RB: Booking Confirmations

Sep 6, 2019

Do you have resources that are struggling to cope with the number of bookings? Computer labs that are always booked; contention among staff for technology suites; or a shortage of quality teaching spaces?

Previously we implemented the “High-Use” flag for resources. This was an automated notification system that informed staff who were registered for “High-Use” resource notifications when ever a booking was deleted. This allowed staff timely notifications to make their bookings when these resources became available.

We are now focusing our attention on those staff members who have booked a “High-Use” resource but fail to turn up when expected.

Enable Booking Confirmations

  • Click on your school name (bottom left of the screen)
  • From the menu select “App configuration”
  • From the top menu select “Resource Booking”
  • Edit the options here, locate the checkbox for “High-Use Booking Confirmations” and check this.

When you enable the above option the application will now send out emails, every morning at 5am, when there is a booking on the following day for a “High-Use” resource. (Normal resources are ignored).

Each staff member with a “High-Use” resource booking will receive an email, if they have multiple bookings the bookings will be grouped into a single email. The email content will look similar to that below:

Clicking the “Confirm” button will confirm the booking, in other words, “Yes – I will be using this resource at that time”. The following page will appear:

If the staff member realises that they won’t be using the resource mentioned, they can then click the “Release” button. This will delete the booking and release the resource to other staff. The following page will appear:

Confirmation Expiry

As mentioned in the email, if neither button is pressed the booking will automatically expire 12 hours (by default) after the email is sent. So, normally when the email is sent at 5am the default expiry would be 5pm the same day.

In the application configuration you can configure a shorter or longer expiry time, 12 hours is just the default value.