Creating a course booking system with Google/O365/whatever

[sonofsanta]

So Maths have asked me if this is possible, and it seems like it should be, it's just finding the best approach.

 

They want to make sure Year 11 kids are coming in for revision sessions during exam time, and so they want a booking system where they can choose which revision sessions they want to attend. There are 14 potential sessions, each with 30 available spaces, in a week, and each week will be treated differently. Kids will need to attend exactly 3 sessions a week.

 

My first instinct was a Google/Office 365 Form where they could fill out their name, maths group and then select three sessions with checkboxes. That'd all feed into a spreadsheet that could be used to generate registers, check sign ups etc. But I'm not sure how I could get the form to dynamically update the number of seats available based on responses already received, such that a session with 30 participants could no longer be selected.

 

I also thought about using Office 365 resources, but I don't think that can handle multiple people booking a resource at once, nor would it give us the data in as useful a format as a form.

 

The other option is to set up multiple free trips on WisePay, but that'll be more work than a simple form, especially as Maths want to treat each week differently--with a form, I can just duplicate everything, but with WisePay it'll end up being (say) 4 weeks of 14 sessions = 56 blooming trips. I don't think it'd be possible to enforce the exactly-three requirement, either. ("Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out...")

 

I'm open to suggestions, either for making the above work or any other approach. Doodle.com looks a plausible option in its free incarnation: it can do the limit of 30 places, it can export to Excel, but it can't insist upon exactly-three and I can't add specific notes on options to state the room (though both these problems can be mitigated by adding a description).

 

Anyone ever done anything similar?

[sonofsanta]

...I may have cracked it with this guide, in fact, though it'll need some testing to make sure it's reliable: https://nathannagele.com/how-to-remove-choices-in-google-forms/

[nadeem]

It might already be part of your Office365 subscription

 

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/scheduling-and-booking-app

[mavhc]

There's appointment slots in GSuite, although only 1 per person, so you could make 30 2 min appointments I guess, as a hack

[pete]

Integrate MS forms with Flow?