By default, Stacks treats all bookings as ‘approved’ unless expressly declined by a staff member. As such, the user will receive a confirmation email, and the room time slot will no longer appear as available immediately upon the user clicking Book Room. Any Bookings not yet approved or declined will be set as Pending.

To explicitly approve or decline a booking:

1. Navigate to the Room Booking tile on your dashboard

2. Click Approve or Decline to the right of the Booking

   • This will remove the ‘Pending’ status from the Booking

   • IF the Booking is declined, the user will be notified with a cancellation email

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard
2. Click Edit to the right of the Booking

3. Edit the Booking as necessary

4. Click 'SAVE' to apply the edits

• The owner of the Booking will not be automatically notified of these changes

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard
2. Click Delete to the right of the Booking
3. ​​​​​​IF the Booking is deleted, the reserved time will once again be available.

4. Click 'DELETE' to confirm

WARNING: This action should be taken with caution as it will both remove the booking from the list entirely and act as a cancellation, but will not notify user

Rooms may be booked by users or staff members

Book a Room as a User

1. Click on the 'Bookings' icon in the top-right corner of the website header

   • If this icon is not visible, you can enable it by navigating to the Systems Configuration tile and opening the Site Configuration tile. Click on the Header Items tab to toggle on the header icons.

• The user does not need to be logged in to book a room

• By default, all Rooms will be displayed and sorted by their respective Groups, regardless of availability

2. To search for an available room, use the filters

3. Click 'Search for Availability' to filter the list

• This will display only those rooms available on the specified date

4. Click on a Room in the list

• Any available booking times will be displayed

5. Click on a time slot from the list

6. At a minimum, provide:

• Contact name
• Contact phone
• Email
• Duration
• Response to the Math question

Optional

• Room Booking Description
• Occupant count

7. Click 'Book Room'

• The user will receive a confirmation on their screen as well as a confirmation email

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard
2. Click on the 'Bookings' tile
3. Click 'ADD BOOKING'
4. Click User as the booking type

5. When creating the Booking, provide:

Booking Owner

• This should be the staff member who created, or will be responsible for managing this Booking
• Contact name
• Contact phone
• Email
• Duration
• Booking date and time
• Space

6. Optional

• Room Booking Description
• Occupant count

7. Click 'Book Room'

Rooms can be booked by staff for internal programs & events or on behalf of a patron. 

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard
2. Click on the Bookings tile

3. Click 'Add Booking'

4. Choose Admin as the Booking type

5. Complete the form, including

• contact information (to determine which fields are required go to Dashboard > Room Bookings > Configuration)
• duration
• room booking description that contains important or necessary information about the booking request

• number of occupants
• address, library card number of the requester (if applicable)

• booking date and time
• and the requested space

6. Click the Book Room button.

A Room can be described as any space which might be booked by either users or administrators. When defining a Room, these spaces can be of any size and shape, such as a small communal work table or a large presentation hall.

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard
2. Click on the 'Rooms' tile
3. Click the 'ADD ROOMS' button
4. Click on the Group to which the Room belongs

5. Enter a label for the Room

• This will be displayed to users, as seen in the screenshot below

6. Select the Category which best describes the Room

• Users are able to search for Rooms based on their Category, as seen in the screenshot below

7. Enter the Room’s capacity

• How many people can the room/space hold?

8. Joined Room (Optional) - If the room you are created is part of, or connected to another room, select the name of the room here. This will allow patrons to book a joined room.
NOTE: If this is the first joined room you are creating you will need to create the other room first, then return to this setting and modify it.

9. Optional - Use the ‘Room Description’ editor to provide information about the Room

• This could include instructions for the use of the space, photos, a list of related resources, etc.

• These details can be very valuable to your users when booking a Room

10. Optional - Override the hours set by the Room’s Group in the 'Hours' section

• By default, these hours will be inherited from the Room’s Group

11. Optional - Select an Easy Form to incorporate it into the booking process for this room

• First, you must create an Easy Form

• Then you will be able to select it in the dropdown list

12. Optional - Override the minimum/maximum duration, or maximum days in advance rules set by the Room’s Group in the 'Override Rules' section

• By default, these rules will be inherited from the Room’s Group

13. Click 'SAVE ROOM'

Configure the templates for emails sent: New Bookings, Cancelled Bookings, Booking Reminders, and Booking Approvals. 

New Bookings

1. Provide the email which should appear in the ‘Sender’ field of the email in the ‘Reply Email Address’ field

2. Provide the subject of the email in the ‘Email Subject’ field

3. Optional - Edit the body of the email using any of the following parameters
   • %datetime%
   • %duration%
   • %group%
   • %room%
   • %occupancy%
   • %description%
   • %name%
   • %email%
   • %phone%

Canceled Bookings

1. Provide the email which should appear in the Sender field of the email in the ‘Reply Email Address’ field

2. Provide the subject of the email in the ‘Email Subject’ field

3. Optional - Edit the body of the email using any of the following parameters

   • %datetime%

   • %duration%

   • %group%

   • %room%

   • %occupancy%

   • %description%

   • %name%

   • %email%

   • %phone%

Booking Reminder

1. Set the number of days before which the reminder should be sent to the user

2. Set the time of day the reminder should be sent

3. Provide the email which should appear in the ‘Sender’ field of the email in the ‘Bookings Reminder Reply E-mail Address’ field

4. Provide the subject of the email in the ‘Email Subject’ field

5. Optional - Edit the body of the email using any of the following parameters

   • %datetime%

   • %duration%

   • %group%

   • %room%

   • %occupancy%

   • %description%

   • %name%

   • %email%

   • %phone%

Booking Approval

When a staff member approves a Room Booking, this email will be sent to the user who booked the room.

1. Edit the Reply Email Address
2. Edit the Email Subject
3. Edit the Body of the Email

4. Optional - Edit the body of the email using any of the following parameters:

   • %datetime%

   • %duration%

   • %group%

   • %room%

   • %occupancy%

   • %description%

   • %name%

   • %email%

   • %phone%

5. Click 'SAVE EMAIL TEMPLATES'

You can set dates during which room bookings are not permitted. 

Closed dates may be set on a Room-by-Room basis or can be applied to all of your organization’s Rooms at once. 

Example: You may choose to have rooms not available during holiday break starting December 25th.

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard

2. Click the ‘Closed Dates’ tile

3. Click 'ADD CLOSED RESERVATION'

4. Provide the description for the Closed Date in the ‘Purpose’ field

5. Check the box in the header in the ‘Spaces’ section to apply the Closed Date to all Rooms
OR Check the boxes of the Rooms to which to the Closed Date applies

6. Choose the date and time, or range of dates when the room(s) will be closed to Bookings

7. If the Closed Date will repeat regularly (eg. a room is closed to bookings on the third day of every month), check the ‘Repeating’ checkbox and provide the details

8. Click 'SAVE RESERVATION'

Groups

Groups can be used to logically group similar rooms. This can be helpful when managing many rooms (e.g. Study Rooms).

Create a Group

1. Navigate to the Room Bookings tile on your dashboard

2. Click the Group tile

3. Click ADD GROUP

4. Provide a title for the Group

   • This will not be displayed to users

5. Provide a label for the Group

• This will be used as the heading for any rooms which you add to the Group and will be displayed to users (as seen in the screenshot below)

• This makes it easier for users to find the specific room they need to book

6. Choose whether users should be able to book rooms themselves

7. Enter the default hours during which rooms in that Group may be booked

• These settings can be overwritten on a per-room basis as required

8. Set any ‘Override Rules’

These can be overwritten per room but any rules set here will establish the default behavior. These rules include:

• Minimum duration - The minimum duration for a room booking for this location. If no value is specified, the value of 15 min will be used.
• Maximum duration - The maximum duration for a room booking for this location. If no value is specified, the value of 4 hours will be used.
• Maximum days in advance - The maximum days in advance a room booking can be made for this location. If no value is specified, the value of 2 weeks will be used.

9. Click on the Rules tab to set the maximum reservations per week for any room in this Group

Categories can be used to tag rooms with a relevant label. This allows users to quickly find a Room to book (as shown in the screenshot below). Example: Tag a room with Children, Labs, Project Rooms, Study Rooms, etc. 

These Category terms mimic most of the functionality of Filter Vocabularies.

Create a Category

1. Click on the 'Categories' tile

2. Click the 'ADD TERM' button

3. Provide the name of the Category

4. Optional Provide a description of the term. This will only be displayed for administrators and not users

5. Click 'SAVE'

V 2.1.4

1. Navigate to the Configuration Tile (Dashboard > Room Bookings > Configuration)
2. Modify the settings as required. Details for each section are below.
3. Click SAVE CONFIGURATION

Display Settings

Display Hour Increments

• 1 Minute
• 5 Minute
• 10 Minute
• 15 Minute
• 30 Minute
• 60 Minute

Limit Hours

• Limit start time
  Set the time you want to be the earliest available time to book rooms.
• Limit end time
  Set the time you want to be the latest available time to book rooms.

Reservation Rules

• Set minimum duration
  Limits the minimum length of a reservation
• Set maximum duration
  Limits how long a reservation can be
• Set maximum days in advance
  Limits how far in advance a reservation can be made

Advanced Configuration

Required Fields

Check out how the Stacks Community is using Room Bookings:

• Regent College Library
• Southwest Texas Junior College Library
• Hennessey Public Library