Facility: How to set up Facility integration

If you would like Room Booking to integrate with Facility, this article takes you through the steps to set this up - either as part of the initial set up of Room Booking, or using a system that's already up and running.

Why Integrate with Facility

Facility integration allows you to automatically sync the complete timetable, rooms & term dates automatically every day. 

How does this work?

We sync your data from Facility into Room Booking on a daily basis in the early hours of the morning. This is done by using the Facility Connect API (please contact Facility direct if you need any information on the Connect API). The sync is read only, no data is written back to Facility.

Setting up Facility integration

To allow your system to connect to the Facility Connect API. you need to specify the IP addresses from which our data requests will originate in the API.xml file. This can be found in C:\Facility\ePortal\conf\Catalina\localhost on the server where Facility is installed. 

To modify the API.xml file to allow the data requests open the file in a text editor and locate the following section of xml:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="" /><br>
	

Change the contents of allow="" to a list (separated by the pipe character | ) of the required IP addresses. 

Our IP addresses are

3.11.136.51

3.11.149.57

3.11.229.108

An example configuration which allows access would look like this:   

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve" allow="127.0.0.1|3.11.136.51|3.11.149.57|3.11.229.108" /><br>
	

To verify these settings access https://localhost/API in a web browser,and ensure there are no error messages on screen. 

Please note you should also have an SSL certificate set up to ensure ePortal is accessed over HTTPS.

Once you have competed the above, send us a message confirming this via the Contact link at the top right of this page: click Contact, enter your details, then click Send.

We will run an initial sync for you to update the data into Room Booking.

Match Room/Timeslots (Existing Customers Only)

When setting up the integration for an existing system you now need to match the timeslots and rooms that have come across from Facility to those already set up on SchoolCloud Room Booking:

1. Login to Room Booking as an administrator - or if logged in already, click Home.
   
   Follow the on screen instructions to match up the rooms and timeslots that have been extracted from Facility (in the drop down boxes) to those already on your system.  
   
   If the on screen instructions don’t show, ensure that your initial sync completed correctly and that (under Manage Admins) your administrator account has permission to access System Settings.
   Please ensure that you match this information accurately, as matching Rooms and Timeslots allows us to correctly sync timetable information into existing rooms in Room Booking.
   If any bookings previously made on Room Booking clash with the timetabled information received from the sync then those bookings will be removed and the user associated with the booking will be emailed to advise them of this.  
   
   
   Existing bookings which do not clash with timetable information from the sync remain on the system. 
2. Once you have matched the rooms and timeslots the main administrator panel will appear, with the message below.Any rooms from Facility that have not been matched will be automatically created in Room Booking under Manage Resources in the resource category of 'Unassigned'. 
   This category is hidden from administrators & users when making bookings and does not count against your licence limits.If you would like the rooms to be made bookable see  What's Next below. 
3. Let us know once you have matched the rooms and timeslots and we will run an up to date sync for you to ensure all details are updated on your system.

What's Next? 

Your set up of Facility integration for Room Booking is now complete! An automatic sync from Facility will run daily for you. 

Here are some extra steps you may need to take:

1. If you are setting up your system for the first time you will need to assign categories to any rooms that you would like to be made bookable. How do I set up my rooms and make them bookable?
2. As long as your rooms have categories assigned you can check your timetable is showing correctly by going to the Calendar tab and viewing the timetable information for each room. The timetable information will be displayed in yellow.
3. If you are setting your system up for the first time you can now continue to to set up your users. Please see Users: How to add users to your system or How to Set Up Single Sign-On (SSO).