# Channels
A **channel** in Adrasis is a partner you connect to — an OTA (Online Travel Agency), a channel manager (the aggregator software between a hotel and the rest of the distribution stack), a bedbank (B2B bed-supply network), a metasearch engine, a B2B platform. Once configured, properties from your catalog publish to it (or ingest from it) automatically. This page explains how channels are set up and what each piece is for.
## What it takes to make a channel work
For a property to publish to (or ingest from) a channel, four pieces have to line up:
All four pieces have to line up before a channel can publish or ingest.
| Piece | Who handles it | When it changes |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Connector** | The platform makes the partner available | When a new partner integration ships |
| **Credentials** | Your organization admin sets them up once | When the partner rotates them |
| **Property bindings** | An operator sets them per property | When you start (or stop) publishing a property to the channel |
| **Mapping** | An operator does it once, revisits it as the catalog evolves | When you add new rooms, rate plans, meal plans |
A channel is **active for a property** when all four pieces line up.
## What you do as an operator
Setting up a new channel for a property typically goes:
1. **Confirm the connector is enabled for your organization.** Open *Connectors → Integration*. If the partner you want is not in the list, ask the platform team to enable it.
2. **Add your credentials.** The console takes the partner-issued credentials, keeps them safe, and validates them against the partner where possible.
3. **Bind the property** through the property's *Channels* tab. Enter the partner's identifier for that property.
4. **Map your rooms, rate plans, attributes, and meal plans** to the partner's vocabulary. The mapping page surfaces gaps and helps you close them.
5. **Activate the binding.** Outbound feeds run on schedule; inbound partner traffic can be received.
Concrete picture: Hotel Sunrise wants to start selling on a metasearch engine you have already enabled organization-wide. You bind Hotel Sunrise to that channel, enter the partner's identifier for it, map its three room types and two rate plans (*BAR* and *Non-Refundable Europe*) to the partner's vocabulary, and flip the binding to active. From the next scheduled feed run onward, Hotel Sunrise's rates appear on the partner — you do not log into the partner.
## How credentials are kept safe
You give a credential to your organization once; the platform takes it from there:
* **Stored encrypted.** Partner secrets are kept in a managed vault, not in plain text.
* **Validated where possible.** When a partner offers a verification check, the console checks the credential before saving.
* **Organization-scoped.** A credential serves every property the organization binds to that connector — partners issue one set per hotel group, not per property, and the platform mirrors that.
* **Rotatable.** When a partner rotates your secret, you replace it in the console; the rest of the platform picks up the change without further action.
You manage credentials through the *Connectors → Integration* page; if a credential expires or fails to verify, the page surfaces it.
## Mapping — what makes the channel speak the same language
Once credentials and bindings are in place, the platform must speak the partner's vocabulary: their room codes, their rate plan IDs, their meal-plan codes. Mapping is what turns *"the partner's room 432"* into *"our Deluxe Sea View"* — and back, in either direction.
Mapping is set up once during onboarding through the curation surface. Adragent can fill in obvious matches automatically; the rest you decide. See [Mapping & curation](/console/mapping-and-curation/canonical-mapping.md) for the details.
The platform keeps partner mapping fast at runtime so channel traffic does not slow down on it.
## Knowing if a channel is healthy
Each channel has a status surface that tells you, at a glance:
* **Recent inbound success rate** — are partner messages landing cleanly?
* **Last credential check** — did the credentials verify on the last run?
* **Mapping gaps** — anything the partner sent that does not map to a canonical entity yet.
* **Failed-write follow-up** — anything failing repeatedly enough to need attention.
Failed channel writes do not vanish. They route through a retry chain and then — if they keep failing — into a holding area that operations and the platform can replay or investigate. You see the "needs attention" signal in the console; nothing fails silently.
## Where to next
* **What flows out** → [Outbound overview](/console/distribution/outbound.md)
* **What flows in** → [Inbound overview](/console/distribution/inbound.md)
* **How mapping turns partner codes into your catalog** → [Mapping & curation](/console/mapping-and-curation/canonical-mapping.md)
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