[php] Booking System

[Hightower]

Our booking system was outdated (VB6 I think it was done in) so, after finding no nice clean alternatives that did what we wanted on the web I got to designing my own. The majority of development is now finished and we've rolled it out in school to trial.

 

Uploaded a few screenshots for those that are interested. Once we are happy it works as needed I will get about releasing this to the public.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8554[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]8553[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]8552[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]8555[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]8556[/ATTACH]

[siuko]

Looks promising

 

First questions are:

 

1) What are system requirements

2) Does it import bookings from sims?

3) Does it do 2 week timetables?

4) Can it use LDAP (and also possibly SSO)?

 

Sorry for all the questions

[Hightower]

Looks promising

 

First questions are:

 

1) What are system requirements

2) Does it import bookings from sims?

3) Does it do 2 week timetables?

4) Can it use LDAP (and also possibly SSO)?

 

Sorry for all the questions

 

1) Just needs a WAMP/LAMP server - PHP & MySQL

2) No imports from SIMS

3) It doesn't yet - I designed it for use at my school which is 1 week timetabled, but it is something I plan to change in future development

4) Yes, it is designed to use LDAP. There is a really good booking system that @Webman: has designed, but v1 doesn't do LDAP which is the main reason I set about designing this as it is a big requirement of ours.

 

Once I have trialled it I plan to open a page on my website for feature/requests and bug reporting etc as although it now does everything we require a booking system to do, I wish to continue building on it.

[Sylv3r]

Looks good - keep up the hard work

[kestrel1]

Keep us posted. Looks interesting.

[Hightower]

BookIt v0.1 (Beta Release)

 

Any feedback please PM me or use the Contact Form on the link.

[MK-2]

Hightower, I love the clean look to it. Just a few thoughts by just looking through the demo (I will try the beta soon).

- Could the date be a calendar style, so for staff wanting to book two weeks on Wednesday for example can just see a calendar and click that date to load that week (obviously I don't know how much work is involved or if its feasible).

- I understand the login uses LDAP, and it's designed for WAMP not IIS, but could I for instance remove the login button and just have it do authentication in IIS so they dont need to click on a login box, it automatically pops up? Or perhaps it uses the current login name as authentication?

- perhaps (again this might be in here i haven't tried the beta yet) the option for staff to enter not only the class name, but also the lesson. so teacher x goes to book room y with class z, but are they in there teaching maths or science? maybe just a drop down list of lessons which an admin inputs?

 

Looks amazing though, will definitely give it a run

[bladedanny]

I've downloaded and installed the beta, one problem I ran into is when going into settings, settings.php looks to your server to get the latest version it came up with error 'connection refused'. I've navigated round this problem for now by creating my own bookitversion.txt locally and pointing to that.

 

I'm not sure if the original error is a permissions error as I've had a look and the file is definitely there on your server.

 

Looks good so far though, this may be exactly what I've been after.

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

[Hightower]

- Could the date be a calendar style, so for staff wanting to book two weeks on Wednesday for example can just see a calendar and click that date to load that week (obviously I don't know how much work is involved or if its feasible).

- I understand the login uses LDAP, and it's designed for WAMP not IIS, but could I for instance remove the login button and just have it do authentication in IIS so they dont need to click on a login box, it automatically pops up? Or perhaps it uses the current login name as authentication?

- perhaps (again this might be in here i haven't tried the beta yet) the option for staff to enter not only the class name, but also the lesson. so teacher x goes to book room y with class z, but are they in there teaching maths or science? maybe just a drop down list of lessons which an admin inputs?

 

Date can be a calendar, and I have added this to list of things to do.

 

Got your PM about IIS and I am looking into this now, to see exactly what I can do with it.

 

Can definately add a lesson field to the booking

 

I've downloaded and installed the beta, one problem I ran into is when going into settings, settings.php looks to your server to get the latest version it came up with error 'connection refused'. I've navigated round this problem for now by creating my own bookitversion.txt locally and pointing to that.

 

I'm not sure if the original error is a permissions error as I've had a look and the file is definitely there on your server.

 

Looks good so far though, this may be exactly what I've been after.

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

 

Thanks for the feedback - will look into why this may not be working. Seemed to work fine for me though - could it be the address is blocked where you are?

[bladedanny]

Thanks for the feedback - will look into why this may not be working. Seemed to work fine for me though - could it be the address is blocked where you are?

 

I can open bookitversion.txt in a web browser manually, not sure why settings.php didn't. Having said that it very well could be the YHGfL blocking access (they like to do silly things like that).

 

Something else I've just found (sorry) is when clicking on the edit images button for an item upon clicking cancel taking me to

http://helpdesk/bookit/index.php/item/view/modalbox.hide%28%29

I get.

An Error Was Encountered

The URI you submitted has disallowed characters.

 

Clicking either Upload or the cross works fine.

 

Thats is for errors. Another question I have is, I have 30 Nintendo DSs is there any way to upload a csv or similar to save me having to enter each one individually?

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

[Hightower]

I can open bookitversion.txt in a web browser manually, not sure why settings.php didn't. Having said that it very well could be the YHGfL blocking access (they like to do silly things like that).

 

Something else I've just found (sorry) is when clicking on the edit images button for an item upon clicking cancel taking me to

http://helpdesk/bookit/index.php/item/view/modalbox.hide%28%29

I get.

An Error Was Encountered

The URI you submitted has disallowed characters.

Clicking either Upload or the cross works fine.

 

Thats is for errors. Another question I have is, I have 30 Nintendo DSs is there any way to upload a csv or similar to save me having to enter each one individually?

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

 

CSV is a possibility, but not an over-nighter. Can you leave that one with me and I will definately look into it.

[bladedanny]

CSV is a possibility, but not an over-nighter. Can you leave that one with me and I will definately look into it.

 

Yeah of course, for now I've just imported a csv into mysql which seems to have worked ok.

 

Great bit of software though, previously I've been using mrbs to book laptops and equipment, but this is so much cleaner easier for staff to use.

 

Keep up the good work.

 

thanks,

 

Dan

[GREED]

I like the look from the screenshots. However it looks very similar to an online web-based facility from Room Booking System - Online Room Booking Software, we bought into them in my previous school. Just worth a thought before releasing to all.

[powdarrmonkey]

Do you have a bug tracker available yet?

[Hightower]

I like the look from the screenshots. However it looks very similar to an online web-based facility from Room Booking System - Online Room Booking Software, we bought into them in my previous school. Just worth a thought before releasing to all.

 

Just took a look at the screenshots to that, and I think BookIt looks a lot different, and is probably lacking a lot of the features they have there at the moment. I've not researched any booking system to 'rip off' when designing this - just merely designed it around our needs as a school, and this is what came out.

 

Do you have a bug tracker available yet?

 

I don't - can you recommend a WordPress plugin that can do this?

[powdarrmonkey]

WordPress › WordPress Advanced Ticket System « WordPress Plugins looks reasonable, though I've never used it personally. I prefer trac, because it ties into a git code repository for auto updates, blaming, and so on.

[GREED]

Just took a look at the screenshots to that, and I think BookIt looks a lot different, and is probably lacking a lot of the features they have there at the moment. I've not researched any booking system to 'rip off' when designing this - just merely designed it around our needs as a school, and this is what came out.

 

Hightower

 

My apologies I did not mean you had ripped that off at all, I only meant that there is another similar product on the market that I have used in the past. Using it before I can see similarities, but I am sure there are bespoke things to your school you have made.

 

I did not mean offence.

 

Graham

[Hightower]

Hightower

 

My apologies I did not mean you had ripped that off at all, I only meant that there is another similar product on the market that I have used in the past. Using it before I can see similarities, but I am sure there are bespoke things to your school you have made.

 

I did not mean offence.

 

Graham

 

I didn't take it as an offence

 

I'll take it as a compliment that you are comparing it to a paid for solution

[GREED]

I'll take it as a compliment that you are comparing it to a paid for solution

 

As it was meant

[zag]

Looking forward to 2 week timetables

 

Nice clean look, exactly what I want.

 

EDIT: Trying v0.2 and really impressive install procedure and documentation! Well done.

Edited November 18, 2010 by zag

[zag]

Some suggestions for v0.3

 

- Slightly change the background colour of periods that are booked to make it obvious

- 2 week timetable view

- A way to login by IT staff and quickly make a number of number of identical bookings with 1 click

- Explanation and examples of LDAP settings

- Remove white spaces automatically from input forms like the create period times

- Change bookable tick box to be on by default

- Change "create period" to "save period" so it makes more sense when you edit it.

- I get the error "Error Number: 1364 Field 'small_image' doesn't have a default value" When trying to add an ICT room

Edited November 18, 2010 by zag

[Hightower]

Some suggestions

 

- Slightly change the background colour of periods that are booked to make it obvious

- 2 week timetable view

- A way to login by IT staff and quickly make a number of number of identical bookings with 1 click

- Remove white spaces automatically from input forms like the create period times

- Change bookable tick box to be on by default

- Change "create period" to "save period" so it makes more sense when you edit it.

 

Thanks - What do you mean by the identical bookings bit?

[zag]

Thanks - What do you mean by the identical bookings bit?

 

Ahh sorry I should have explained myself better.

 

Often as IT staff we get sent an email with a large number of random bookings to make(Because the teacher can't be bothered). Our current booking system allows you to log on as "geography" for example and mass book a load of rooms without having to type in the details each time. Its a really big time saver when you have 20 bookings to make.

 

EDIT: Forget this, just wasn't using it right.

Edited November 18, 2010 by zag

[fafster]

Ahh sorry I should have explained myself better.

 

Often as IT staff we get sent an email with a large number of random bookings to make(Because the teacher can't be bothered). Our current booking system allows you to log on as "geography" for example and mass book a load of rooms without having to type in the details each time. Its a really big time saver when you have 20 bookings to make.

 

I think I know what you mean. For example: Have one form to fill in, and then a load of location, period and date fields underneath. That would definitely be handy.

[zag]

I think I know what you mean. For example: Have one form to fill in, and then a load of location, period and date fields underneath. That would definitely be handy.

 

Yes no worries, I had a private message convo with Hightower about it and its fine as it is. I just wasn't understanding it correctly