New Functionality

Schema markup Added to Restaurant Sites

Schema.org markup has been added to our Live CMS Restaurant Websites Application to enable search engines to better understand the different types of content your site is displaying. Adding the schema markup to your site can surface your content more clearly or more prominently in search results. Over time other organizations may find interesting new ways to make use of it as well. Markup has been added to specific data points within the restaurant application with a detailed breakdown below.

Food Menu Management

Markup has been added to the following data points in the Food Menu module in Restaurant Sites. Schema markup for food menus may be displayed in Google search results like the included example.

• Menu Name
• Menu Description
• Menu Section
• Menu Section Name
• Menu Section Image
• Menu Section Description
• Menu Item Name
• Menu Item Price
• Menu Item Description
• Suitable for Diet (includes full list of dietary items)
• Menu Item Modifier Name
• Menu Item Modifier Price

Venue Management

Restaurant venue information now includes Schema markup for the following data points:

• Venue Name
• Venue Image
• Address/City/Country/PostalCode
• Contact (telephone)
• Cost
• Cuisine
• Domain URL
• Description
• Hours of Operation 

This update still requires users in the CMS to display the data that includes the markup as content within a page on your website. For example, users who have created food menus within the menu module will still need to add the menu they’ve created to an active page within their site for search engines to see the data with markup.

GDPR Compliance Audit

An extensive audit was undertaken of the Live CMS Restaurant Websites Application in order to plan needed enhancements to bring it into compliance with GDPR. The good news is the audit revealed the product already meets the requirements for compliancy.. 

Known Issue Fixes

Updates to Bookatable widget in restaurant sites

The original integration with the Bookatable widget was appending an "Account ID" from one of our clients which has now been replaced with a general “Connection ID” input field. This will allow the widget to work with any restaurant who has a Bookatable account.

New Functionality

Live CMS Forms Management Module 

The forms module allows users to create, manage and publish forms on applications built on Live CMS. A variety of forms can be created from simple contact us” or newsletter sign-up to a more complex RFP form for collecting larger amounts of information. Live CMS users can manage the submissions for all published forms within Live CMS. This module will be added to standard products in the coming months and can be added to any existing custom application.

Please contact your account manager for details on integrating this module to your custom front end application.

Features & Functionality

• Browse forms based on created or last modified dates, form status or search by keyword.
• Set a form as active or inactive to toggle the display of the form wherever it is present in the site(s).
• Form fields are drag-and-droppable for easy reordering within the form.
• Email notifications can be enabled to have Live CMS send an auto-generated notification to any number of email addresses whenever submissions made. No form information is included in the email transfer for security and online compliance reasons.
• Available form elements include:
  • Text Field
  • Text Area
  • Dropdown
  • Radio Buttons
  • Checkbox
  • File Upload – supports multiple file formats
  • Headings – for creating multiple sections within the form
• Form elements can be marked as required which displays standard validation messaging within the website
• Build forms in multiple languages with support for special characters such as Chinese and Cyrillic and right to left languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
• All forms come with a mandatory reCAPTCHA field to prevent submission spams (client is required to generate the key for the website in site settings)
• All form submissions are stored and manageable in the Live CMS Forms Management Module
  • View all submissions (read/unread) in list view
  • All attachments within the submission are accessible through the submission detail page

New Product

Offers Management Service

Building technology that allows our clients to manage offers and promotions has been a core part of our business from the beginning. As part of the evolution of this technology we have built a new version of the Offers Management Module on AWS (Amazon Web Services) that gives customers a variety of ways to effectively manage and distribute offer data across any channel without limitation.

Amazon Web Services

AWS provides a cutting-edge cloud computing platform that can continue to innovate with the growth of our products. Amazon provides a mix of infrastructure and platform services that allow applications to scale infinitely with no loss in speed or stability. You can read more on the benefits of AWS here.

Amazon API Gateway

With the growing number of ways in which consumers consume content it is essential for data to be more readily available through fast and secure connections to APIs. Utilizing the Amazon API Gateway, APIs can be published, maintained, monitored, and secured at any scale allowing maximum flexibility in how the offer service is utilized. For example, customers can use the API to pull offer data into third party CMS platforms, third party channels, or their own proprietary systems and still take full advantage of the speed and security the service offers. 

Developer Note

Our offers API is a quick, easy, and reliable way to store offer data. It is a REST based API, that is fully secured using JavaScript web tokens and can be accessed anywhere an HTTP request can be made.

Live CMS Offer Management Module

The Offer Management Module in Live CMS can be set up as a stand-alone application, as a component of our Enterprise level solutions or as part of an existing application such as those offered in the Intelier Digital Marketing Suite.

Features and Functionality

• Create unlimited offers and easily browse or search by offer name, active status, date created, offer expiry or last modified.
• Schedule offers to publish for a specific time window or to never expire.
• Set availability rules such as availability, black-out dates, minimum length of stay, and valid days of arrival.
• Tag offers to add greater flexibility in generating API calls. For example, you can use tags for offer categories (like meetings and weddings), destinations, specific hotels, among other things.
• Include a high-resolution image that can auto-generated to display at different sizes and resolutions across multiple channels and devices.
• Include a rate plan and/or offer code to connect the offer to a CRS or IBE.
• Build your offer information in multiple languages with support for special characters such as Chinese and Cyrillic and right to left languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
• Language specific content includes:
  • Standard and Short Headlines
  • Tagline
  • Short and Full Description
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Rate Plan Descriptions
  • Image Title, Caption and Alt Text
  • CTA Label, URL and Query Parameters

Generate any URL for your offer based on multiple keys and values

To learn more about the Offers Management Service and how to connect it to your instance of Live CMS, a third party CMS or your own proprietary systems please contact your Account Manager.