SHARES/QIK keyboards

[Dont call me Shirley]

A northeastern station recently had its SABRE CRTs and keyboards replaced with ones compatible with QIK/SHARES; agents were surprised to discover that the new keyboards do not have mag stripe/OCR slots for scanning credit card numbers and passports. That information now has to be entered manually (time-consuming and annoying compared to "swiping"). Is the lack of these readers a standard feature on QIK/SHARES workstations? Or a are the readers a seperate piece of equipment that was not installed for some reason?

 

[US1YFARE]

Keep in mind that HP was a regional carrier and is not used to flying to international destinations.

 

[FCYTravis]

Keep in mind that HP was a regional carrier and is not used to flying to international destinations.

Uh, that's categorically false. HP offered non-stop service to at least a dozen international destinations in Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica.

 

[flyingcat]

Well passengers can check in through the kiosk so that an agent does not need to type in passport information. Having a passenger use the kiosk saves time for the passenger and money for the company.

 

[Boeing Boeing GONE]

For those people that can use them!! just another reason why shares is so less superior than Sabre... Cheap tho!!

 

[Geek]

For those people that can use them!! just another reason why shares is so less superior than Sabre... Cheap tho!!

I can't agree with the "less superior" statment. :blink:
But I can add something to the passport reader issue.
HP's standard is a regular qwert keyport. Stations with flights to international destinations had a seperate passport reader that is attached to the pc.
But two issues come with this.
1. a serial port must be available to be able to connect it to. ( If the pc has 2 printers already attached this is a problem.)
2. We had a very limited amount of these units available.
I don't know any other information on how this is going to be addressed but I do know this is being talked about.
I know they were going to try and reuse the old keyboards but there is an issue with drivers to be able to run them.
Understand you are going from windows 95/98 that has NO security to Windows XP on a Active Directory Domain. (very tight security)
So there is a lot of issues with the conversion.
For those who don't understand what is involved I am sure it looks like it should be easy. But for those that have half a clue should understand just how daunting a job this is to make everything work together until they convert over everything to Shares.

 

[ClueByFour]

Well passengers can check in through the kiosk so that an agent does not need to type in passport information. Having a passenger use the kiosk saves time for the passenger and money for the company.

Having a passenger use the kiosk saves money for the company and nothing else. It has always taken me less time to have the agent process a check-in than the kiosk.

 

[hp-csr-phx]

We havn't had credit card swipers in years at PHX. It is a pain having to type the credit card number/exp date.

 

[expressedndepressed]

We havn't had credit card swipers in years at PHX. It is a pain having to type the credit card number/exp date.

Hopefully there are no bean-counters on this site...Can you imagine how many agents could be furloughed in PHX alone, if you had passport/credit card readers. By the way, most every station has international passengers, thus would need passport readers also. Sabre is able to process passports and credit cards in the same reader, meaning a more secure, accurate and speedier transaction. If LCC is truly interested in saving, invest now!! Saturday mornings will become riddled with PR delays.

 

[SegmentKing]

Unfortunately, US, err HP, didn't require EDS/Shares to upgrade or make modifications to the new CRS.. its going to be the present system at hand.

Unlike Sabre, which is the Rolls Royce of all booking engines, things can be added and modified with the flip of a switch (or a couple weeks)... and they offer many items 'ala carte'.

*sigh*

But pre merger HP had very little knowledge or insight on international travel - why else is their interline department pretty much all east folks?

I also agree about the credit card / passport swipe. Even at my old station we used them frequently. Also made the transactions go faster, meaning we spent more time talking w/ our customers or moving on to the next.

 

[Geek]

Unfortunately, US, err HP, didn't require EDS/Shares to upgrade or make modifications to the new CRS.. its going to be the present system at hand.

Unlike Sabre, which is the Rolls Royce of all booking engines, things can be added and modified with the flip of a switch (or a couple weeks)... and they offer many items 'ala carte'.

*sigh*

But pre merger HP had very little knowledge or insight on international travel - why else is their interline department pretty much all east folks?

I also agree about the credit card / passport swipe. Even at my old station we used them frequently. Also made the transactions go faster, meaning we spent more time talking w/ our customers or moving on to the next.

While I do agree that the time involved made the transactions faster, many of you are not looking at all the issues involved. Maybe you don't understand or just don't want to understand. Easier to just say "management or bean counters" are involved so it is bad.
I tried to give you some insight to some of the software issues involved and you say "EDS" wasn't involved or just ignore what I said all together??
Do you understand just how EDS was working? They take weeks and even months just to give a quote of an outrageous amount of money they want to charge US for anything, and then charge US ridiculous amounts of money just for that quote. My opinion is that they are a large amount of the reason that US was in the financial situation they were in, and working with crap equipment.
Yea, HP may do a lot of things in house, but it does save money and it does keep us all in a JOB! (and that is just not the IT dept. I am talking about)
This transition will take some time to complete. I am sure that eventually they will replace the readers, in fact I know they will. It makes sense. But to do it the correct way and the most cost efficient way is the key. What are the options available? What software is needed? How will they connect and push the information??
These are all things that have to be researched and take time. In the mean time yes, the front line people will have to do things a little different.
I am one who is out with the front line people every week. I know what you go through; I see the issues you have. I do try and make thinks as easy as possible for the agents but things are changing daily. Most of you just want to complain when anything changes. But realize we are all going through daily changes. I would like to have any of you do my job with all the new hoops we have to go through to make things work. This merger is affecting every single one of us in every single dept. We are ALL being stretched to the limit. We ALL have to work together and quit complaining that it is hardest on us. It is hard on all of us.
Geek

 

[gizmo_sc]

Credit card readers come in serial port (rs232), piggy back on the keyboard or the CIVILIZED connection USB. So dont panic is there is not a reader it can be added. FYI in INT International Res I use both QIK(Shares) and CARE(Saber) we just toggle back and forth between the computer systems, having been a former WORLDSPAN user moving over to QIK and CARE has been easy. Rumor has it when we move over to QIK we are going to get an international package from Continental they use QIK also. Personallly I would perfer the native entries I can do it faster than the KEYCELLS. It is all in what you get used to using. THANK GOODNESS we got new computers we did have ANTIQUE IBMs PII-233mhz, and like overnight they were all replaced with COMPAQ P4, multitasking is much easier, especially when you need to hit QIK, CARE and WEB Front END and the US AIRWAYS website !!!!

 

[Fly4Free]

While I do agree that the time involved made the transactions faster, many of you are not looking at all the issues involved. Maybe you don't understand or just don't want to understand. Easier to just say "management or bean counters" are involved so it is bad.
I tried to give you some insight to some of the software issues involved and you say "EDS" wasn't involved or just ignore what I said all together??
Do you understand just how EDS was working? They take weeks and even months just to give a quote of an outrageous amount of money they want to charge US for anything, and then charge US ridiculous amounts of money just for that quote. My opinion is that they are a large amount of the reason that US was in the financial situation they were in, and working with crap equipment.
Yea, HP may do a lot of things in house, but it does save money and it does keep us all in a JOB! (and that is just not the IT dept. I am talking about)
This transition will take some time to complete. I am sure that eventually they will replace the readers, in fact I know they will. It makes sense. But to do it the correct way and the most cost efficient way is the key. What are the options available? What software is needed? How will they connect and push the information??
These are all things that have to be researched and take time. In the mean time yes, the front line people will have to do things a little different.
I am one who is out with the front line people every week. I know what you go through; I see the issues you have. I do try and make thinks as easy as possible for the agents but things are changing daily. Most of you just want to complain when anything changes. But realize we are all going through daily changes. I would like to have any of you do my job with all the new hoops we have to go through to make things work. This merger is affecting every single one of us in every single dept. We are ALL being stretched to the limit. We ALL have to work together and quit complaining that it is hardest on us. It is hard on all of us.
Geek

Hey Geek.. I used to deploy systems at Verizon before working here.. you are right on the ball. Part of the thing I did there besides setting up the systems was deploying them as well. This even included the POS equipment! And let me tell you, you have to be an administrator on the system to set it up and to even upgrade the firmware on them.

I had someone refuse to complete a sell the other week because I asked them for their 3 digit CVV number on the back of their card!! They outright refused to give it to me as if it was a top secret number like your SSN.

Anyhow, see ya around!

 

[Geek]

Credit card readers come in serial port (rs232), piggy back on the keyboard or the CIVILIZED connection USB. So dont panic is there is not a reader it can be added. FYI in INT International Res I use both QIK(Shares) and CARE(Saber) we just toggle back and forth between the computer systems, having been a former WORLDSPAN user moving over to QIK and CARE has been easy. Rumor has it when we move over to QIK we are going to get an international package from Continental they use QIK also. Personallly I would perfer the native entries I can do it faster than the KEYCELLS. It is all in what you get used to using. THANK GOODNESS we got new computers we did have ANTIQUE IBMs PII-233mhz, and like overnight they were all replaced with COMPAQ P4, multitasking is much easier, especially when you need to hit QIK, CARE and WEB Front END and the US AIRWAYS website !!!!

Yes, I think the USB connection is the best, much quicker and easy to configure. Plus the bus speed is better. Hopefully that will be the option chosen, but the way the Spec Client printing is done I don't know if that option will work, But this isn't printing just pushing it to the PNR??? Maybe that will be no problem. See that needs to be tested out. I do not know where that dept is in testing options. they are in a different building than I am, when I am in town....
Glad to hear someone is a little grateful for the steps we are trying to take forward....

 

[flyingcat]

This merger is affecting every single one of us in every single dept. We are ALL being stretched to the limit. We ALL have to work together and quit complaining that it is hardest on us. It is hard on all of us.
Geek

Amen brother or sister

Trust me everybody will be celebrating when we all go to one res system. So many problems are related to using dual systems. After that we can go full speed with OUR OWN improvements to SHARES. Many projects were put on hold due to the merger. The biggest I can think of are gate readers.