Notifications between the office and the tour operators

Why does TourCockpit send notifications?

A booking has two sides. The reseller sold the seat and holds the guest; the office runs the day and knows the routes. Every time one side changes something, the other needs to know, and before TourCockpit that was a phone call or a message someone had to remember to send. Notifications make that call by themselves, in both directions, at the moment the change is saved.

Each notification travels two ways at once. A WhatsApp message reaches the person's phone, wherever they are. An item lands in their Inbox inside TourCockpit, reachable from every screen, where it stays until they deal with it. The WhatsApp message is the nudge; the inbox is the record.

What does the office hear about?

Everything a reseller does to a booking through their portal: a new booking, a change to one, and a cancellation. The message names the reseller, the tour, the day and the person at the desk who did it.

• A new booking: the reseller, the tour, how many people (and the child seat, when one was requested) and the day.
• A changed booking: the reseller, the tour, the day and what the party is now.
• A cancelled booking: the reseller, the tour and the day.

Changes the office makes itself send nothing to the office; the office already knows. What the office does to a reseller's booking is what the reseller hears about, in the next section.

What does a tour operator hear about?

What the office does to that operator's own bookings, and nothing about anyone else's. Four moments:

• The booking was changed: the office edited the party or the hotel, or assigned a booking to this operator.
• The pickup time was set, changed or cleared: the message names the tour, the day, the time it was, and the time it now is, so you can re-tell the guest without opening the booking. A time that was never set reads as not set, and a cleared one says that no pickup time is set. Clearing a time is news too, because the guest has to be told.
• The booking was moved to another day: whether the office moved that one booking or moved the whole departure to another day. The message names the new day and the pickup on it.
• The booking was cancelled. A booking the office reassigns to another operator leaves your list the same way, as a cancellation, because for your desk that is what happened.

Office-only details never notify: staff initials, the lunch marker, payment, cash, the reference and the note can change all day without a message leaving the building. A reseller hears about what their guest can see.

Who receives them, and who does not?

The two directions follow different rules, on purpose.

• The office side is an opt-in. On the Team screen, each office account has a WhatsApp number and the checkbox Receive WhatsApp alerts for new bookings, both under Edit on the person's row. Anyone with the box ticked is told; anyone without it hears nothing. The checkbox is the permission and the number is only the address: a person who ticked the box but entered no number still gets every item in their inbox, and only the WhatsApp message is skipped.
• The operator side is not an opt-in. Every active user of the reseller that owns the booking is told, whether or not they entered a number, because this is their own sold seat changing rather than somebody else's activity. The same checkbox on a reseller's row of the Team screen changes nothing for them.
• A reseller is only ever told about their own bookings. Who receives the message is decided by the booking's operator alone, never by the tour or the day, so two agencies on the same departure never hear about each other.
• Nobody is told about their own action. A desk that changes its own booking notifies the office, not itself. A manager working inside a reseller's portal counts as that reseller: the office is told exactly as if the desk had done it, and the message names the manager as the person who acted.

What does the WhatsApp message say?

One short message per moment, sent by TourCockpit to the person's own number. It names the reseller, the tour, the day, what changed and who did it, and it ends with a button that opens the board on that day. The wording of the message itself is in English for now; the date, the party and the child seat inside it are written in the reader's own language, so a Spanish reader sees 6 de junio de 2026 rather than an English date.

Where is the inbox, and what is in it?

The bell. On a desktop screen it floats at the top right of every page; on a phone or tablet it sits in the top bar. The red badge on it counts your unread items exactly: three means three. Press the bell and the Inbox panel opens over whatever you were doing, so you never leave the board to check it.

Items are listed newest first. Each one is a sentence in your language, for example Pickup for NORTE desde sur on Sat 12 Sep: 08:40 to 09:10, followed by the tour, who did it and how long ago. Unread items are bold on a tinted background. Under each item, Open takes you to the booking (the office lands on the booking's edit page, an operator on their board for that day), and Mark as read or Mark as unread flips its state without going anywhere.

Opening the panel marks nothing as read. Read state is yours to set: opening an item counts as reading it, Mark as read clears one you need not act on, Mark as unread brings back one you saw but cannot deal with yet, and Mark all as read at the bottom clears everything at once, for the day you first open an inbox with months of history in it. When nothing is left unread, the panel says You’re all caught up.

Read state is saved with the item, not remembered by the browser: close the laptop, come back tomorrow, and the same items are still unread. And your inbox is yours alone. A manager sees every reseller's activity because every one of those messages was addressed to them; a reseller sees only what was sent to their desk.

What is the small message in the corner?

While you are working in TourCockpit, a new item announces itself shortly after it arrives with a small Inbox message at the bottom right of the screen, offering Open and Dismiss. It fades by itself after a few seconds, it never announces something you did yourself, and each item announces itself once.

• Open takes you to the booking and marks the item as read.
• Dismiss marks it as read too: you saw it and chose to wave it away.
• Letting it fade marks nothing. You may have been looking at the board or away from the desk, so the badge keeps the count for you.