Going live

Who can go live

A General Manager or a Hotel Admin. The strip at the top of the dashboard shows its Go live button only to them. Everyone else sees the strip without it, and its ? says "A General Manager or Hotel Admin can switch this property to live." Our staff never get the button when they look at your property to help: they switch a property live only when you ask.

The switch itself is refused for anyone below General Manager, too, and nothing changes: a Revenue Manager or Viewer who gets that far sees "A General Manager or Hotel Admin can switch this property to live." in the confirm. Ask one of them.

If a General Manager or Hotel Admin sees that line when they confirm, something on our side is missing for this property, and asking someone else will not help. Email us with your property name.

A demo property can't go live, for anyone. Its strip shows Go live greyed out, and clicking it says "A demo property can't go live." (The demo property).

When sending is not on

Sending to Cloudbeds and to ThinkReservations each has a switch on MAYA's side, and both are on. Go live is offered only while MAYA can see that your system's switch is on. If it is ever off, the strip has no Go live, and its ? says "Sending to Think Reservations isn't on right now. You can go live once it is." (with your system's name). If MAYA can't check the switch for a moment, it says "MAYA couldn't check that sending to Cloudbeds is on. Try again in a few minutes." The switch itself is refused with the same words, and nothing changes. Your rules keep running in simulation meanwhile.

Roles: who can do what says it in one line, as the Team page lists it: "A Revenue Manager can't go live, reconnect the property system from MAYA, or choose which rate types MAYA moves."

Before you go live

MAYA enforces none of these checks. Each one saves a surprise.

Start with the checklist for your property system: a base rate of its own for every room type, rates loaded for tonight and the next 395 nights, your time zone confirmed with us, anything nobody sleeps in unticked under Counts as a room, blocked rooms recorded, and floors and ceilings set. Load those rates before you go live. Your rules start from your own rate for each night, and a night your system has at 0 is left alone.

Then four checks in MAYA itself.

1. Floors and ceilings. Each room type has a floor and a ceiling: the lowest and highest price that can go out for it.
   • Where to see them. The review screen lists every room under "Your floors and ceilings", with a floor box and a ceiling box to set, change or clear (read Checking what MAYA found). The Guardrails column on the Rate Simulator tab shows them too, for every room type that counts as a room. Your answers to the five questions set some of them, and the import filled others from your own past rates where there was enough history.
   • A limit still at $1.00 or $99,999.99 shows as "none" on the review and stops nothing in the currencies MAYA works in. Type one in its box on the review, or answer the floor or ceiling question again at maya-rms.com/onboarding/questions (your floor answer goes to every room type at once). Get suggestions from my data on the Rules tab offers a card for a room type still at a default when there is a number to offer.
   • A limit that is already set can be changed or removed in its box on the review, and the import never writes over what you did there. Floors and ceilings explains. Coming from PIE on Cloudbeds, Import from PIE sets them from PIE's price limits.
2. Starter rules. They are on, and the prices they set already show on the calendar. Turning a rule Off keeps every change it has made to your prices so far, even in simulation, and those prices go out when you go live with Send MAYA's prices now. Going live with Start from your current rates takes them off, a rule that is off included (Start from your current rates or send MAYA's prices). To be rid of a starter rule and what it did, Delete it and choose Delete Rule and Undo Its Changes, or remove them all at the end of the review with Remove them and start with a clean slate.
3. Watch for a week. Open the change log a few times a day (it opens on the 10 most recent runs that changed a price, and Older reaches back 90 days), check the Fired column on the Rules tab to see which rules act most (click a rule's number for each time it acted), and copy any entry you want to keep. If a price would have surprised you, change the rule or the limit before you go live.
4. Switch off other pricing tools. If another tool changes rates in your system, switch it off before you go live. That includes PIE's rules in Cloudbeds, once you have imported them into MAYA. MAYA reads a rate another tool changes the same way as a rate you change by hand. Rates you change in your property system says what happens to those.

Where the button is

The strip at the top. While your property simulates, a slim amber strip runs across the top of every tab of the dashboard, of the Billing and Team pages, and of the review screen: "Simulation · MAYA works out prices but sends nothing to Cloudbeds". For a General Manager or Hotel Admin a green Go live button sits at its right, on every page but the review. It is there for every Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations property, starter rules or not. A Mews property has none (see the confirm dialog).

The review screen has no Go live. Its strip shows the same words with no button, and for a General Manager or Hotel Admin its ? says "You go live from this strip on your dashboard, once you finish here." The review ends with Keep them and Remove them and start with a clean slate under your starter rules, or Finish, and each takes you to your dashboard, still in simulation. Read Your starter rules.

There is no way to schedule going live for a later date, such as next Monday morning. Sending starts as soon as a General Manager or Hotel Admin confirms (MAYA runs a cycle for the property right away), so click the button when you want sending to start, after switching off any other tool that changes your rates. If we switch you live by email, send the email when you want sending to start.

The confirm dialog

Clicking Go live on the strip opens a dialog. Nothing happens until you choose how to start inside it (or click its own Go live, where it offers only that). Not yet, or the Escape key, closes it and leaves you in simulation. While the switch is being made the button you pressed reads "Switching…". The title names your property, and the words depend on your property system.

Under those lines, above the buttons, one more sentence: "Going live sends MAYA's prices to Cloudbeds automatically. You're confirming you've reviewed your rules and limits (Terms 3.3)." (with your system's name; on ThinkReservations with no rate type in use, it reads "automatically once a rate type is picked."). The word "Terms" is a link to the Terms of Service.

The button takes live the property whose name is in the title. If you switched to another property in another tab since the page loaded, nothing changes and the dialog says "This page is for another property. Reload and try again." Reload, check the name, and go live from there.

If the switch fails for a reason other than your role, the dialog stays open and shows the reason above the buttons. It is the reason MAYA sent back, or your browser's own words if the connection dropped. When no reason came back at all, it reads "Couldn't switch to live. Try again." Click your choice once more. "Not signed in" means your session has ended: sign in again and try once more. If it keeps failing, email us with the words you see.

Three more reasons can come back, each changing nothing:

• "This property is already live." Someone else took it live while your dialog was open. Reload the page.
• "Your rules changed while this was open. Look again, then go live." You chose Start from your current rates or a choice by rule and night, and a rule was added, edited, switched on or off, or deleted after the dialog worked out its counts, by you in another tab or by someone else. The dialog works its counts out again at once, on your rules as they are now, and a list you opened under Choose by rule and night closes, with the choices you made on it: look again and choose again. Send MAYA's prices now sends the prices the calendar has when you click, and is never refused for this.
• "Couldn't work out what to hold. Nothing changed. Try again." MAYA couldn't read your rules for Start from your current rates. It never sends MAYA's prices instead.

Two ways to start

On Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, when sending is on and MAYA has somewhere to send, the dialog says how many prices would change, then offers two buttons. Neither is chosen for you.

The count comes first: "312 of MAYA's prices differ from Cloudbeds." A price is one room type on one night. It counts a night and room type when MAYA's price differs from what Cloudbeds holds there now, to the cent, and would pass every check the send makes. These are the same prices the dots on the calendar mark (What going live would send). How many of them go out depends on the way you start: each button says what it changes.

• Start from your current Cloudbeds rates, with "Rules act only on what newly becomes true." under it. When your floors, ceilings or prices you typed still change some nights, a second line counts them: "12 nights change (your floors, ceilings and typed prices)". Its ? says: "Every rule's change comes off, and each rule waits on each night until it stops being true there and then becomes true again. Floors and ceilings still apply, and prices you typed are still sent to Cloudbeds. Nights that come into your window later are judged fresh." When some of your rules would rarely act this way, an amber line says so: "2 of your rules would rarely act on nights where they're already true." Its ? names each one with why (how each kind of rule starts).
• Send MAYA's prices now, with "37 nights change." under it. Its ? says: "MAYA sends the prices the calendar shows now. The dots on the calendar mark the nights that change." On ThinkReservations it adds "Your other standard rates in Think Reservations move with them." When some of the prices already sit well above their usual rate and your rules would raise them further, an amber line counts those prices (a room type on a night each, so one night can count more than once): "5 of them already sit well above usual in Cloudbeds." with Review, which opens the list below.

While the dialog is still working out the counts, Send MAYA's prices now works without them, and Start from your current rates waits. Each time you open the dialog it works them out afresh, so it never shows the counts from an earlier look.

Choose by rule and night

Choose by rule and night, under the two buttons, opens the list, and one button takes their place: Go live with these choices (37 nights change), counting the nights your choices change. The list's nights are read when you open it: "Reading the nights…" shows meanwhile, and the button waits for them. If they can't be read, "Couldn't read the nights." comes with Try again. Your choices go with the rules as the list read them, so a rule changed after that refuses the go-live as described above.

• Rules. Each rule with a change on a night in the window, on or off ("Weekend surge (off)"), with its amount and how many nights it has a change on: "Weekend surge · +10% · 23 nights". Each has Apply and Skip. Apply keeps its changes, sent as they are. Skip starts it from your rates, as the first button does for every rule, and shows why that rule would rarely act, when it would.
• Nights that change. Each night with a room type listed, with a box for the night and how many: "Fri, Nov 13 · 3 room types". A room type is listed when MAYA's price, starting from your Cloudbeds rate, or your Apply and Skip as they stand would change its price, so setting a rule to Skip can add one. Every price the button counts is listed. Click the night to see its room types, under their room groups, each with a box, your Cloudbeds rate and what your choices send there: "Queen · Cloudbeds $179.00 → $230.46". Where your choices leave Cloudbeds' rate as it is, it says "Queen · Cloudbeds $179.00 · no change". Under it is what's in that price: each change, then "Your floor" or "Your ceiling" when one held it, and "Your price" for a price you typed ("Changed in Cloudbeds" for a rate changed there that MAYA kept). So "-5%, Your floor" is a cut your floor stopped. Each line follows your Apply and Skip and your boxes as you change them. The night's box ticks or unticks all of them at once. A room type left unticked starts from your Cloudbeds rate, as the first button does for it (kept between its floor and ceiling, or a price you typed), and every rule acting there waits. A room type that isn't listed keeps your rules' changes, which leave its price as it is.
• What it starts from. Every rule on Apply and every night ticked, except the room types whose rate in Cloudbeds already sits well above usual and that your rules would raise further, past what starting from your rates sends there (a floor or a price you typed alone never counts): those start unticked, with "already 28% above usual, may be priced in" beside them. A night whose every listed room type is like that starts unticked too.

"Usual" is the middle of that room type's own rates in Cloudbeds on the same kind of night (Friday and Saturday nights, or the other nights), within 14 nights either side, when there are at least 4 to go on. "Well above" is 20% or more. MAYA never works out what a choice would earn: the list shows prices and counts only.

With every rule applied and every night ticked, the button sends MAYA's prices, the same as Send MAYA's prices now.

When the dialog offers only Go live

The dialog keeps the single Go live it always had, which sends MAYA's prices, when:

• no price would change ("0" would be the count), or the counts can't be read;
• MAYA hasn't read your rates yet (the first read comes a few minutes after you connect), so there is nothing to count;
• MAYA has sent prices to the window before (the property went live once and is back in simulation): your system then holds MAYA's last prices, so starting from your rates would not mean what it says;
• your database has not had the update this needs yet.

Where it has the count, it still says it above the button: "312 prices differ from Cloudbeds and would be sent from the next cycle." On Mews, with no connection, with sending off, or on ThinkReservations with no rate type in use, the dialog is as described above, with nothing about prices. MAYA support's switch in the Command Center sends MAYA's prices.

Start from your current rates or send MAYA's prices

While you simulate, MAYA prices every night as if it were live, so what your rules did in simulation is already in the prices the calendar shows. Send MAYA's prices now sends them. Start from your current rates starts from what your system has instead, and lets your rules act from there.

What goes out first.

• Send MAYA's prices now: every night in the window at the price the calendar shows, nearest first. Nights where nothing differs are written and change nothing.
• Start from your current rates: every night at your system's own rate, kept between the room type's floor and ceiling, and a price you typed as you typed it. Floors and ceilings still apply, and typed prices are still sent. A rule's change goes out only where the rule becomes true for the first time after you went live.

How a rule waits. Every rule's change comes off, on every night it could act on and wherever it has a change, a rule that is off included. Then each rule waits on each night. While it is true there, it changes nothing. The first time MAYA measures it not true there, the wait ends, and the next time it is true it acts as it does anywhere else: a standard rule switches on, and a booking speed or pickup rule raises or cuts, without first waiting out its wait from the changes that came off. A booking speed or pickup change that comes off still counts as having acted on the bookings it counted: a weaker rule that moves the price the same way counts only the bookings made after it, as it did in simulation, whether that rule waits or not. That lasts on every cycle after, even once the rule that made the change is edited into another kind of rule or switched off. And while a booking speed or pickup rule waits on a night, it still holds back the rules it outranks there, as a rule waiting out its own wait does (Which one fires when several match): a weaker rule that moves the price the same way while the waiting rule is true there, counted with its own changes off, and a rule that moves the price the other way while the waiting rule's whole window is true. So skipping a stronger rule never lets a weaker one act where the stronger one, acting, would have kept it off. A reading that measures nothing keeps the wait: no booking history to compare with yet, a pickup count too short to judge, a night you told the rule to stop on, or a rule whose measured room types are all switched off. A night that comes into your window later has no wait: the rule judges it fresh.

Saving a rule later. Apply on a later save of a rule ends its waits: it acts on every night it matches now, and the days the popup shows include those nights. Skip keeps them, and holds the popup's days its own way. Turning the rule Off ends them on the next pricing run, once its changes there are off, so switched back on it starts as any rule switched on does, with Apply or Skip. Deleting the rule removes them. The waits stay if MAYA support switches you back to simulation.

When it goes out. A night is sent only once MAYA has priced it after you went live. MAYA prices those nights first, nearest first, up to 264 a cycle, so a year of nights goes out within a few cycles.

How each kind of rule starts

A rule with several conditions waits on the whole rule: its wait on a night ends the first time MAYA measures any of them not true there, and it acts once all of them are true again. So the dialog names a rule for what the whole rule does:

• A condition that comes and goes on its own (pickup more than N, booking speed at least, or exactly, a faster level, or recent bookings) ends the wait soon, so a rule with one is never named.
• With days before arrival less than N, only the nights already within N days wait. The dialog says, for example, "Within 3 days of arrival, nights already under 60% change only if they go over 60% and come back under. Nights further out are judged as they come within 3 days." On its own, it is the N-day delay above.
• Days before arrival more than N is named only when it is the rule's only condition: any other condition can end the wait while the night is still that far out.
• Two conditions that rarely come back are named together: "Nights already under 40% and slow change only if one of those stops being true and then both are again." Occupancy more than X%, rooms left fewer than N and ahead of usual are never named on their own, but each joins such a line, as one more way a night changes: "Nights already under 60% and with fewer than 5 rooms left change only if one of those stops being true and then both are again."

Coming from PIE or from setting rates by hand, Start from your current rates keeps MAYA from raising a rate the old tool or you already raised. Send MAYA's prices now suits a property whose rates in its system are plain, with nothing priced in.

The nights outside your limits

On Cloudbeds and ThinkReservations, when some nights in the window have your own rate in your system outside a room type's floor or ceiling, a line above the Terms sentence counts them: "12 nights have a rate outside your floor or ceiling; MAYA will move them inside when it sends." (or "1 night has a rate…, MAYA will move it inside…"). A night counts once however many of its room types are outside. It counts the nights from tonight through the window, on a rate your system has for the night above 0, leaving out nights with a price you typed (those go out as typed) and nights past the last one your system returned a rate for. Room types that are not active are left out, and so is a type you unticked as a room unless a rule changes it, since MAYA sends nothing for it. When none are outside, or the count cannot be read, there is no line, and the button works the same either way.

On those nights, a rate under the floor goes out at the floor and one over the ceiling goes out at the ceiling, even where no rule fired. To keep your own rate on those nights, change or remove the limit on the review before you go live. Read What "Each price it sends replaces that night's rate" means.

What "Each price it sends replaces that night's rate" means

For each room type MAYA writes one nightly rate to one rate plan in your system: the base rate in Cloudbeds, the rate type named after "MAYA reads and writes:" in ThinkReservations (Best Available, or the one you picked). On ThinkReservations your other standard rate types that MAYA moves get the same change on their own rate (Your other standard rates). The number that was there is replaced by the price your rules set for that night. That price starts from the rate you had, so on a night where no rule fired the number that goes out is your own rate, kept between that room type's floor and ceiling. If your rate is under the floor or over the ceiling, the floor or ceiling goes out instead. The confirm counts those nights, and the review lists every room's floor and ceiling in boxes you can change.

Rate plans that follow the base rate (derived plans, and packages built on it) move as your system's own rules move them. MAYA never writes those directly. How prices reach your property system has the detail.

"A night is sent again whenever its price changes" is the other half. After the first send, a night goes out again only when MAYA's price for it changes. A night whose price stays the same is not sent again.

Terms 3.3

Clause 3.3 of the Terms of Service says who can switch a property to live: a General Manager or Hotel Admin, or another role we designate, and you choose who holds those roles. It treats your click on Go live as your confirmation of two things. First, that you have reviewed the property's rules and limits: every active rule, whether you wrote it or MAYA built it, and every floor and ceiling. Second, that you accept responsibility for every rate MAYA publishes for the property. It also says that if we switch a property live at your request or with your permission, we act on your instruction. That is why the sentence sits beside the button rather than in Terms accepted weeks earlier, possibly by someone else. Terms and legal has the clause.

What MAYA records when you go live

• Who clicked the button, the version of the Terms shown on the screen, your IP address and your browser. This is kept as the record of the go-live.
• How you started: the calendar's prices, your current rates, or a choice by rule and night. With it, how many waits that wrote (one for each rule on each night) and on how many nights, none for the calendar's prices, and for a choice by rule and night how many rules you skipped and how many room types on a night were left unticked. Counts only, never a price.
• The moment the property went live. It matters later: a rate you changed in your system while simulating is read as your base rate, not as a manual price, and this moment is how MAYA tells the two apart.
• With Start from your current rates or a choice by rule and night: each rule's wait on each night, until it ends (How a rule waits).
• A request to read your own rates again before the first send.

Your rules, your floors and ceilings, your history, your manual prices and your team are exactly as they were.

What happens next

1. The strip becomes a tag. The amber strip is gone and a small green Live tag sits at the top right of every screen. On the review screen the starter rules box reads "✓ Live: your rules are now managing prices". In the change log a "Went live" item marks the moment, worded for how you started: "Sam took pricing live. From the next cycle, MAYA sends its prices to Cloudbeds.", "Sam took pricing live, starting from your Cloudbeds rates. Your rules act on what newly becomes true." or "Sam took pricing live, starting some nights from your Cloudbeds rates. From the next cycle, MAYA sends its prices to Cloudbeds." Runs from before keep their Simulation tag, and runs from now on say whether each price was sent. A simulated change whose price the night still has then reads "Nothing was sent to Cloudbeds at the time." with a second line once the first send has gone, such as "Sent to Cloudbeds after you went live." (The change log).
2. The next cycle reads your rates first. Cycles run about every five minutes. The first live cycle reads your own rate for every night in the window before it prices. Whatever you had in your system at that moment is the starting point your rules work from.
3. Then it sends. Prices for tonight and the next 395 nights go out, nearest nights first, in batches.
   • With Send MAYA's prices now, nothing has been sent before, so every priced night goes out on this first send: nights where a rule fired at the rule's price, nights where none fired at your own rate (kept between the room type's floor and ceiling), and a price you typed while simulating as typed. A change made while simulating by a rule you have since turned off goes out too.
   • With Start from your current rates, each night goes out once MAYA has priced it after you went live, with every rule's change off: your own rate kept between the floor and ceiling, or a price you typed. MAYA prices those nights first, so they go out within a few cycles. In the change log each change taken off reads, for example, "Weekend surge +10% came off when you went live", with "$230.46 was MAYA's simulated price and was never sent to Cloudbeds. The price is now $179.00."
4. After that, changes only. A night is sent again when its price changes. A cycle where nothing changed sends nothing.

Everything about what is sent, held back, confirmed and retried is on How prices reach your property system.

How long until prices appear in my system

Usually within a minute or two: MAYA starts a run for the property as soon as you confirm, though the confirm itself speaks of the next cycle. Cloudbeds applies each price a few seconds after receiving it. ThinkReservations accepts each send and applies it shortly after.

It takes longer when the first read of your rates fails or runs out of time (the first send waits for the next cycle that reads them), when your property is large (a big first send continues on the following cycles), or when your system asks MAYA to slow down. If nothing has changed in your system after 15 minutes, open the change log. A problem that needs you appears there as "Prices not reaching Cloudbeds". Prices are not reaching your property system walks through what to check.

Going live during the trial

Yes. A property on its free trial is treated as paid for everything MAYA does, sending included. The only gate on going live is your role.

Going live for some room types only

Not yet. The switch is for the whole property. What you can do instead: a rule only changes the room types you tick under Apply to room types, so a room type no rule names is sent at your own rate, kept between its floor and ceiling. Its number in your system does not move unless your rate sits under its floor or over its ceiling, and then the floor or ceiling goes out instead. To keep a room type out of sending, untick Counts as a room for it on the PMS tab and leave it out of every rule: MAYA then sends nothing for it unless you type a price. Unticking also takes it out of occupancy and your bill, so it suits a meeting room or a court, not a bedroom. Every room type that counts as a room is sent.