Room booking system on Moodle

I'm looking for a way of booking IT rooms on (Cleo) Moodle that takes the minimum of fuss to set up at the start of the year and is simple enough for the teachers to use:rolleyes:.
The rooms are used about 60% of the time by timetabled classes, and it's a full-on two week timetable (week B bearing little resemblance to week A):eek:

Any suggestions?

I've made a category called "Staff" and a course named "Bookings"

I've considered a "database", but couldn't make it look simple enough to use and putting the timetabled classes in would be a nightmare. :( That is, however how we're doing the bookings for non-timetableable facilities like the minibus, for which it is ok :)

How good would Moodle be at handling an excel sheet that staff could download, book rooms on, then upload again? That process would have to be pretty seamless for them - it would have to be the "save " that uploaded it as they'd never cope with saving then uploading what they saved - is that possible?!:drunken_smilie:

I'm new to Moodle, but spent the past 18 months on a sharepoint VLE (that we decided we couldn't afford, hence moving to Moodle). All help greatly appreciated!

I would suggest a database that requires a login for staff to add too. But they are unable to alter it when a lesson is booked?

That way you can clean week A off (aside from the ICT lessons) in week B, and vice versa. That way if its booked, its tough!

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Originally Posted by nephilim

I would suggest a database that requires a login for staff to add too. But they are unable to alter it when a lesson is booked?

That way you can clean week A off (aside from the ICT lessons) in week B, and vice versa. That way if its booked, its tough!

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The "database" I was referring to is just the bog-standard database that you put on a course from the "add an activity" menu - I don't THINK you can do anything quite that clever with it, but do stand to be corrected :)

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how good would Moodle be at handling an excel sheet that staff could download, book rooms on, then upload again? That process would have to be pretty seamless for them - it would have to be the "save " that uploaded it as they'd never cope with saving then uploading what they saved - is that possible?!

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This,I think, is where Moodle currently falls down- there is no facility for communal editing of spreadsheets and there is no way (trust me!) that you will get your staff downloading, editing and then reuploading a spreadsheet to book a room.
I suggest either
*ignore Moodle altogether and use the MRBS on your intranet (as we do)
* set up a google spreadsheet and add them as users - this might stand a chance of being easier for them to edit.

I will have a think about the Moodle database however.

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Originally Posted by secretlife

*ignore Moodle altogether and use the MRBS on your intranet (as we do)

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You could just put in a block that is a link to MRBS
I'd use the word integrate rather than ignore ;)

I'd second MRBS it's an excellent tool and integrates nicely into moodle - However make sure you use the version on moodle.org not the one direct from MRBS as the two projects forked a while back...

Are you saying get the one on moodle.org but use it offline then Andy? (CLEO don't allow ftp access to upload our own choice of modules)

Didn't realise that CLEO don't allow you to add your own blocks... In which case MRBS is out of the question...

Shame as it would have been an excellent solution (have just finished integrating it into my moodle install)...

You could run MRBS seperately on an internally hosted server if you have one and then just provide all staff with the same login to MRBS. The stick a link on the front page of moodle... Not ideal but it would work...

That's what we do at our place that I suggested to Tony- only trouble is , we all have the same login and staff keep overriding each others' bookings!!

If I remember correctly there is an LDAP authentication system for MRBS so you might be able to use that then staff wouldn't be able to take other people's entries out!

We currently use a public calendar in Exchange but we do only have 5 bookable rooms. It works quite well as most staff know how to use Outlook.

However, I have just installed Moodle so I will check out MRBS to see if it any better than using Outlook

We're using moodle MRBS for room booking. Works quite well, no complaints so far. I had to get a little to make it look pretty though.