Manage Bookings
Managing bookings has never been so easy. The Room Booking System contains many features which sets us apart from the rest.
Find Free Rooms Quickly
Upon booking a room, the user is shown the timetable which shows the availability of all rooms for the week ahead on one simple screen. Unlike other booking systems which have you searching each room for availability, our system will show instantly the availability of all rooms for the selected room category.
Resource Bookings
Any resource can also be booked with a room. Common resources are projectors, voting handsets, televisions and laptop trolleys. Resources are managed separately from rooms and purpose made technical accounts can manage resource bookings.
Recurring Bookings
We’ve made scheduling multiple bookings quick with Recurring Bookings. Bookings can be repeated over timeslots, days or weeks from one simple screen. Should the room be unavailable on any recurrence, an alternative can be chosen.
Infinite Bookings
You can have as many bookings as you wish with the Room Booking System. We don't believe in charging per booking or depending on how many bookings you make.
Manage When Bookings Can Be Made
Administrators can control multiple limits on when users can make bookings. This is useful to control usage limits per user efficiently. Current Booking Limits include a specified number of weeks in advance, a specific date limit and disallowing bookings for 24/48hrs for preparation purposes.
Printable Booking Sheets
Sometimes you wish to have a physical print of bookings to display outside each room. The Print Bookings feature on the administration panel allows you to select which rooms to print booking sheets for.
Authorise Bookings
For total control over bookings, the system can add every new booking as a pending booking. These bookings must be confirmed by an administrator before they are authorised.
One Off Timetable Exceptions
Exceptions to the timetable stored in the system can be created to allow a booking at a specific time when there would normally be a class scheduled. This flexibility allows you to accommodate temporary changes without changing the timetable.
Booking Details
Up to five fields of user inputted data can be entered with a booking. Administrators can rename the booking details and choose to make them mandatory. This is useful to find out why each room is being booked or obtain certain required information with each booking.
Bookings In Your Room
Normally a member of staff resides in a room which can be booked out, “their” room. The Bookings in Your Room feature notifies the member of staff to vacate the room when booked via email. Staff can view all bookings made in their room.
Transfer Bookings
Suppose you require a room which has been booked by another user. With Transfer Bookings, you can send an email to the user with the original booking directly from the system. If the other user agrees, the booking is transferred to your account.
Email Notifications
Managed by the administrator, details of bookings can be emailed to the user who created the booking and/or the user who is assigned to the room. Emails can also be sent to the user and/or room owner when bookings are deleted.
Timetable Features
What makes our system ideal for schools are the specifically designed features to accommodate school timetables.
Single and Bi-Weekly Timetables
With a system designed specifically for schools, we understand that schools use different timetable types. The Room Booking System fully supports the different timetable enabling the system to run itself with little maintenance. Organisations other than schools would use a Single Weekly timetable.
Stored Class Timetable
The Room Booking System stores details of when classes are scheduled in rooms. These bookings act permanently therefore rooms can only be booked when free of classes. Changing the timetable is as simple as ticking a checkbox relating to the correct day/timeslot.
Unlimited Timeslots
What sets us apart is the Room Booking System runs on set timeslots, ideal for schools. There can be an unlimited number of timeslots per day and are renamed accordingly. For example: “Period 1”, “Break” or “After School”. For organisations other than schools: “9 - 10am”, “1.30 – 2.30pm”, etc.
Term Dates Stored (Bi-Weekly)
This specific feature was developed exclusively for schools running bi-weekly timetables. The administrator enters date ranges when the school is open specifying the starting week of the term – Week A or Week B. Any holiday is automatically greyed out stopping staff booking during these times.
Intelligent Week Selection (Bi-Weekly)
The Room Booking System will automatically rotate between Week A and Week B in bi-weekly timetables without you manually having to define each week. The Term Dates are used to select the correct timetable week.
Renaming Weeks (Bi-Weekly)
Administrators are able to rename Week A and Week B to the terminology used within your school, for example: Red Week and Blue Week; Week 1 and Week 2; etc.
Import Timetable from MIS Systems
When multiple changes to the timetable are required, importing is often the quickest. We can import timetable data from a variety of management information systems – all we require is a list of classes.
Export Data
Should you wish to run reports on the data stored in the Room Booking System, a Backup Data function exists which exports all data to a CSV file which can be read by many applications.
Unlimited Rooms
The Room Booking System supports an unlimited number of rooms. Currently we have systems with around 140 rooms.
Room Categories
Organising rooms into categories is essential when dealing with different room types. For example, ICT Rooms, Meeting Rooms and General Classrooms could all be entered on the system. Organising rooms into categories allows staff to search the availability of just one room type at a time.
Room Management
The Room Booking System can store useful information on each room which staff can access. Also included is the room rating which conveniently places the best rated room first when staff make a booking ensuring the best possible room is selected.
Control System Status
Administrators have complete control over the system and with one click are able to disable the whole system and display a message to users. The User Sign Up feature can also be disabled to stop new sign ups.
Icon Based Interface
Room Booking System Version 2.0 was redesigned from ground up to include a modern, icon based interface. This friendly interface helps users start using the system quickly.
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User Accounts
Version 2 is all about simplicity and usability and hence was designed with users in mind.
Individual User Accounts
Every member of staff has their own account to simplify booking a room. Details of the user are recorded automatically when bookings are made. Users can manage and delete their own bookings only – they cannot delete someone else’s booking.
Tech Accounts to Manage Resources
Technician Accounts display any resources booked by staff. This allows technical members of staff to arrange, for example, video projectors to be taken to the correct room. Allowing technical staff to plan ahead increases efficiency.
Administration Account Levels
Administrator accounts can have different access rights within the system. The “Full” account can access all features; the “Manage Bookings” account can view, edit and delete bookings while the “View Bookings” account can just view bookings only.
Bulk Import Users
To get up and running even quicker, we can bulk import users onto the system setting a default password for all accounts. Upon their first login, users are prompted to change their password.
Unlimited Accounts
We have no usage limits on all types of accounts. We charge the same price no matter how many users you have on the system.
Password Reminder
If a user forgets their login details, rather than bugging the administrator, the secure automated password reminder can email login details to the email address stored under the user’s account.
User Oriented Video Tutorials
Although the Room Booking System is very intuitive, some users like a helping hand. The user section features a video tutorial on how to book a room. The helpful guide demonstrates all features along the short booking process highlighting where to click and when.
Helpful User Overview Homepage
Upon login, users are presented with the User Overview. This homepage provides a snapshot of the complete system in an easy and intuitive format. Five upcoming bookings are shown and friendly icons link to the rest of the system.
Data Privacy & Security
Keeping your data safe and secure is a top priority. High performance servers and backup solutions from top data centres achieve this.
No Installation with a Hosted Solution
Available as a fully hosted and maintained solution, there is no set up required with the Room Booking System. Any internet connected computer with a modern web browser can access the system. We can perform updates and maintenance to ensure the system runs efficiently.
UK Based Data Centre
The Room Booking System is hosted on fast UK based servers in the BlueSquare Data Centre in Maidenhead, near London. The high performance server ensures the system loads quickly whilst the modern data centre provides multiple redundant connections to the internet.
Daily Backup to the USA
We have taken measures to ensure backups are available in the unlikely event of a server failure. All data is backed up daily to a server in the USA securing data against catastrophic data centre failures.
Industry Standard Database
The Room Booking System utilises Microsoft SQL Server 2005, an industry standard database to ensure data is kept secure, is scalable and can be accessed quickly.
Professionally Managed Servers
We’re software developers, not system administrators or security analysis. That’s why we have a professional firm who manage the server for us ensuring the server is kept in optimal condition, ensuring us an uptime of 99.95%.
Email Based Support
Prompt email based support is available free. We are happy to assist with setting up the system or any issues which you may have. We do our best to response within 24 hours however the vast majority are answered in just a few hours.
Minimal Data Stored
We only store data relevant to room bookings for use in the Room Booking System. We will never sell data to 3rd parties.
Statistics and Reports
Modern interactive charts help you visualise data stored in the Room Booking System.
Dynamic Date Regions
Graphs are automatically updated with the latest data every time they are displayed. Useful date filtering exists on all graphs helping you to monitor usage effectively.
View Daily Booking Count
The interactive line graph showing the total number of bookings per day is a very useful tool. This graph can be zoomed in by dragging and selected the date range on the graph. The trend of when most bookings are made can be seen.
Easily Monitor Room Usage
A colourful pie chart illustrates the percentage usage of all rooms allowing you to identify the most popular rooms.
Amount of Bookings Made by Users
From a glance at a bar chart, administrators can see if any users are making too many bookings. This chart features all users with a count of the number of bookings within the specified time period.
Analyze Timeslot Popularity
A pie chart shows the popularity of each timeslot. This is useful when constructing the school’s timetable or to indentify when more rooms need to be made available.
Identify Day Popularity
This pie chart illustrates which days of the week are most popular – do more staff use ICT Rooms on a Friday? |