Do you use Room Booking Software?

[alan-d]

We us Digirez although the price has trebled since we bought it 3 years ago - they must be doing well!

[jazzy639]

Wow, didnt relise this was a hot topic!

the thing i liked about the system we're on is that it was all set up for us. all that we did was fill in the rooms and timetable info and it worked from day one. we were willing to pay as i dont have to host anything or mess around with php, it just works! simple!

[Ric_]

@jazzy639: If you want anything else like this, I'll happilyu come and install it for £600

[jazzy639]

nah, ur ok

the room booking system we use is much more suited to our school and there are features that the staff use a lot like:
quick view of whats available - over 10 rooms - displayed clearly on the timetable
we have different sorts of rooms which are sorted in categories and are displayed efficiently using the timetable
room owners can see who is in their room
admin likes the amount of control he's got and the statistics
... only to name a few

i will be definately sticking to what ive got!

if your concerned about the price, speak to them and see if they'll lower it - they did for my school as well as the offer

[john]

Would it be possible to either do something like this in Sharepoint services or customise this for say Minibusses rather than Rooms? We have paper forms for Mini-Busses at present, and you have to wander to get the form etc, but an on-line one would be simpler for us to check to book it in for a service etc... as its fight fight fight over the book, but this could be the solution.

[beeswax]

there is a room booking add-on to sharepoint, but I can't remember where to locate it on the microsoft site. I've a copy on my pen drive which I can let you have (it's free, after all).
beeswax

[john]

That would be excellent if you could as I am going to play with setting a new Intranet up this term, for launch in Sept, and its going to be sharepoint based, so I could make a start with that.

[beeswax]

you may find this useful, as I seem to have left my pen drive at the office.
beeswax

[john]

That sounds brill beeswax, just what I am looking for, when I finally get all my server setup, that will be my first module to be played with!

Thanks

[MrDylan]

We used to have an Excel Spreadsheet on the network that teachers could check and we'd book them.

Ended up with people booking the wrong days and then having conflicts, been given lists of loads of dates to book or asked to remember to book rooms weeks in advance that we didn't have timetables for and even being asked by staff if people were off or weren't using a room they'd booked for any reason.

Ended up taking so much of our time, and being asked things we had no idea what the answers were we paid someone, only about £150 to make a web based booking system.

Now people log on and get a list of rooms with timetables, showing if it's booked or whatnot and they book things themselves.

The only problem now is people complain they can't get in because other staff have booked loads.

Not my problem I say, nothing I can do, nothing to do with me, take it up with the purpetrator.

[ChrisH]

I modified the code on our MRBS to stop people booking more than 21 days in advance as some people thought it was ok to book rooms every week to the end of the year :?

[MrDylan]

Trouble is even if I did set up something like that, they'd just log in every day and top it up.

I usually let them book a half a term in advance.

At the end of the day though, I now just say it's not my responsibilty, they're nto children ffs!

[Geoff]

Thing with MRBS is that it doesn't account for holidays. They soon learn not to book past the next half term.

[MrDylan]

hehe. Ours can have holidays specified, and it copes with our two week timetable.

[matt40k]

Room booking

Look at that, then do!!