Jan 23, 2018

The public display of room and resource booking information is dynamic and time appropriate.  You can use this, for example, outside a library or at the entrance to a number of computer labs or meeting rooms can be found.  The purpose is to show time critical information about what bookings exist for these shared areas, […]

Writing reports is fairly straight forward, however there are times when staff find it difficult and they need some help.  Rather than writing more manuals with long and tedious descriptions it is easier to simply look at the user’s report and work out what they are doing wrong.  To do this we implemented an option […]

Where you school has multiple campuses, or where a neighbouring school is also using Sobs you can configure this application to share certain resources, allowing them to be bookable by staff at the remote site. Identifying your campuses or neighbouring schools Before any sharing takes place you are required to define a relationship between the […]

You may define an additional text field that is displayed on the booking form. Currently Sobs includes a ‘Reason’ field for staff to record the reason for a booking.  This could be a class, a subject, or both, or something altogether different.  The reason field can also be left blank.  We don’t force the staff […]

There are times where booking a resource is just the beginning of a process that often involves a number of other details being required.  For example when a staff member books a library space the library will have additional questions about whether a T/L is required or will A/V resources be needed.  How many seats […]

Files can be attached to bookings.  You can add a single file to a booking or multiple files.  Originally the purpose of this feature was to attach risk assessment reports to science lab lessons.  However you can add files to bookings for multiple purposes.  They could be lesson plans, music or video files to be […]

The approval process is designed to require a booking to be passed by an appropriately authorised staff member for approval.  This staff member has the power to approve or cancel any booking for specific resources. The Resource Manager For a staff member to approve bookings they must have the security of a Resource Manager (or […]

A description of the process that Sobs uses for approvals Selection for approval processing Firstly, only selected resources will use the approval process.  The default in Sobs is that no approval is necessary, however if approvals has been enabled for a resource then all booking requests will initiate the approval process, with the exception of […]

Sometimes you may need to make a resource appear in two different categories.  For example, a computer lab may by part of the computer labs category but also a member of a category for rooms with IWBs or Audio/Visual capabilities. Overview Create the resource as normal in the first category (either). In the alternative category […]

There are a number of options with regard to time constraints on bookings: Limit to how far ahead a user can book a resource Force bookings to be made a certain time in advance Booking ahead a number of days This option allows the manager to configure how far in advance a staff member will […]

One of the questions we receive from a number of schools is how to stop teachers booking multiple rooms in a single period – surely they can only be in one place at a time. Our first question was to ask whether we do want to restrict a teacher to booking a single room, and […]

Time tabling applications are used within most schools to organise a schedule of classes, teachers and rooms.  There is an overlap between the time tabling application and our Room and Resource booking application, where some rooms may have scheduled classes and are therefore not available for general booking.  To support this we have developed a […]

There is a procedure for importing data from BookIt, however it is not designed for repeat use but an ad-hoc process. Import Steps In the ‘School settings’ page click on the ‘RB’ tab.  Click the ‘Edit’ button and scroll to the bottom, check the option for ‘Import from BookIt’ and then ‘Save’. (You should uncheck any […]

There are a number of ways of deleting bookings, depending on your available security. Delete a Single Booking To delete a single booking click on the booking in the calendar as though you are going to edit the booking.  When the edit screen is displayed you will find a ‘Delete’ button in the bottom right […]

Generally when a repeat booking is created the system will automatically remember the bookings and displays a repeat icon on the calendar display.  However, for some schools when their bookings are imported the repeat option is not available and individual bookings are generated.  Sobs can now attempt to identify a group of repeat bookings and […]

Firstly we should stress that SOBS is firstly a booking system and secondly an issue/return system.  This option will not have all of the functionality of a library system, in fact it is focused very much around having a booking in place before an item is issued. Purpose The purpose of the Issue/Return system is […]

When we originally designed the Room and Resource Booking system we wanted to keep the information and requirements flexible, however over time we are accepting there are times when we do want to make some information mandatory. The Reason Field (Since 2.1c) We now have an option to ensure the Reason field contains some (any) […]

There are a number of different methods of notification that we will try and explain in this article so you can choose the one that is right for you. Staff notification of today’s bookings Staff can select a ‘Notify-daily’ option on their profile.  When checked they will receive an email each morning notifying them of […]

In most instances the school rooms and resources will be booked using the standard timetable periods.  There are however instances when the booking of a resource benefits from using standard time-based schedule, ie booking specific hours or half-hourly slots. Configuring a time-based booking schedule Time-based booking schedules can only be configured for categories, they can’t […]

We were recently asked if there were any generic help documents that could be provided to staff.  We thought this was a good idea so we created an article on how to book a room or resource.  If you think this is useful and would like more articles that can be used by staff please […]

If this is your first time using Sobs Room and Resource Booking then this is the article for you.  We will try and step through the process and explain the various stages of configuring the system for your school, however we realise that many schools will configure the system in different ways and for their […]

Many of the Sobs applications work better when you configure your school calendar information.  The following should help you setup the calendar for your school. Creating years, terms and holidays Click on the ‘Calendar’ link in the Configuration menu.  This will take you to a page showing the current and any future calendars.  Historical years […]

Calendar maintenance in Sobs includes a time table or plan facility for configuring period times.  This is required in the Room and Resource Booking application and is optional in the Student Attendance Register, otherwise generally not required. Plans A ‘Plan’ is the configuration of periods within any particular timetable day.  A very simple time table […]

Continuing on from the article about basic calendars, here we look at customising your calendar and school timetable to suit. Configure Plans to reflect each different Timetable day With the SOBS plans you can configure the normal cycle length for your timetable, do this in the Plan record (in Configuration | Periods).  If you school […]