Germany FAQs

1. What data is sent from OpenTable to Fishbowl?

a. Guest first name and last name, email address, birthdate if provided, wedding anniversary if provided, and date last dined.

2. What data is sent from Fishbowl to OpenTable?

a. Only unsubscribe data.

3. How does Fishbowl know what link to insert for a restaurant's make a reservation url?

a. Based on the RID, Fishbowl creates a url for each restaurant that contains the restref 

4. How do Guest Codes appear in Fishbowl?

a. If a restaurant is assigning guests to OpenTable Guest Codes in the ERB or in Guest Center, that data will come over to Fishbowl as part of the integration.  You will be able to see Guest Codes in Step 4 (see picture below) and you can multi select Guest Codes to mail to by using Control Click.  

5. I added a guest in Guest Center with an incorrect email address.  Then corrected it.  Both email addresses appear in Fishbowl.  Why?

a. Email address is the unique ID between OpenTable and Fishbowl.  So the system saw these as two email addresses and therefore two people.  In this case, just unsubscribe the incorrect email address.

6. I see the Wedding Anniversary field has included 2015 to the date.  Why?

a. If no year is provided for the wedding anniversary, the system will automatially add the current year.

7. I added a guest to ERB or Guest Center, but I do not see them in Fishbowl.  Why?

a. You must add an email address for a guest in order for that guest info to come over to Fishbowl.  Fishbowl is an Email Marketing provider, so guest records that do not have an email address will not be sent to us.

8. The following things cannot be done with the current product, and would require future development work.

a. additional layouts.

b. German holiday calendar.

c. Changing P for Phone to T for Telefon.

d. Gender (titles like Mr, Mrs, Sir, etc)

e. posting a newsletter to Facebook or Twitter.

9. Should a restaurant unsubscribe a diner from OpenTable or from Fishbowl?  Which way works better?

a. Unsubscribing from Fishbowl is best.  The diner can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email that the restaurant sent out using Fishbowl.

10. Is there a way we can manually push the synch ?

a. Yes - Export their guest list from OpenTable and import it into Fishbowl.

11. How often does Fishbowl pull information from OpenTable? 

a. For ERB – nightly.  For Guest Center – real time.

12.If the mailing is scheduled before the diner unsubscribed, do they still receive the mailing?

a. No.  If the diner unsubscribes before the mailing is sent out, then no, they should not receive the mailing. For example, if the mailing is scheduled for 9pm, and the diner unsubscribes at 7pm, No, the diner will not receive the mailing.

13. How does the push from FB to our system work exactly? 

a. It’s done via a webservice API integration that the OpenTable and Fishbowl engineering teams have built. 

14. How does Fishbowl handle bounced emails?

a. We will mark an email address as a hard bounce after 5 soft bounces.  Here are definitions on hard and soft bounces.

A  hard bounce occurs when the recipient's email address does not exist or is invalid.  Fishbowl will categorize this as Permanently Bounced when an email address received one hard bounce.

A  soft bounce occurs when the recipient's mailbox is full or cannot accept emails.  Fishbowl will categorize this as Permanently Bounced when the email address receives five soft bounces.

15. How does a restaurant add a Newsletter Join Page onto their website? 

a. read these instructions http://localhelp.fishbowl.com/index.php/Join_Page