The new "normal" and Travel Messaging

[sasrsc]

When travel resumes (which it will), we are employing new rules around booking. We do not use Travel Request. It seems to me that there's a missing option(s) for the messaging workflow.

1) Travel Policy - Messages: I'd like to be able to present the user with a popup message when they click search. This can be done but then you have to duplicate the message for Air, Car and Hotel (as you never known what a user will be searching for). I don't want the user to see the same popup for the same trip 3 times or twice.

2) Custom Fields: We plan to add a new question to be presented at the beginning of a search - is this an essential business trip? yes/no etc... but with no, it still proceeds to booking. It would be nice to have it stop and not proceed if you said "no". Obviously - people will learn but regardless.

I know we could add to the company notes too but that's often overlooked, especially if the Expense Team has hijacked to top of the message visibility.

It seems like both options are only partially handled with the current technology. Am I missing something? Ideas?

[AshleyB]

Hi @sasrsc

Thank you for starting this conversation! I am very interested to learn what your fellow Community Members have seen work for them.

Any suggestions for sasrsc? Is anyone else looking to rethinking processes and practices once travel starts up again? 

[siteadmin]

One suggestion would be to use the "Login Warning" under Travel Admin > Custom Text>Login Warning. 

This will display whenver the user logs in so it doesn't matter what they search they will alway see the message when they login and not multiple times when searching with air, car, and hotel search messages.  

[sasrsc]

In the end we did not do a login message. We have Expense as well as Travel and we didn't want to hit Expense users with the message as it's specific to Travel. I wish there was a generic ... when you click a travel search message (and yes, I know I can do an air search, hotel search, car search but I find that a little clunky as they could see duplicate messaging). In the end we decided to add an "Important Notice" banner to the top of everyone's Company Notice then we also added a custom field (at start of booking) to have them stop and select this is an essential business trip. It's also a little clunky but I thought it would stop and give them a brief moment to think first before continuing.