Simple Conference Room Scheduling

Schedulething is a powerful tool for any kind of online booking. It makes the most complex reservations easy - even those that require the availability of multiple resources. This post, however, will focus on a simple but common use of Schedulething: scheduling meeting rooms in your workplace or facility.

Scheduling the conference room at your office is a very common task, but often one that requires picking up the phone or flipping through a book. A lot of businesses use Microsoft Exchange server for this purpose, but thats usually accessible only by people on the network, so it’s impossible for guests to make the reservation, and it’s probably not accessible when you’re outside the office.

Room reservations are pretty simple in ScheduleThing because they typically involve only one resource - the room itself. To set up a conference room booking site in ScheduleThing, there are just a few simple steps:

1. Sign up for a free account. It only takes a few seconds and it doesn’t require a credit card.
2. Create a resource called ‘Conference Room’ (or a more descriptive label, if you prefer). Click the Resources tab, then enter your label in the Add New Resource box on the right. You can add a description if you like, but that’s not required. You can set the hours availability for the conference room itself. By default, the hours will be 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday, but you can change it to match your office hours.
3. Create a Reservation Type called ‘Conference Room Meeting’. Click on theReservation Types Tab, then click New Reservation Type. Decide how long you want to allow the room to be booked for. 10 minutes at a time? An hour at a time? I recommend choosing the shortest possible time. You can set the maximum number of timeslots a user can book in a single reservation, so users can easily choose several consecutive time slots on your booking site if you let them. You’ll be asked which resources are required for this Reservation Type. If you’re a new user, you’ll only have one resource to choose, ‘Conference Room’. Check next to your conference room in the Required Resources box. It’s a required resource because it MUST be available in order for someone to book it (I’ll explain optional resource lists later). Save the Reservation Type and that’s it!

Your reservation types instantly appear as an option on your booking site! Best of all, these types of simple reservations are free! A free ScheduleThing account allows you to have two resources and a reservation type, so you won’t even need to get budget approval to set up your own online reservation system.

Here’s a great example of simple conference room scheduling in action at a local business center and law firm. http://pinnaclebuilding.schedulething.com

One more tip: if you want to restrict who can reserve the room, you can password-protect your booking site. Simply enter a Scheduling Password on theSettings tab!

My next post will cover adding another resource to the mix, like a projector or videoconferencing device. Happy scheduling!