Booking System`

MunsterCycling

Hi,

I have been asked to come up with a booking system for a business and am drawing a blank.

What is needed is a calendar style layout that can be zoomed in to see individual days. There are a set number of bookable periods in a day and I would like to have them available in a drop down menu when a new appointment is requested, there also needs to be fields for: Name, Tel number , number of attendees plus a few more.

I had thought that Outlook would have been the way to go as then e-mail could be tied into the equation but my lack of expertise in all things Outlook leave me grasping at straws.

Anyone got hints or ideas?

MC

Fysh

Does this service need to be available as a webpage, or is it going to be a managed service co-ordinated by one person?

The answer to that will tell you whether you need something server-based (eg using Exchange if you want to tie it with email, etc, or possibly using MRBS if you've got the skills involved) or something a bit smaller in scale and functionality (eg an Access/OpenBase database).

Having had past experience of requests for booking or ticketing systems from non-technical staff who didn't really know what they needed, it sounds like you could use some more clarification on what's needed before you try to implement it.

For instance, it would be a good idea to have clear answers to the following:

• Is the service going to be available through a web-interface, or would an offline system managed manually by one person suffice?
• What resources (budget, skills, equipment, implementation time) are available for this project?
• What is the deadline for this project?
• What are you managing with the booking system? Ie will people book a particular piece of equipment/meeting room, or will they simply book a meeting or appointment with one or more individuals in the company?
• How many bookings/meetings per day/week/month is the system expected to cope with?
• How are these bookings/appointments currently managed?

MunsterCycling

Thanks for the reply,

Let me answer the questions you set in order:

# Is the service going to be available through a web-interface, or would an offline system managed manually by one person suffice?
Offline and by one person is fine

# What resources (budget, skills, equipment, implementation time) are available for this project?
Budget: Virtually nil, Skills: Low skilled (I had to make up signs for them), One standalone PC and a networked colour printer, One week to implement

# What is the deadline for this project?
See previous answer but could push it out another week

# What are you managing with the booking system? Ie will people book a particular piece of equipment/meeting room, or will they simply book a meeting or appointment with one or more individuals in the company?
Booking system is for a room only / time slot

# How many bookings/meetings per day/week/month is the system expected to cope with?
3 rooms with IIRC 3-4 bookings a day in two hour time slots everyday

# How are these bookings/appointments currently managed?
On paper in a booking book that was specially printed

ronkmonster

Would a basic calendar application not suffice for all these points?
I use EssentialPIM (has more than calendar) and you could setup a color coded category for each room.

There is an email client in it also, but I'm not if there any link between calendar and emails

There is a free version available and a paid pro version.

Fysh

The quickest, though most time-consuming long-term, solution would be to design a spreadsheet in Excel or OpenCalc. You can colour-code it to make it easier to interpret, and easily make changes.

A slightly more complex option would be to spend a couple of days learning how to put together a simple database and interface using Access or OpenOffice Base. These will be more useful tools, in terms of keeping themselves ticking over, but the upfront investment is higher. On the other hand, if you want to find out something like "How many meetings have been held in Room A over the last year?" for example, you can do so quite easily by querying the database, rather than having to read through all the booking sheets and adding up numbers in your head.

You could try using something like a calendaring application, but I'm not sure many of them will easily lend themselves to tracking the availability of multiple venues.

JonathanAnon

I used to use shared calendars (with Outlook and Exchange) for keeping track of who was using the board room and meeting rooms.. it worked quite well. Even if you only have Outlook on it's own, this would be fine because you dont need to share.. I would create a separate Calendar for each room and keep track of booking by creating appointment items.. You could set up mail lists where relevant..

If you only have one week, I think this is the quickest option.. If you did it up in Excel or Access, it would give you a lot of automation.. but you would need a) some Excel/Access ability and b) more time to do this...

MunsterCycling

Thanks for all the replies, can't for the life of me figure out why I didn't ask here last week.

Anybody got more to add or a different suggestion then feel free to post it up.

MC