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Introduction

This document is to detail for existing users of the CentralAZ Room Management plugin the places to review prior to and after installing the BEMA Room Management plugin.

Installation

Install on a Test Server

This update will break your installation due to changes to the approval process. We highly recommend installing the plugin on a test server so that you can review any changes and address any bugs that may come up.

Install during downtime

The migrations will copy any existing reservations over to the new BEMA tables. This may cause migrations to run for 30 minutes or more. Because of this, we recommend installing after hours if you’re an existing customer.

Remove the CentralAz DLL

If the plugin has not already done so, make sure that com.centralaz.RoomManagement.DLL is removed from your server’s BIN folder.

Migration Issues

We’ve heavily tested the migrations involved on multiple environments with the CentralAZ plugin installed, but it’s hard to catch every bug. If you encounter a migration error, submit an issue on our Issues page.

Custom Code

If you have any custom sql, lava, or c# code that touches Room Management, be sure to review and update it to reflect the new tables and approval states.

New Features

Below is a short list of the new features included in Version 2.0. For a longer list or more detailed information on each feature, review the updated documentation

Approval System

Initial Approval Group

We’ve added an Initial Approval Group to the process that can approve or deny reservations before approvals are sent to location / resource specific Special Approval Groups

Override Approval Group

Formerly the Super Admin Group, we’ve renamed this to add additional clarity to it’s purpose: To override the approval process and force an approval for reservations. Only to be used for emergencies

Approval States

We’ve modified and expanded the approval states available to users. The new ones are listed below:

• Draft

• Pending Initial Approval

• Pending Special Approval

• Pending Final Approval

• Approved

• Changes Needed

• Denied

• Cancelled

Approval Process

New in 2.0, the Approval Process is managed by a workflow called Approval Process instead of the old Room Reservation Approval Notification one. This new workflow manages all the approval steps that used to be locked behind the service layer of the plugin, to allow for further customization of your individual approval process. This new workflow also no longer requires the execute lava command, so users are free to disable it in their global attributes.

If you’ve customized the Room Reservation Approval Notification workflow type in the past, we recommend creating a copy of this workflow type and applying your changes to that. This workflow type only needs to be set up to a Reservation Status Changed trigger. With the new Draft approval state, a Reservation Created trigger is no longer needed.

Special Approval Notification

New in 2.0, the Approval Process workflow will now launch a Special Approval Notification workflow for every resource and location that needs to be approved. This used to be managed behind the scenes by the plugin and the Notification Email configured on the reservation type, but is now managed in a workflow for you to further customize how you want special approval to work.

If you’ve created a custom email template to use for the Special Approval Notification email in the past, you’ll need to create a copy of this workflow type add update it with your changes. Don’t forget to update your main Approval Process workflow to point to the new one!

(Optional) Post-Approval Modification Process