General Remarks

Remarks can be added to a Universal Record during create or modify reservation. Remarks are added to a PNR to document various parts of the booking or ticketing process. They also can be used as a way to satisfy back-office/mid-office rules for policy adherence.

Remarks are supported by the GeneralRemark element in the Common service.

General Remarks can be added to a PNR to document events that happen during the lifecycle of the PNR. For example, it is common to add a General Remark when a hotel is offered to the traveler but refused, or when a ticket is issued at a non-refundable fare and the agent wants to document the fact that the traveler was advised of penalties.

Universal API agents can add General Remarks for the Galileo (1G) provider and for the Apollo (1V) provider by setting @UseProviderNativeMode="true". This enables the Universal API agents to add these remarks which are not feasible through regular channels.

Because various providers use different types of remarks in their PNRs, the TypeInGds attribute indicates the type of remark that is added to the provider's PNR:

  • Alpha
  • Basic
  • Historical
  • Invoice
  • Itinerary
  • Vendor
  • Confidential (currently only used by Galileo)
  • FOPComment (currently only used by Worldspan )

The type of remark may include requirements for any corresponding Category attribute. If TypeInGds is left empty, the remark remains in the Universal Record database only, and is not sent to the provider's PNR. See Exceptions for provider-specific details about Remark data.

The following example adds a General Remark to a new Air Booking.

Vendor Remarks

Specific for Vendor Remarks, the following items apply:

  • Apollo (1V) and Worldspan (1P) do not support Vendor Remarks. To work around this limitation, use the format <SSR Type="OTHS" FreeText="SSR TESTING" Carrier="CX" />.

  • Galileo (1G) only: For all GDS carriers and Ticketless Carriers, the SSR OTHS is converted to a Vendor Remark (GeneralRemark/@TypeInGds with the 'Vendor' enumeration).

  • Sample code for a Vendor Remark is formatted as:

    <com:GeneralRemark Key="VR1" TypeInGds="Vendor" Category="Vendor" SupplierType="Air" SupplierCode="CX">
    <com:RemarkData>Vendor rmks</com:RemarkData>
    </com:GeneralRemark>

 

Updating General Remarks

When a GeneralRemark is updated via UniversalRecordModify/UniversalUpdate and the Universal Record already has the TypeInGds attribute set, but:

Universal API considers this a TypeInGds modification which is not supported by the provider and not saved by the provider, but is saved locally in the Universal Record.

In such a scenario the Universal Record Modify response returns a validation error:

TypeInGds modification not supported for GeneralRemark- TypeInGds has to be the same as the existing value already stored in UniversalRecord.

Exceptions

For Galileo, the following Category requirements are supported for TypeInGds values:

  • "Alpha": Single or double alpha characters required for the Category.
  • "Basic": No Category associated.
  • "Historical": Single alpha character optional for the Category.

In Galileo, these General Remarks are called Notepad remarks, and are displayed in a PNR with the format *NP or *NPH if the remark has a qualifier of H, for example.

On both Galileo (1G) and Apollo (1V), if the length of general remarks in the request is greater than the 4K (4096) max limit (Header+input block size) it throws the error "SDD PROCEDURE ERROR: 3013 - RECORD LENGTH MISMATCH" due to a programming restriction.

On both Galileo (1G) and Apollo (1V), if the length of general remarks in the request is greater than the 4K (4096) max limit (Header+input block size) it throws the error "SDD PROCEDURE ERROR: 3013 - RECORD LENGTH MISMATCH" due to a programming restriction.

To add a remark with a pillow character (“¤”) in Apollo 1V, send an "at" symbol or “@” in API requests. The pillow character is only in Apollo, and in the Universal API responses, it always returns as an "@" symbol. For example:

<common_v51_0:GeneralRemark Key="0HpnzAA==" Category="F" TypeInGds="Alpha" 
ProviderReservationInfoRef="0HpnzAA==">
  <common_v51_0:RemarkData>APA-FF-$BB-WES33//@AB</common_v51_0:RemarkData>
</common_v51_0:GeneralRemark>

This is also true for Accounting Remarks.

ACH does not support General Remarks.

RCH does not support General Remarks.