Sobs

May 16, 2018

It’s not really anonymous – we know the people booking, they are staff, guests, students or parents, however sometime in the future we may extend this to include those unknown.

What’s anonymous booking for?

Resources that your school is willing to make available for the community, in an orderly fashion. You might have a tennis court, a basketball court, an oval or an outdoor theatre that you are keen to make greater use of. You may already have some process for students and parents to book these facilities which is great. The SOBS Anonymous booking is simply an online facility to allow these people to book these resources when they are available.

How do students and parents use it?

You will publish a link on your school website – they simply click the link and follow the instructions. The form starts by asking for the email address. This must be an existing email address registered on a staff record, a guest record, a student record or a parent record (this is different to the parent email added from the Parent/Teacher interview application).

The user then selects the resource. Only resources accessible to guests can be booked here, no other resources are listed.

The resource description and optionally an image will be displayed, along with available periods / times listed. The user will only be able to select a single period or time slot for their booking – there are no extended bookings or repeat bookings available. The list of periods / times only extends to the week ahead – the user will not be able to book beyond the week ahead.

The booking description will display the same prompt and help information as you would see in the main booking screen, it’s not different in that respect, however we do require a description to be entered on this form.

Lastly if there are any options defined for this resource they will be displayed also and operate the same was as in the main booking screen.

Once the booking is created a confirmation message appears on the screen, and an email is sent to the user’s email address. The email contains the details of the booking and also a button that allows the user to delete the booking if it is no longer required.

If the resource requires approval (and approval can be limited to guest booking / anonymous booking) then the booking will be created with a ‘Pending’ status and an email will be sent to the approving resource managers.

Does this cost extra?

No, it is part of the Room Booking application – there is no additional charge.

How do we set this up?

Begin by enabling Guest access.
1. Click on your school name (bottom left) and then on School configuration.
2. In the top left menu select “Authentication” and then click the “Edit” button
3. Here you will enable Guest access to the Resource Booking application – this is essential for anonymous booking to work.
You will need to enable guest access to your Room Booking application.
1. Click on your school name (bottom left) and then on App configuration.
2. Ensure you are on the “Resource Booking” page, if not, select “Resource Booking” from the top left menu.
3. Click the “Edit” button to update these settings – at the bottom of the form you will find the following options:
  1. Select whether the guest sees Times, Periods or Periods and Times. If the guests are typically booking outside school hours then the times is probably the best option.
  2. The show calendar option will display the weekly calendar for all resources available to guests.
  3. A repeat option is by default disabled. When enabled it will allow a guest to repeat their booking for up to 10 weeks.
By default Guests do not have the security necessary to book resources – you can configure this.
1. Click on your school name (bottom left) and then on “Staff / Guests”
2. In the top left menu click on “Security roles”
3. If a list of applications is displayed, click on “Resource booking”
4. This will show a table of security options you can configure.
5. Edit the “Can make bookings” option to allow guests to make booking.
6. You should also configure the “Can only book ahead this far” to control how far ahead the guest can book these resources. NOTE: If you have configured the “Repeat booking” option, then this value should reflect the selected repeat option, for example, if you have allowed 5 repeat bookings, then the book ahead value should probably be set around 42.
You will need to allow guests to access/book some of your resources.
1. Click on your school name (bottom left) and then on “Categories / Resources” – this will show a list of categories
2. Click on a category row to locate the resources you want to make available
3. Edit the resource you want to make available and enable the ‘Restrictions’ checkbox. Save your change.
4. In the action menu on the right of this resource you will find a menu option “Configure restrictions” – click this.
5. You will now see a list of rules applied to this resource. By default all Users at the school will be allowed to book this resource, and all Guests will be denied.
6. Change the ‘Deny’ guest access to ‘Allow’ guest access.
7. This resource will now be available for booking by Guest accounts.
If you want to extend this facility to students and parents, if not already imported you should import your student parent data, perhaps using one of the other applications, School Notices, Student Attendance, Permissions Slips, Detention System (you don’t have to use that application, a trial will be sufficient to run the student and parent data import).
Publish the Anonymous booking link on your school website: https://sobs.com.au/rb3/anon.php?schoolid=NNN (where NNN is your SOBS schoolid number).

Will this facility get spammed or abused?

We have configured an anti-spam option into the form that should protect us from the spiders that troll the net for forms like this.

Currently the facility is limited to our pre-loaded email addresses, so despite the name we are not allowing unknown users to make bookings.

Will some student or parent take the opportunity to make repeat booking on these resources? That is a possibility, however with a description of booking limits (and we suggest some limit such as no more than 2 bookings per week per guest be included in the resource description) together with an approval process in place the bookings will quickly be deleted and the originator will have wasted a good amount of time doing nothing really. After each booking is made the booking form is reset and the user would need to type in their email again, select a resource, a time, and type in a description in order to submit a further booking. I believe our user will tire of this very quickly.

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