Room scheduling software

[David Cridland]

Hi Sara,

At University of Western Sydney we use a system that is based on the "Meeting Room Booking System" open source software available at this location http://mrbs.sourceforge.net/

For the UWS system we have made changes to adapt the system to our needs. We have 7 campus libraries with varying numbers of study rooms at each location and different opening times. Changes include:- (Many of these are spelled out on our conditions of booking page)


-          Authentication by LDAP allows us to use UWS student login username/password

-          Restricted views to the day view, not needing the week and month view.

-          Restricted calendar views to forward bookings, as there is no need to see past history

-          Restricted students to maximum 2 hours per day

-          Restricted students to maximum 2 bookings per day (otherwise they try to book quarter hour sessions every half hour in an attempt to dominate the room for longer)

-          Restricted students to maximum 2 weeks advanced booking.

-          Restricted students from naming or describing their own booking sessions, each session is simply called "Booked" (It was felt that common sense and decency may not prevail)

-          Restricted students to searching (using report) for their own bookings and provide a direct link to this report.

-          Student bookings are in Green, staff bookings are in blue - MRBS allows many colours, but we currently only use two.

-          Students cannot change other peoples bookings


Most staff have none of these restrictions and have extra administrative rights that allow :-

-          Naming of sessions, eg. Staff Meeting

-          Any duration, any advanced time, any number of bookings, whole day booking in a click, multiple room booking at a site.

-          Facility to easily book in a pattern - weekly, daily, monthly, second day of every third week, etc

-          Changing room names and descriptions

-          Add or Delete rooms or Hide room for a short period.

-          Add or delete sites (Libraries).

-          Delete or edit any booking.

-          Can search by report for bookings by time, site, room, student id, etc.

There is a choice of which DB to use, we use Mysql as the database behind the system.\

Regards
David Cridland
Library Systems Officer (Research)
University of Western Sydney
Australia


From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Sara Brownmiller
Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2014 1:20 AM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Room scheduling software

The University of Oregon Libraries is looking for a room scheduling application that can be used throughout the libraries.   We currently use the campus R25/25Live software, which is difficult and clunky for both requestors and approvers.   Students need to be able to place their own requests, with review and approval by library staff.   It would be useful if the software had the ability to enforce some policies, i.e. only a single booking per week, etc.
We'd like to find a software that is more user friendly, can be integrated with the campus identity management system (Shibboleth), and accommodate a variety of policies, rooms and buildings.  If possible, we are also interested in offering a digital display of reservations for some rooms.
If your library has a room scheduling software that is working well, would you let me know what it is?
thanks, Sara
-----------------------
Sara Brownmiller  . . . . . . . . . . . . . University of Oregon Libraries
Director, Library Systems . . . . . . . 1299 University of Oregon
snb at uoregon.edu<mailto:snb at uoregon.edu> . . . . . . . . . . . . Eugene, OR 97403-1299
541-346-2368 (voice)

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2014-09-15

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