Classroombookings - Hosted?

Hi everyone

As some of you are aware I've been making good progress lately with my free/open-source web-based room booking system (yes, it now has LDAP).

It has been mentioned to me a couple of times that, for whatever reason, a locally-installable version isn't possible or it wouldn't be accessible outside of the school from home - which I completely understand.

To get to the point: I could set up and run a hosted Classroombookings site; but I'm only prepared to do this if there is enough interest from schools who would pay a yearly cost. It would definitely be cheaper than the rip-off that is roombookingsystem.co.uk (£420 setup, £210 yearly!) but enough to cover my bills.

What are your ideas on this? Would you be interested? What sort of fee would you expect to pay?

Thanks for your time.

well you could but (not trying to discourage you)

I really don't see the problem with mrbs and putting it on a subdomain of the schools site. all it needs is mysql & php to work properly online.... and best of all its costs £0.

mrbs doesn't deal properly with 2 week timetables crbs does.

CRBS is a lot user friendly to setup and configure than mrbs in my experience.

I would still host crbs internally though.

Glad to see the progress.

Ben

hmm, might be nice for primaries etc,

but personally I'd build a box internally

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Originally Posted by mossj

well you could but (not trying to discourage you)

I really don't see the problem with mrbs and putting it on a subdomain of the schools site. all it needs is mysql & php to work properly online.... and best of all its costs £0.

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Allot of schools are not allowed to do this, the LEA stop them.

@webaman i have a webserver on a 40mb line if you want to host.

I meant to hit the top radio button. My bad. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FN-GM

Allot of schools are not allowed to do this, the LEA stop them.

@webaman i have a webserver on a 40mb line if you want to host.

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hmmm I'm new to the rules of web devolpment in schools, but why would they stop them? Are we supposed to tell them when we try things like this?

I.E I've just sorted out exacly this, and changed my host for a second time. All without telling the LEA. Also redesigning the site in Joomla :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mossj

hmmm I'm new to the rules of web devolpment in schools, but why would they stop them? Are we supposed to tell them when we try things like this?

I.E I've just sorted out exacly this, and changed my host for a second time. All without telling the LEA. Also redesigning the site in Joomla :)

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No idea why i am in an area where all the school where we can do as we please really. I think they are more bothered about hosting it yourself.

@mossj: The open source version you can download & run yourself will always remain free - that was always my goal. One reason, because MRBS in my opinion just looks plain ugly, is complicated, and doesn't do many of the stuff that most schools need - there is a fundamental requirement for an easy-to-use system that is teacher-proof and free.

I'm just trying to gauge the opinion of whether schools that like Classroombookings who can't host it themselves (for various reasons) would prefer a hosted option - instead of paying through the nose for things like roombookingsystem.co.uk. (I had a quick look at their stand at BETT and immediately thought WTF when it took about 6 clicks to confirm a room booking :confused:)

I find MRBS very lacking and no teacher friendly enough to be of use to them all, the classroom bookings is very teacher friendly and good for them to use so it is much better, and if it now has LDAP its even better!!!

We just purchased roombookingsystems.co.uk and whilst it does the job, i personally don't like it. But as working for a school where staff would need the booking system to be available outside of school, a hosted option would be great. Our school for example feels hosting and setting up security for outside access would be a risk, mainly as we do not have the required knowledge to do this.
If it was up to me i would host website, classroombookingsystem,vle, email, but unfortunatley i dont have that authority.

The development for this is looking good. It maybe time to end my 4 year affair with MRBS. I find I have to keep adding code to MRBS. Just lately I had to add some code to stop them booking before 9 am as they were coming in at 7:30 and booking rooms as far ahead as they possibly could so nobody else got a chance!

Slightly related, while at the same time completely unrelated, but it would be great if a system like this could be built up to become an 'all in one' intranet solution. Is that something you've ever considored Craig?

@ChrisH: Those are the sort of school-centric ideas I'm aiming for. If you have any other thoughts, don't hesitate to start a discussion about it here :)

@Edu-IT: It's a nice idea, but no it's not something I've thought about before. What I don't want to happen is for it to become something that morphs into some hacked-together piece of software that it was never intended to be.

I see.

Couple of features of other systems which are useful and which may already be included in your product:

• Ability to print booking summary sheets per room/user
• Ability to request specific resources for a room (E.g projector) - notify person responsible for providing equipment?