SiteConnect Integration Process
Sign up Stage
If you wish to become a SiteConnect partner and integrate to the SiteConnect API, you must first apply via the following form: Become a SiteMinder partner - Integration Application. Our business team will get in contact with you once your application has been reviewed.
Development to the SiteConnect API can only commence once your application has been approved and any applicable agreements are signed.
Welcome to SiteConnect
The process for connecting to the SiteConnect service consists of five stages presented below.
Project roadmap: high level overview of the SiteConnect project to help achieve the 60 business days requirement to complete this integration: Project Timeline - SiteConnect
Phase 1 - Welcome Pack & Retrieve Rooms API
Step 1. Complete our SiteConnect Techform to assist us in understanding which functionalities you are planning to develop.
Step 2. Build your Room Retrieval response following our Retrieve Rooms API:
Step 3. Provide us with your staging/test details.
Global credentials to authenticate to your endpoint is a requirement (Credential and Endpoint Requirements).
The booking channel is to build a room list endpoint to connect to our Retrieve Rooms API. This will ensure SiteConnect can access rooms and rate plans from your site for testing purposes. This is the first step and must be completed before any test account can be created to further progress into development.
Phase 2 - Development
A SiteConnect test account will be created for the booking channel on our test environment and self-testing can occur at any time, while the Partner Integrations team will monitor the updates and logs to ensure that the development and testing are occurring. They will also be on hand to help with any technical questions you have surrounding the SiteConnect API.
Once you confirm that you have completed development, we will require you to fill out our SiteConnect Pre-Certification form. This will give us the final list of supported functionalities and the responses to this form will help us generate the Certification Document.
Phase 3 - Certification
We will provide you with a Certification Document with further instructions for the Certification phase and specific test cases to be completed and signed off by us.
Once you have successfully completed the Certification phase, SiteMinder will sign off on the connection and prepare it for Production Pilot phase.
Your test account on our test environment will be disabled once the certification is complete.
Phase 4 - Production Pilot
The Partner Integrations team will provide production details in a Certification Complete email. You must ensure these details are saved securely, as they will be crucial for all the hotels connecting your channel in SiteMinder. The production URL is different from the test environment. Make sure you take extra care when implementing the connection to your production environment.
You must then provide us with your production URL, username and password that we will deploy to our production environments.
Your production endpoint must not contain an IP address but instead a DNS (Domain Name System).
Your production endpoint must use HTTPS protocol.
Putting IP addresses into our configurations can be risky as IP addresses may change at a stage thus breaking the connection, whereas, with a valid DNS name, the connection will be more stable. In the case where you are using a specific port, they should be running SSL on 443 and the endpoint must be accessible outside of your environment.
SiteMinder and the booking channel agree on one pilot hotel that will be used as the first live connection within the production environment and to facilitate the pilot process, the property must be already using the SiteMinder Channel Manager. The pilot phase is based on a 7 days window until we can confirm that all developed functions are working correctly and the booking channel can be available for more properties. These are the steps that will be covered during the pilot:
Room Rates Mapping in SiteMinder.
Hotel Confirms Availability, Restrictions and Rates are received in the Booking Channel extranet.
Reservation Delivery.
Phase 5 - Live
Once a booking channel is certified and the pilot successfully completed, the booking channel name will be logged with the SiteMinder Sales & Support teams as being production enabled. Requests for new production property connections can be made by a property from within SiteMinder Channel Manager application.