Glossary

The following terms need to be understood when working with Universal Policy.

Also see the Overview and Universal Policy Summary pages for more details about Universal Policy.

Account

Accounts are nodes on the Universal Profile hierarchy underneath the Agency. (Note: Traveler groups can be configured underneath accounts.) Policies and policy groups are generally configured at the account level. Up to 10 policy groups can be configured per account. There is no limit on the number of policies that can be associated with an account, which allows policies to be added to or removed from policy groups as needed.

Admin Web Services

The Universal Policy Admin Web Services can be used by external developers to configure or retrieve policy data as an alternative to using the Universal Policy Admin Portal.

Agency

This is the top level of the Universal Profile hierarchy, which is generally the level at which the corporate booking tool (CBT) credentials are provisioned.

Corporate Booking Tool (CBT)

Any application used at an agency or company to book travel for their travelers. The CBT works with Universal Policy to configure policy, search for travel, and book travel.

Display-Only Vendor

If a vendor is configured as a display-only vendor, only results associated with that vendor are displayed in the search results.

Note: For display-only airlines, if a shop request does not contain any search results for the configured display-only airline, then all airlines in the response are returned instead of no results at all.

Example: BA is configured as display-only from DEN to LHR. The expected result is that all airlines other than BA are excluded from results between a DEN to LHR shop request. However, if no BA flights are returned in the response, then all airlines are displayed.

Excluded Vendor

If a vendor is configured as an excluded vendor, then results associated with this vendor are removed from the search results.

In-/Out-of-Policy

An item (such as a price point or rate) is marked as in-policy if it passes all configured tests; if for any reason an item does not pass a configured test it is marked as out-of-policy.

Note: In-policy and preferred do not mean the same thing. A vendor can be preferred but a specific fare or rate associated with that vendor can be out of policy. A vendor can be non-preferred but a fare or rate from that vendor can still be inpolicy.

Non-Travelport Content

Non-Travelport content is search response data obtained by the caller from a source other than Travelport prior to making a call to Universal Policy. The search response data must be formatted into the policy neutral schema formats provided in the Search Evaluation Web Services section of this documentation. To apply policy to Travelport content, use Universal API; see Travelport Content below.

Policy

A policy is a collection of data related to a particular product type (air, car, or hotel) that is used to determine if a particular fare or rate is in-policy or out-of-policy. A policy can also be used to determine if a particular vendor is preferred or non-preferred. Individual policies are not applied to travelers. Instead, policies are combined into policy groups and travelers are assigned to that policy group. Travelers are assigned to groups within a company or agency's CBT, not in Universal Policy.

Policy Group / Policy Reference

A policy group is a set of policies and reason codes under a single policy reference. Each policy group can contain up to one air, car, and/or hotel policy and up to one reason code.

A policy reference is an identifier automatically assigned by Universal Policy when a policy group is created. The policy reference is stored in the Universal Profile associated with the account for which the policy group is created. The policy reference used to refer to a policy group can be found on the Edit Policy Group page in the Universal Policy Admin Portal, as shown in the example below.

The policy group also defines which countries are considered domestic and which are international. The example screen below is from the Universal Policy Admin Portal. It shows the available options for configuring a policy group.

Preferred Vendor

If a vendor matches the configured geography criteria to be considered preferred it is marked as such in the results. If there are multiple vendors at a single price point, all vendors must be preferred for the price point to be marked as preferred.

Reason Code

A reason code allows travelers to specify why they chose an out-of-policy option from the search results, assuming that travelers are allowed to book out-of-policy travel and the booking tool supports this option. Using reason codes is optional.

Search Evaluation Web Services

The Universal Policy Search Evaluation Web Services are used to apply or evaluate policy against a set of search results. Those search results can be obtained either from a non-Travelport content source, as discussed in the Search Evaluation Web Services section of this documentation, or from Travelport’s Universal API; see the Universal Policy page within the Universal API help.

Traveler Group

Traveler groups are sets of travelers underneath one account. Policy groups can be assigned to traveler groups, allowing you to configure policies for specific groups of travelers. For example, you can create the policy groups "Management" and "General Staff" and associate them with "Management" and "General Staff" traveler groups under an account. Travelers and traveler groups are created with an agency or company's CBT, not within Universal Policy.

Travelport Content

Travelport content is search response data obtained through Universal API entries, which run against Travelport content providers (Apollo, Galileo, Worldspan, Airline Content Hub (ACH)). When using Travelport content, the caller sends a shop request to Universal API, which sends the search results through Universal API to apply policy data and then returns the annotated response to the caller. Documentation about using policy with Universal API is provided separately, on the Universal Policy page within the Universal API help.

Universal Policy Admin Portal

The Universal Policy Admin Portal is the Travelport-supported user interface for creating and managing policy data. The Universal Policy Admin Portal online help provides the most comprehensive information about configuring policy and is a valuable resource for developers using Universal Policy Web Services, either to set up policy or apply policy to travel data.