The Reservation Module

Groups, objects and reservations

An object is reserved using a reservation object. This object can be a room, some equipment, or something else. To keep it generic it is called a reservation object. This object has the following attributes within kOOL; a name, description and optionally a colour.

A reservation object may be reserved at a particular date and time. Also stored with the reservation are the name and contact details of the person reserving it.

If extra control over the reservation objects is required, they can be set to have changes moderated. Reservations to a moderated object are not applied immediately, a "moderator", (e.g. the pastor) must first approve the reservation. When a reservation of a moderated object is made, an email may be sent to the moderators. Also, the moderators will all see the number of open moderated reservations on the front module under "Reservations", or in the "Moderation" submenu of the reservation module. Reservations which require moderation are still shown in the calendar view. There is more information about reservations below.

Since a large number of reservation objects can accumulate very quickly, authorisations are not assigned to the actual object. Instead objects are combined into groups. For example, all meeting rooms could be combined into the "Meeting room" group, or all equipment such as projector, camera, etc. could be grouped into a "Multimedia" group. This allows permissions to be assigned to logins at the group level. Different groups may have different moderators.

Linked objects

A reservation object ("Object A") can be linked to other objects ("objects"). This means that a reservation for "object A" also blocks the reservation for "objects". For example, if there is a building with several rooms. An object may be created for each room, to allow an individual room to be booked. In addition, the building itself could be created as an object, which contains all the rooms as linked objects, to allow the building to be booked. This concept can also be used for rooms with removable partitions.

The object which contains linked objects is a reservation object in its own right. Therefore permissions must be defined for this object, e.g. whether it is to be moderated etc.

In the list view of the reservation objects, the number of linked objects appears in brackets after the object name. When creating a reservation, the list of linked objects appears in the description of the object, as a sub-menu.

Permissions

Each user may be assigned one of four authorisation stages for each reservation group:

• View: Reservations of this group may be viewed, however no new reservations may be requested nor may existing ones be edited.
• New: New reservations can be added or requested for moderated objects. You may edit or delete your own reservations when logged in or with the correct reservation codes.
• Edit: All reservations of this group may be edited and also deleted. Moderated objects can be reserved without confirmation from a moderator.
• Moderate: In addition to the permissions listed above, reservation requests on moderated objects may be accepted or rejected.

Moderation

A reservation object may be moderated. The moderation options "Yes" and "Yes: E-Mail" are the same, except that after a reservation is requested on an object with the latter option set, an email is sent to all moderators of the object being reserved.

Once a reservation is accepted or rejected, an email may be sent to the user who requested it, so they are informed about the decision. A form email is sent whose text may be modified if necessary.

A user with authorisation stage 3 or above may reserve objects without the need for moderation. They can also reserve objects which are not moderated.

Users who are logged in can see their own requests awaiting moderation and may delete them.

Calendar View

Creating and editing reservations

The procedure differs depending upon the user's permissions:

Authorisation Stage 2 "new": New reservations for unmoderated objects can be created immediately. For moderated objects a moderator must confirm the reservation. Once created, reservations can be edited or deleted only if the correct code is entered for this reservation. Alternatively, a user who is logged in and has authorisation stage 2 may edit or delete their own reservations without the code.

Stage 3 "Editing": All reservations may be created as well as edited or deleted. Reservations for moderation may not be accepted or rejected.

A user may reserve several objects at once, so the contact details and purpose only need to be entered once. This option is not available for the guest user, but it may be activated with a setting (See below).

Repeated reservations - series

When creating a new reservation, it is possible to define it to be repeated. The repetition can be defined in various ways. These reservations are created together in a series and may be edited or deleted later as a series.

While editing or deleting a reservation in a series, it is necessary to choose whether the modifications apply to the particular date being changed, or to the entire series.

Filter

• Show all reservations from the current month (i.e. do not show reservations from past months). This is the default setting.
• Show reservations during the next summer holiday (July and August).

A user with athorisation stage 4 (Moderator) can store a filter as global. This means that users of kOOL who may only create, but not edit reservations (Up to authorisation stage 2) may only see reservations within the defined period.

Settings

Settings for current user

• Default view: Select the view you'd like to get to upon clicking "reservations" in the main navigation.
• List: Number of reservations per page:
• Number of months in year view:
• start of day in weekly calendar: First hour to be displayed in weekly PDF export.
• end of day in weekly calendar: Last hour to be displayed in weekly PDF export.
• Monthly calendar: Use this as title: Choose the title for the reservations in the calendar: Object, Purpose or Requester name
• Maximum number of characters used for title in monthly calendar: The reservation title will be truncated to this number of characters on the calendar screen. Titles longer than the width of the day will continue on second line.
• Highlight Sundays in list view: Select this option to make the events that appear on a Sunday stand out in the list view.
• Summarise reservations for an event: If there are many reservations for a particular event, the view, particularly in the weekly calendar, can become cluttered. The reservations for a particular event are combined on the calendar if this option is selected. This option can be defined for individual event groups if the "Combine reservations" option is set.
• Show times in the PDF calendar: The monthly calendar when exported as PDF may show the date and time, or just the date. If the time is not shown, there is more space available to display the title.
• Show Purpose in the PDF calendar: If set to yes, the purpose of the reservation is included on a second line in the calendar PDF export.
• Week calendar (PDF) starts with this day:
• Number of days for week calendar (PDF):
• Receive confirmation email for your own reservations: Set to yes to receive an email for all your reservations.
• Receive confirmation email for reservations of level 4 users: If a user with access level 4 or higher stores a reservation for a moderated object it will be stored without moderation. If this option is set and you are a moderator for this object, you will receive an information email.
• iCal export: Show events in the past: Here you may choose how far back reservations will be included in the iCal export. Defaults to 0, which means only future reservations will be exported.

Global settings (access level 4)

• Mandatory fields for new reservations: Select the fields which a user is compelled to fill out when creating a new reservation.
• For each reservation requested, send an Email to: List one or more (Comma separated) E-Mail addresses, which should receive a confirmation email for each reservation that is created. These are all unmoderated reservations in addition to all accepted moderated reservations.
• Show name and email for guest: It is possible to hide the personal data for a reservation when viewed by the guest account. So name and email address of a reservation are only shown for users logged in to kOOL.
• Guest may reserve multiple objects: A user who is logged in may select several objects together to be reserved. This option, when selected, also allows the guest user to do this.

Import reservations to Sunbird, iCal or Outlook

The reservations in the kOOL database can be imported into a calendar program using an iCal file. All reservations defined in kOOL, starting from today are published. If you only wish to publish certain reservations items, it is possible to define a preset in kOOL, called "ical" which contains the required reservations items. This is used to filter the reservations exported to iCal.

In order to download the iCal file, you must log in with your kOOL Login. If you cancel the password dialogue or enter a wrong password, only the publicly viewable reservations are exported, i.e. those which you would see in kOOL, without being logged in. The URL for downloading the iCal file is:

http:// YOUR.KOOL.DOMAIN/resical (e.g. http:// kool.church.org/resical)

In order to access the public reservations only without authentication the following URL may be used:

http:// YOUR.KOOL.DOMAIN/resical/?ko_guest (e.g. http:// kool.church.org/resical/?ko_guest)

Older versions of outlook do not support iCal very well. It is best to use Outlook 2003 or even better, Outlook 2007. There is a plugin for use with Outlook 2003, which simplifies the administration of remote calendars: remotecalendars.sourceforge.net

Further information on iCal may be found on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar