write it up with AI, which works them into a full reply.

On Requests, Reply opens the conversation. Decline can carry a message of your own, which is sent instead of the standard email and kept in the conversation.

Assign, stage and follow up

The bar at the top of each request and booking shows:

• Assigned to: the person looking after it. Choose yourself or a teammate who is an Editor or Admin; they are told straight away. Assigning a new request moves it to In progress.
• Stage, for requests: New, In progress or Waiting for traveller. Sending a message moves a request to waiting, and their reply moves it back to in progress. Confirming marks it Won, declining marks it Lost.
• Follow up: a date, such as Tomorrow, In 3 days or Next week, and a short note, such as "Call about the sauna hut". On the day, the person it is assigned to, or whoever set it, gets a notification and an email.

Requests has a Board view with a column for each stage, and won and lost requests from the last 30 days. Assigned to me narrows Requests and Bookings to your own. A dot next to a name means the traveller has replied and nobody has read it yet.

Team notes

Team notes in the conversation are for your team only; travellers never see them. Type @ and a teammate's name, or use Mention, then select Add note, and they get a notification with your note. Notes for your team on the booking is a separate field for things that should always be on show.

Overview and the Orbit inbox

Needs your attention on the Overview lists replies waiting to be read, follow-ups that are due, requests assigned to you, requests waiting, failed and overdue payments, and departures close to full. Editors and Admins also see requests nobody has taken, overdue payments, follow-ups and replies in the Orbit inbox.