Strategic Partnerships Starter Kit – API

Slack is our internal communication platform that we use internally at FareHarbor. To customize your Slack sidebar theme check this page here.

Slack Profile

Slack Channels

This section is a directory of relevant global and team-specific FareHarbor Slack channels, including a description of their purpose and the direct access link.

Please note: If you are redirected to #lounge instead of the expected room, it is likely that it is a private room. If that is the case, ask your manager or someone on the team to add you to the room.

Team-Specific Slack Channels

#strategicpartners-affiliates – This is where all questions and communication from outside of the team for the Strategic Partnerships live. Any team can ask us questions in this room by using the workflows or by tagging @strategic-partnerships.

#strategicpartnerships_team – This room is a private team room for the Strategic Partnerships Team and the Channel Support Team to meet for daily team communication, questions and important updates.

#connectivity-extapi – This room is a private team room for Strategic Partnerships Team and Connectivity Specialists to communicate about new API partnerships and all things External APIs.

#strategicpartnerships_fhme – This room is a private team room for Strategic Partnerships Team and FH Sites Engineering Team to communicate about FHDN (API & Links) Compass features, updates, ideas.

#fhdn_api – This is a private room for Strategic Partnerships and Operations Team to discuss operational questions (i.e. legal) about FHDN API.

#apipartyparty – This room is a private team room for Strategic Partnerships Team and Connectivity Specialists to stay in touch and celebrate/share work anniversaries, bday cards, any other accomplishments.

If you are a new hire, you should have received access to Zendesk already from the Operations team. If you haven’t please submit the IT form and request access to Zendesk.

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is a customer support platform that facilitates communication between FareHarbor’s teams and our clients and sometimes affiliates. Equipped with features that allow Supporters to receive, analyze, and respond to support requests accurately and efficiently, Zendesk is an important part of FareHarbor’s celebrated 24/7 customer support services. Read more about Zendesk in this help page here.

FareHarbor Zendesk Login Page

Click on the FareHarbor Zendesk login page to access your account. Make sure to bookmark this in your Internet browser!

Zendesk Signature

1. Copy the text above by pressing command + C.
2. In Zendesk, click on your profile icon in the top-right corner of the page and click on View Profile.
3. When your profile opens in the left-hand panel, click in the space behind Signature and paste the text you copied earlier by pressing command + V on your keyboard or right-clicking and selecting Paste. Adjust your name and your position.

Zendesk Strategic Partnerships Views

Every Zendesk comes with certain default views. These will appear on the left side of your Zendesk dashboard. The way Zendesk views work is that tickets are grouped together in a way that will allow you to deal with them most logically and efficiently based on specified criteria. You should monitor and reply to tickets that are pertaining anything:

• API questions
• FHDN API
• Addressed to you

See picture below.

My Open Tickets – shows tickets that you are currently working on that are assigned under your name.

My pending tickets – shows tickets that are pending on action from the submitter (aka client/ affiliate).

Monitoring Zendesk

It’s your responsibility to check Zendesk a few times per day and make sure that all tickets in our ZD queue are responded to.

Respond to a Ticket

Respond to tickets right away, or write an internal note that you are responding to or have responded in Close. If you are unsure how to respond, post your question to your team members in #strategicpartnerships_team.

Assigning a ticket to yourself

If you are going to pick a ticket out of the ZD queue and take ownership of it, you should change the assignee field and then submit the ticket as Open. This tells everyone else on the team that you are working on that ticket and that steps are being taken to move it forward. The assignee field is in the upper lefthand corner and marks the agent or group that is assigned ownership of the ticket.

Once you have claimed the ticket by selecting your name from the drop-down menu, or by clicking ‘take it’, click Submit as Open. Alternatively, you can click Submit and Stay if you find yourself frequently needing to go back to the ticket while you work on it.

Assigning a ticket category

You cannot submit a ticket if you do not have a ticket category selected. Ticket category indicates the type of request. The category to select is fhdn.

Leaving an Internal Note versus Public Reply

If you want to leave a note in a ticket, select Internal Note and write a message and submit the ticket as Open.

If you want to send an email to the requester, select Public Reply and then choose either Pending (whenever you are waiting for the requester to respond) or submit as Solved if there’s no further action after your reply.

Resolving a ticket

Getting a ticket to the Solved state is your goal. To solve a ticket, go to the bottom right of the page and click on the arrow next to Submit as New submit option then click on Submit as Solved.

Before you submit a ticket as solved, ask yourself a few questions:

• Have I solved the requester’s issue?
• Have I filled in any required ticket fields?

What is Close?

Close is the CRM system all FareHarbor teams use to communicate with clients or affiliates and keep track of leads.

Close Account

In your Close account, you should have both your personal FareHarbor email as well as our team’s email account strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.com. To do so you first have to log in your Gmail, so contact your Manager or Strategic Partnerships Ops to help you with this. Once you have added the strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.com to your Gmail, follow the steps below to add it to your Close account.

1. Go to Close > Settings > Integrations > Connected Accounts.
2. Click Add Account (top-right corner).
3. Select Google and click on Connect with Google. This will open a new tab where you can select the strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.comGoogle account you want to connect and add to your Close Account.

Close Email Signature

See example of a Close signature for our team below.

Strategic Partnerships Close AMER Signature example:

Strategic Partnerships Close EMEA Signature example:

Your Leads

Your leads are those with your name in the “SP – API Partner Owner” custom field. These are the only leads you should be reaching out to. If another name is in that field, or that field is blank, do not call or email that lead.

• Review newly assigned and existing leads “custom.sp – api partner owner” in (“Me”)
  • Prioritize! Does this partner have an affiliate Dashboard? How many companies are they working with currently? Are they generating bookings for our clients? Include this information in a note in Close. This will help determine whether this is a priority.
    • If there are 0-10 leads partnered with this affiliate: low priority
    • If there are 11-50 leads partnered with this affiliate: medium priority
    • If there are 51+ leads partnered with this affiliate: high priority
  • Update the SP – API Partner Status custom field in Close throughout the whole process
    • Review this page if you are unsure of what the status should be and make sure this information is updated in Airtable.

Keeping Close Updated

Our CRM, Close, is used by all teams within FareHarbor. You know your leads better than anyone, and it is therefore up to you to keep them fully updated at all times and keep your notes organized.

Update Contact information (and RE-ORDER)

• If you find a new contact, ENTER IT.
• If you find out someone is deceased or has left the company, mark it with xxx in front of their name and then move the name to the bottom of the list of names so someone does not accidentally contact them.
• Enter new phone numbers and email addresses.
• Own Close and update anything on any lead you call with (even if you’re moving fast on a ripmaster)

Logging calls

• [SPK] – logged after you speak with someone at a company
• [MSG] – when you leave a voicemail
• [CNM] – used for Call No Message (called, but hang up before leaving a voicemail)

Strategic Partnerships Custom Fields

The Airtable view below shows the custom fields that are relevant for our team and you need to keep updated at all times.

Smartviews to manage pipeline

Smart views are saved search queries based on the criteria you set. They help you navigate through your lead pool and keep yourself accountable and organized. The Airtable view below contains smart views that should save in your Close account. If you are creating or saving a smart view for yourself, make sure to select “Keep it private – only visible to you” under Sharing Options. You can read more about how to create a smart view here.

Team Email Templates

Team-specific email templates pertaining to the FH API that are available for everyone in Close will always start with “SP – API – Template Name” in the title. Once you click on one of them, it will open the email template. If you see ways to make the template better or improve automation (Subject line created, Contact name and company name automatically inserted, etc.), make it happen or discuss your idea with the rest of the team.

Templates make your job easier and more efficient. The full list of Team Email Templates will be covered during your 1:1 training. If you find yourself typing a similar email often, it’s time to consider if it should be made into a template. Please discuss with your Manager or with Strategic Partnerships Operations.

Please check if you have access/account to the Strategic Partnerships Airtable. If you don’t, reach out to your Manager or SP Ops to invite you to the team Airtable.

Airtable can store information in a spreadsheet that’s visually appealing and easy-to-use, but it’s also powerful enough to act as a database. Our team has it’s own Airtable base called Strategic Partnerships. We use it for task and project management, tracking inventory, team specific forms and submissions, meeting notes.

Strategic Partnerships Airtable – our team base. It contains both API & FHDN related projects and info. Most notable tables in this Airtable are:

• Weekly team meetings questions and notesStrategic
• SP Inquiries – all sp inquiry submissions for potential API or FHDN partners from other teams are going into this table.
• API Partner List table contains live API Partners
• API Partner Survey results – every time a partner goes live on the FH API, they fill out the new API Partner survey which resides in this table and includes all the partner’s responses. This allows our team to understand the scope of the API integration and the partner’s capabilities.
• Projects – individual or team projects. Each member tracks their projects in their own view.
• And many more!

SP Team – API Connections Interface – Bookmark this page! This page has links that you would be using on a daily basis.

For affiliates, all contracts must be send through Conga, whereas active FareHarbor clients can join FHDN through Compass.

We use Postman to gain practical knowledge of how the External API works, test the test environment before sending a Quickstart Guide to our API partners and to test for errors. Postman is an API platform for building, using and testing APIs and allows us to see in a clear and organized manner how the data in FareHarbor is being communicated to partners in JSON format and how different requests and interactions take place. You need to create your own account using your FareHarbor email address, so visit this page here. During your first weeks of training, you will receive additional information and practice together with another Strategic Partnerships Manager.

Tableau is an interactive data visualization software used for internal and external reporting. Our team uses Tableau to better understand how API Partners are performing.

Once you receive your login credentials, you can access Tableau via this Login URL.

Strategic Partnerships API Tableau Reports

API Bookings & In-System Affiliate Bookings report – This report pulls information about API bookings and in-system (not through the API) bookings for affiliate companies.

Google Calendar

In your Google calendar you must add our team’s calendar – Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar. This calendar shows the days team members are on vacation and you’ll use it in the future to add your vacation days too. Please contact your manager to receive a link to add the Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar.

Gmail

If you have not yet set up your email signature in Gmail, follow these steps here to do so!

Bookmarks in Google Chrome

Chrome bookmarks let you easily mark down the pages you want to revisit and help you stay efficient and organized in your day to day. Bookmarks can get a little out of hand, so we recommend you create different folders. This way it will be super easy for you to find all the pages you need and use frequently later on (see screenshot below). Learn more about this here or ask your Strategic Partnerships Ops to help you with this. Organizing your bookmarks from the start will help you navigate through your day and through the websites listed in the following sections!

General help pages to read:

• FareHarbor Teams – overview of all FH teams
• Quickstart – read a quickstart guide to FareHarbor
• Strategic Partnership Team Overview
• Affiliate Terminology – internal help page that explains all the different terms we use at FareHarbor for affiliates

API-related help pages to bookmark:

SP Team – API Connections Interface – Bookmark this page! This page has links that you would be using on a daily basis.

Rapid Fire: Ramp Up Revenue with the FareHarbor Distribution Network – in this session, you will be introduced to how the FareHarbor Distribution Network (FHDN) and FHDN API (formerly FareHarbor Connect) help our clients grow their business.

Request your vacation

• Plan in advance and let your manager know of any vacation requests.
• Vacation requests must be submitted through Workday.
• If you have to leave early, come in late or have an appointment during the day, you must let your manager know.

Before/ During your vacation

1. Mark in the team’s Google Calendar Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar the days you will be out of office .

2. You must change your Slack status. Choose one of the following options (sickness, vacation, etc.) and include:

   • OOO
   • Back [Date]
   • Buddy: @strategic-partnerships

3. Set up an email auto response in your Gmail. It is important to make it clear for other contacts, if you won’t have access to your email and thus cannot respond to emails while you are away. Here is an example:

For those with a thirst for learning, here are some great resources to help you stay up to date with Industry news:

• Interesting Courses to Try
• Skift
• PhocusWire
• Tourpreneur Daily Email

Practice building new items in your demo dashboard & build another dashboard – think of one you can use for new potential API partner testing – something generic like ABC Boat Tours or Amsterdam Walking Tours

• Set up a demo Dashboard
• Building a Dashboard
• Practice building new affiliates and playing around with price sheets. Read more about this here.

Now that you’ve read all of the information in this help page there are two things left for you to do!

1. Check and complete the Strategic Partnerships New Hire Checklist.

   • Your Slack profile is complete
   • You have access to all tools – Close, Zendesk, DocuSign, Tableau
   • You have set an email signature in your Close
   • You have added the team email address to your Close account
   • You have created an email signature in Zendesk
   • You have organized your bookmarks
   • You have added the Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar to your Google Calendar
   • You have access to Docusign
   • You have access and permissions to create records in our Airtable base
   • You have joined all slack channels important for our team

2. Fill out this feedback form and share your opinion with us. Your feedback will help us improve our resources and information that we present to new team members.