User Guide

This is a guide for everyday users to allow them to make the most out of SchoolCloud Room Booking - whether  Logging in, using the Calendar, or creating and managing Bookings, etc. There is also a useful Glossary of Terms at the end. 

Login

Unless your organisation has set up a different route for you, you will usually log in by going to your organisation's Room Booking URL (which will be in the format https://schoolname.roombookingsystem.co.uk).

If you aren't sure which page you should use to access the system, please get in touch with your system administrator and they can confirm it for you.

Depending on your school's chosen authentication method, you might see different pages when you get to the login page. Either our default username and password box:

Or your schools' chosen single sign-on service - such as Firefly, Frog, Azure and ADFS - which display their own custom login pages, which you will already be familiar with.

Calendar

The calendar is the main way that you will interact with Room Booking. It's where you make new bookings, but also where to see what rooms/resources have been booked and (if you are a school) where you see timetabled classes, cover and closures, etc. 

Views

There are three different views that appear below the Calendar option after selecting it.

• Week View allows you to select a category, then a particular room/resource in that category via a drop down, allowing you to view all bookings in that room across a 7 day period, Monday to Sunday.
• Day View allows you to select a category, then view all rooms/resources in that category, and their bookings, on a particular day:
• Category View shows the total number of available rooms/resources in a particular category on a particular day. 
  
  Note: Within Category View, only Timeslot based categories will appear under the Categories subheading. This is because the selected interval for a Time-Based resource  may not fit into the standard period timeslot intervals.

  

Types of bookings

The calendar shows different kinds of bookings:

• Your bookings show in green to distinguish between ones made by you and others.
• 
• Closed resources show as a red box spanning their closed times with "Closed" in the title.
• Bookings made by other users show as a red box usually with the user's name in the title. The title can be configured to show a booking note in the title and, in cases where the user is a hirer, the booking title will be the user's organisation.
• Pending bookings appear on manually made bookings and will use the same colours, just more saturated than confirmed ones and contain "(Pending)" in place of the booking notes.If you are a school: 
• Timetabled Classes show as yellow boxes. On time based resources, these show the period below the class name.
• Closures can sometimes be pulled through from management systems. In such cases, they will be represented on the Calendar as a grey box with the title "Closure". In some cases, a reason may be provided below the title in the space usually reserved for booking notes.Cover can sometimes be pulled through from management systems. In such cases, they are displayed as an orange box with the class name within the booking note section.
• Resources in parts. When a resource is available in parts, you will be able to see how many resources are free and booked. This is generally seen when booking laptops, projectors etc.

Making a booking for yourself

You can add a booking by simply clicking on a slot in the which doesn't contain any bookings (see the Types of bookings section above) or that has available parts (see the Resources in parts section above). When you click the empty slot, a pop-up appears asking you to enter details about the booking you wish to add.You will always see a start and end option for your booking. You may also see other fields, these are  defined by your system administrator. Some of them may be optional, some required.

In the More Options section, you can configure advanced settings for bookings such as recurrence, booking multiple rooms, attendees, and catering items. A system administrator can toggle your access to most of these settings.

After filling in the details required, click the  Book button to add your booking.

Making a booking for someone else

If you have access to make a booking for someone else, on the calendar you will see a drop down box, between the date picker and the category list, containing a list of users.

Cases where you can't book

Depending on the permissions assigned to you, you may not be able to book a resource. This may be one of the following reasons:

• Your booking is in the past. Users are always unable to book resources in the past.
• You have read-only access to the resource.
• You tried to book a resource on a holiday.
• You tried to book a resource on the weekend.
• You tried to add a booking outwith your resource-specific booking limit.
• You are only able to book a set number of days in advance.
• You can only book the current month.
• You have tried to book a date past your allowed booking date.

You can generally tell why a resource is not bookable by checking the heading on the calendar's week view.

In day view, messages may show differently, depending on if the entire resource category is not bookable, or if just a few specific resources aren't bookable. If the entire category is not bookable, a message will show in place of the booking grid telling you why. If specific resources are not available, this will show in the column heading for that resource, as in week view. 

If the restriction is based on your user permissions, a message will pop-up giving you a reason why you cannot book.

What happens after my booking has been made?

When your booking has been added, it'll either be confirmed immediately or, if your admin has set that room/resource to only accept pending bookings, be added as a pending booking. These become confirmed bookings only after an admin, or a specified user, has confirmed them. If you have been given ownership of such a room/resource your bookings are always added as confirmed, and you can also confirm pending bookings make by other users.

Editing/deleting a booking

You can always edit or delete your own bookings. Depending on your permissions, you may be able to edit or delete other people's bookings. Both actions involve clicking the title of a booking on the calendar or by finding the booking in bookings (see below). In both cases, edit (the pencil icon) and delete (the cross icon) will appear for bookings you can modify. For deletions, a confirmation pop-up appears. For edits, you are taken to the Edit Booking page - which is the same as the More Options view you see when adding a booking.

Requesting booking transfer

In some cases you may be able to transfer a booking. Using this feature allows you to send an email to another user asking them to give you their booking. To do so, you can either:

• Go to the calendar and find the booking you wish to transfer. When you click the booking, you will be taken to the transfer booking page if you don't have access to edit or delete the booking.
• Go to bookings then find the booking you wish to transfer. Whilst hovering over the booking with your mouse cursor, you will see an envelope icon appear if you have permissions to request a transfer. Click the envelope.

Whichever way you proceed, you'll see a Transfer Booking Request page showing the following.

The user that you requested the booking from would receive an email referring to this booking. They can either delete their booking or edit the booking and assign it to you, if they have the permissions. This would be done through Room Booking as that user.

Bookings

The bookings section is used to show the manually added bookings on the system in a list. It's primary use is to edit or delete current bookings and to approve or reject bookings on resources for which you are an owner. Your allowed usage of this page will depend on your permissions. You will always see your own bookings on this list but, if you have the permissions for it, you may see others here too.

Exporting/Printing Bookings

To the left of the bookings page, you'll see an Export Bookings link and a Print Bookings link. Whatever you are viewing at the time can be exported into a CSV file (a spreadsheet file) or printed out for use outside of the system.

Getting a calendar feed for your bookings

In the Bookings page, it is possible to get a hold of a calendar feed which you can use in applications like Outlook to automatically see all of your own bookings. This allows your bookings to be much more accessible. Simply click the Subscribe to Feed link to open the link in your default calendar application. If you use a web-based calendar, right click the link then click Copy link address. You can paste this link anywhere that accepts "webcal" links.

Approving/Rejecting pending bookings

If you happen to be a resource owner, you will see a Your Resources section whilst on the Bookings page. This is where you can approve or reject pending bookings if you have permissions to do so.

Simply tick the Activate box next to the bookings you wish to activate then click Activate Bookings. Alternatively, if you wish to delete the booking, simply hover over it with your mouse cursor then click the delete button (red cross). This will only appear if you have permissions to do so.

Statistics

This section allows you to see general statistics for the rooms you have access to - choose a specific date range and you'll see the various reports there update depending on the dates selected.

Helpdesk

Depending on your permissions, you may have access to the Helpdesk section. This allows you to raise support tickets to various people at your school or business. You might, for example, assign a ticket to your IT team using this page. You can create a ticket by completing the Add New Ticket form:

The drop down menu for Department will contain a list of department as configured by the system administrator. You can assign different priorities and risks to the request and once your ticket has been created the relevant department will be contacted. You will be able to see this and see your other existing tickets (if any) under the Add New Ticket form. 

You can click the ticket number or subject to view and edit that ticket. From here, you can add new posts to and see existing posts on the outstanding ticket.

Glossary of Terms

In the guide these terms are be highlighted in bold.

• Dashboard
  As a user, your  dashboard is found when you log into the system and go to the Calendar tab. You might also refer to this as the home page.
• System Administrators
  A system administrator is someone who manages Room Booking at a base level. They might be the person who set it up to begin with. Usually, we find that the IT team manages the system but it's not unheard of for there to be multiple administrators on the system. If something goes wrong on the system, they will generally be the ones who can give you answers so you should make yourself familiar with who those people are. If you aren't sure who this would be, you should ask your colleagues in the first instance. If you still can't find out who it is, contact SchoolCloud directly on 0333 344 3403.
• Authentication Methods
  In many cases, you might be used to logging into services using a username and password specific to the service. This is the case by default on Room Booking but it's possible for us to use your computer's login credentials to allow your login as well. If you aren't sure on how this works, please contact your  system administrator.
• Timetables
  The system is primarily designed for schools and therefore you'll notice a lot of our functionality is derived from school timetables (e.g.  timeslots,classes). If you are reading this as a user not working in an environment recognising them, you shouldn't be exposed to this term on the system but you'll still see references to timeslots. Timetables, in short, are schedules usually created by a system administrator which result in yellow boxes (classes), grey boxes (closures) and orange boxes (cover) appearing on the calendar. These timetabled bookings always take precedence over the manually made bookings on the system. If you ever get an email regarding deletion of a booking due to a timetable change, it will be that one of these timetabled bookings has overwritten your booking.
• Timeslots
  Timeslots are synonymous with periods, a term most school users will be familiar with. These are just arbitrary blocks of time which can be booked instead of the times. These can sometimes be configured to be assigned to a specific resource category. If there's one you expect to see which isn't showing, please contact your  system administrator.
• Timeslot-based Bookings
  A booking method which relies on the  timeslots available to the resource category.
• Time-based Bookings
  A booking method which uses times. In such cases, you could book a room from 09:00 - 10:00 as long as the resource is open within those hours. The opening times are configured by the  system administrator and are represented on the calendar as red boxes with "Closed" in the title.
• Resource Category
  Also referred to in shortform as  categories, these are groups of resources. These groups all follow the same booking format and so must either use timeslot-based bookings or time-based bookings.
• Pending bookings
  A booking state which refers to a "pencilled in" booking. Such bookings must be approved or denied by a  system administrator or resource owner. Pending bookings are more saturated than confirmed ones and contain "(Pending)" in place of the booking notes.
• Resource owner
  A user account which has advanced privileges for specific resources.  Resource owners can choose to approve or deny a booking made by other users.
• Booking notes
  Extra information such as textual fields or drop down boxes assigned to resources. These are filled out when you add a new booking or edit and existing one.
• Attendees
  Contact information assigned to bookings for non-users of the system. Attendees are updated when a booking is added, deleted or edited.
• Catering items
  Not dissimilar to  Booking Notes, these are extra information assigned to resources. These are configured when adding a new booking to the calendar. Catering items notify the catering contact which is configured by your system administrator.