Jan 23, 2018

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 campuses or neighbouring schools.  Each campus / school will have their own Sobs subscription, however the information is distinctly separate unless a relationship is defined.  As the Sobs administrator of your campus / school you will define the other school that will be allowed to access your resources.  Allowing another campus / school to access your resources does not assume that you can therefore access theirs – for a two way relationship each campus / school must define the relationship allowing access from the other.

Defining this relationship does not actually do much in itself, the other campus / school can still not see any of your resources or make any bookings so you can relax.

To allow another campus / school to access your resources:

1. Go to the ‘School Settings’ page and the ‘RB’ tab
2. Scroll down to the option ‘External access’ and click the ‘Add school’ link
3. Use the Postcode search to select the external campus / school and click the ‘Save’ button

Sharing a resource

You may be aware of Sobs ability to define restrictions about who can book certain resources.  If so, you are aware that in general you don’t actually have to configure any special rules, by default everybody has access to everything.  That is partly true.  When a resource is defined the system actually creates a restriction rule that allows any staff member at your school to book this resource.  This also means that staff from other schools are unable to book your resources.  Even after defining a relationship staff at the other campus / school will not have any access to your resources.

To share a resource to staff at another campus / school you must configure the restrictions to allow this.

1. Go to the ‘Resources’ page on the Configuration menu
2. Click the category description to manage the resources
3. Click the ‘Edit’ link for the resource you wish to share
4. Scroll down to the ‘Restricted’ option and ensure the checkbox is checked, then click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page
5. You should now see a ‘Configure’ link in the restricted column for this resource
6. Click the ‘Confgure’ link for this resource
7. The default entry is to ALLOW access to * (all-staff) at your school (blank means your school)
8. Click the ‘Add-rule’ link to add a new rule
9. Check the ‘ALLOW’ radio button to define a rule that will allow access
10. Select the other campus / school from the first selection box – this will automatically update the list in the second selection box
11. You may leave the second selection box defined as ” — All staff — ” as this will allow all staff members at the other campus / school to use this rule
12. Click the ‘Save’ button

For a resource controlled by restrictions, Sobs will first look for a rule defining the logged in staff member.  If found it will then act upon this to either Allow or Deny access. If no rule is found for the user then the system will look for a generic rule for ‘All staff’ at that staff members campus / school and if found it will act upon this to either Allow or Deny access.  If no rule is found then no access is assumed.

Accessing a shared resource

For staff at the external campus / school who have access to shared resource, this resource will appear as an ‘External’ resource at the end of the category list (in the resource menu in the left hand bar).  The staff member will be able to view the current bookings for this resource and make bookings within normal limits.

Staff always book for their local timetable

Between two campuses or schools it is likely that there will be different timetables, periods starting and finishing at different times.  This can cause problems for a shared resource as one class may be wanting to book the resource from 10:15am, whereas the current class may not finish until 10:25am.  For the purposes of booking shared resources the staff member making the booking will always be doing so based on their own timetable.

When they view current bookings for the shared resource any overlapping period will appear as booked.  For example, Alan wants to book for Period 3 at his campus / school, which is defined as 11:00am to 11:45am.  The shared resource he is wanting to book must be available for this entire time frame.  If the campus / school owning the resource has a Period 4 leading up to 11:30am and a Period 5 from 11:30am then the resource will need to be available for both of these periods to enable Alan to make his booking.

External bookings identified

You can easily identify an external booking, it has an external booking icon displayed next to the text.