Concepts on Lycan
The following section is intended to provide a short introduction into the concepts we use on Lycan.
Integration
An integration is the a connection to a third party software. Integrations can either be inbound or outbound. If you want to get rental property data into Lycan, then it will be an outbound connection, however, if you are trying to create a channel connection to distribute data, it will be an outbound integration. Each integration will generally have some type of secret key, or passwords entered against it.
Property
Lycan will create a property record which refers to the source of truth. A property will always have a parent Integration, the ProviderId which refers to the external ID and the Schema which is the property data we have created once we have syncronized from the remote system.
It is improtant to understand that Lycan will never distribute a property, instead it is used to reference the original “source of truth” and acts as the template for when we want to distribute a Listing.
Listing
Any Listing will have a single parent Property. If you think of a typical channel manager, it will be concerned with taking a property and distributing it to a marketplace. Lycan does not take that approach, instead Lycan distributes Property Collections (explained below).
A Listing is automatically created when a Property record is added to a collection. This means that if a property is mapped to three collections, then it will also have three listings.
The huge benefit of this approach is that each listing can have it’s own images, it’s own copy text, it’s own headline descriptions etc, allowing you to totally customise data supplied to each distribution channel. The Property record will always match the source of truth, and you should never need to edit the Property record, whereas you can customise the Listing record based on how you intend to distribute that property.
Property Collections
formally called “Brands”
A property collection is a container of sorts. It can be used to create a logical compilation of property data. A Property Collection can have any number of members, and each member can add their properties to the collection.
The purpose of a property collection is to allow the owner of the collection to customise how the collection will be used. For instance, if you are an agency and want distribution to a third party marketplace, you might be the only member, and the property collection will be distributed along with all the Listing records to the channel.
However, if you are creating your own marketplace, or share an account with several differnt agencies, your Property Collection may have multiple members. You can then control rules, moderate properties to restrict distribution based on your own rules, and set up commission fee structures and membership policies.
Member
A member is a user who has been invited to a property collection. Upon being invited, they can now add any of their properties to this Property Collection making is eligible for distribution based on any connected channel to that property collection. Each member can then have a membership policy assigned to it.
Membership Policy
The membership policies are akin to billing/commercial arrangements. A typical membership policy will allow you as the owner of the property collection to create a fee structure. For example, you might want to charge per property listed on your collection each month, or you might want to charge a percentage per successful reservation, or per lead generated. Each user can have their own membership policy allowing you to control the commercial arrangement for each member.
Channel Connection
A channel connection is what happens when a Property Collection is mapped to an outbound Integration. This “bridge” is called the Channel Connection.
A typical channel manager might take one property and map it to a channel, instead, Lycan takes a full property collection (which may have properties from hundreds of different users, or just properties from your own account) and maps it to an integration. This is what the channel is.
Upon creation of a channel, any properties which exist on the source Property Collection will automatically have Listings created. The Listing record is what we actually distribute. This allows you to customise what data is distributed to the channel via modifying the Listing record, while keeping the original property data untouched.
Reservation
A reservation is any type of enquiry, request to book, or confirmed reservation made on a Listing or Property. The reservation will identify all guest data, any order items which have been added to the reservation, and if the Listing is associated with a Property who’s integration provider allows us to syncronise the reservation back to the their PMS, you can view all syncronization data showing you what data is send/received.