What is Stargate?

Learn about Autohost Stargate and why you need it

What is Stargate? Why do we need it?

Autohost Stargate is an email relay system, and is an important part of the messaging flow. Stargate acts as a gatekeeper - it receives (or generates) messages and decides whether to send, or hold off on sending, the message out to the guest.

Messages get released to the guest depending on whether the necessary conditions have been met. i.e Reminder messages should only be sent if the Autohost Guest Portal has not been completed yet; Check-in instructions should be released only if the guest has been verified or approved.

Currently, most PMS only allow for time-based triggers, not event-based triggers. With Stargate, we've created a way to overcome these limitations. We can dismiss reminder messages if the Guest Portal has already been completed, hold off on check-in instructions until the guest is verified, etc.

In some cases, the native messaging in your PMS will have functionality to account for all necessary conditions, and Autohost Stargate may be skipped. Look for the Messaging Setup instructions for your specific PMS for more details.

How to configure messages to go through Stargate

This next section is for all PMS integrations that trigger the sending of messages via the PMS and need to have the messages go through Autohost Stargate.

If your PMS does not offer messaging capabilities and your messages are created inside Autohost, skip this section.

There are 3 important elements to keep in mind when setting up the messages on your PMS. Follow this guideline for each message you need to configure:

Send it to Stargate. Every Autohost account has a dedicated email assigned to it. Messages need be sent to your dedicated Stargate Email address, instead of to the guest (we will forward it to the guest afterwards). Here’s where to find it:
Send via Email. Even if your PMS offers multiple channel options for the sending of the message, always be sure to select ‘email’ as all messages must be sent to Autohost Stargate via email. You can later indicate if you want the message to be forwarded to the guest through any other medium (i.e SMS) using the #AHP# code snippet, as described below.
Include the correct #AHP# code snippet at the bottom. You will need to include a special line of code, that we refer to as the #AHP# Code Snippet, which holds the special instructions for Stargate to know how to handle the message. This #AHP# code snippet must be included at the very bottom of the message (Read more about the #AHP# code snippet). Refer to your PMS-specific instructions to know which #AHP# code snippets to use for each message.

Other things to note about Stargate

The email subject and the content of the messages can be anything you want, as long as the #AHP# code snippet is there at the very end
We support full HTML, so go ahead, brand your messages!
When to schedule the messages? Whenever you want! - Once a message reaches Autohost, it will be released to the guest right away, as long as the right conditions are met. If the specific conditions haven’t been met yet, then Stargate will hold the message in queue and keep checking until it can be sent.
The “reply-to” address that will be used if the guest replies to the message can be configured by going to Settings > Company > Support Email and changing it there.

Ready to set up Stargate? Follow this link.