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Introduction

So, you’ve gotten the room management plugin. It looks awesome and will help your organization, but you’re a little bit freaked out over all the new stuff. Not to worry, here is a quick rundown of the new stuff pieces that you’ll have access to.

Terminology

Reservations

A Reservation is what ties everything in this plugin together. The Reservation stores what date and time you are setting aside for your event, how many are attending, and any Locations or Resources that you’re reserving for those times.

Locations

When we reserve things for an event we tend to reserve two types of things: rooms and objects. In this plugin, we represent that with Locations and Resources. A Location is a room, along with anything inside that room that cannot be moved, such as wall/ceiling mounted projectors or whiteboards. Since Rock already uses Locations to reflect your organization’s physical room structure for check-in, we use Locations as well. That way you won’t need to enter your room data into Rock a second time. Locations now also have a variety of Layouts that you can configure and select.

Resources

Unlike a Location, a Resource is something that can typically be moved from room to room. Tables or chairs are good examples of Resources. They also have a concept of quantity, so if you have 150 chairs, you can choose to reserve only 40 of them for an event. Unlike Locations, Resources are not already in Rock, so you’ll need to add them before you can start reserving them. There is also a way to designate a resource as “Attached” but we’ll cover that later in this guide.

Pages

Room Management - Main Page

This is the hub page of the plugin, located under Intranet | Office Information | Room Management. It provides you with an overview of the current reservations, as well as links to pages where you can manage and search through them. Much like the calendar on Rock’s external website, this calendar is a highly customizable Lava block. You can dictate whether the small calendar is shown, what filters are displayed and how, what day the week starts on, and even customize how the reservations are displayed or printed. Let’s go over some of these features below:

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1. New Reservation: This takes you to the Reservation Detail page where you can create new reservations. For more information, see the Reservation Detail Page.

2. Search Reservations: This page allows you to find specific reservations. See the Search Reservations Page for more detail.

3. Available Resources: If you have a specific time you’d like to have an event, this page allows you to find available locations or resources for it. For more information, see the Available Resources Page.

4. Admin Tools: This page contains links to the Room Management configuration pages and is only visible to people in the Room Management Administration or Rock Administration security roles.

5. Calendar: Allows you to easily select dates to view reservations for. You can choose to hide or show the calendar, as well as what day the week starts on, via block settings.

6. Filters: While the Ministry filter is the only one shown here, there are a variety of filters available for use, including resource, location, and approval status. You’re able to configure which ones are shown and how in the block settings.

7. View Mode: Here you can switch between viewing reservations for the day, week, month, or even year. While Rock will remember which mode you last used, you can set the default mode, as well as which options are available, in the block settings.

8. Reservation Views: Room Management includes the ability to switch between different views on the main page. This allows you to create, for example, a calendar view and switch between it and the default list view. Much like Printable Reports, you can configure which ones you see in the block settings and configure the views themselves on the Reservation Views page under Admin Tools. You can switch between them using the dropdown shown here. If only one option is configured to be selectable, the dropdown will be hidden, and the view defaulted to that one view.

9. My Reservation Toggle: Allows the user to switch between viewing all reservations, ones they created / are a contact for, or ones that they are part of the approval process for.

10. Printable Reports: Room Management also allows you to print PDF reports using multiple configurable templates, both ones that come out of the box or ones that you or another developer have created. These can be selected using this dropdown. You can configure which reports are selectable in the block settings, and add or modify the reports themselves on the Printable Reports page under Admin Tools.

Let’s take a closer look at the registrations when they’re displayed using the default Reservation View. To view or edit any reservation, simply click on its row.

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1. Name: The event’s name.

2. Event Time: The time the event will happen.

3. Reservation Time: The time that the locations and resources are to be reserved. It includes both the event time and setup/cleanup times.

4. Locations: The locations the reservation will use. Approved items are shown with a checkmark. Locations with Layouts tied to them will have and info circle next to them. Hovering over the circle will display a tooltip giving details about the layout.

5. Resources: Any resources that will be used, with the quantity reserved in parenthesis. Approved items are shown with a checkmark.

6. Setup: If a reservation has a setup diagram/photo, a thumbnail will appear here.

7. Status: The approval status of the request.

8. Approval Indicator: This is a visual indicator of how close the reservation is to being fully approved. When you hover or click on the indicator it will show you which group needs to approve each location or resource. The group name is a link to the group for quick access in case you want to fire off an email from Rock.

Reservation Detail Page

This page is where you can add, edit, and approve reservations. When you hit Save on a reservation, the block will churn through the locations and resources you’ve requested and alert you to any that are already booked for the times you’ve requested.

View Mode

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Edit Mode

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1. Name: The name of the event that you are reserving locations / resources for.

2. Reservation Type: The type of reservation this is for. Typically, you’ll just use the standard, but you can create and use your own like ‘Blackout’ types or ‘Maintenance’ types.

3. Schedule: The event’s schedule. Whenever this or the setup / cleanup times are changed, the Location and Resource pickers are set to grey out any locations or resources that are unavailable for those times.

4. Set up Time: The amount of time in minutes it will take to physically set up for the event.

5. Clean up Time: The amount of time in minutes it will take to tear down the event.

6. Campus: The campus that the reservation is associated with.

7. Ministry: The ministry that is reserving the locations / resources. You can add to or edit the list of ministries shown here in the Admin Tools.

8. Number Attending: The number of people you expect to attend this event.

9. Setup Photo: An optional photo/image showing the room setup for the event.

10. Event Contact: Details about who will be on site during the event.

11. Administrative Contact: Details on who should be contacted if there are questions about this event.

12. Status: The status of the event. See Security/Approvals for details.

13. Locations: Here you can select the locations and location layouts you want to reserve for your event. In view mode this grid will be where Special Approvers approve or deny locations. When you choose to add or edit a location, this modal will appear:
    
    

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    1. Location: The locations will be color-coded as follows:

       1. Black: This location is unable to be reserved.

       2. Red: This location is already reserved for this time

       3. Orange: This location has been requested by another reservation but has not been approved for that reservation yet. Used when locations are only booked once the reservation is approved.

          • Orange is also used if the location’s firm threshold is less than the estimated attendee count for the event.

       4. Green: This location is available

    2. Layout: If the location has any layouts, they’ll be displayed here for selection. Selecting a layout is optional.

    3. Save Then Add: If you’re adding a lot of resources and locations, click this button to keep the modal open and continue adding new items.

14. Resources: Here you can select the resources and quantities of those resources that are reserved for the event. In view mode this grid will be where Special Approvers approve or deny resources. When you choose to add or edit a resource, this modal will appear:
    
    

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    1. Resource: Any available resource will have the quantity available shown in parenthesis and will be color-coded as follows:

       1. Red: All instances of this resource are already reserved for this time

       2. Orange: All instances of this resource have been requested by another reservation but have not been approved for that reservation yet. Used when resources are only booked once the reservation is approved.

       3. Green: This resource is available

    2. Quantity: The amount of that resource you want to reserve.

    3. Location: From here, you can select a reserved location to assign the resource to.

    4. Save Then Add: If you’re adding a lot of resources and locations, click this button to keep the modal open and continue adding new items.

15. Reservation Attributes: Any attributes configured on the reservation type will appear here.

16. Additional Questions: If any resources or locations being reserved have additional questions configured, they will be displayed here.

17. Notes: Add any additional notes about your reservation here.

18. Available Workflows: Any workflows configured to be fired manually on the reservation type will appear here.

19. Edit: Click this button to edit the reservation

20. Delete: Click this to delete the reservation

21. Approval Buttons: The following buttons are visible in view mode:

    1. Submit: When in the Draft or Changes Needed state, this button submits the new / changed reservation to be reviewed.

    2. Approve: Visible to Initial Approvers in the Pending Initial Approval state, Final Approvers in the Pending Final Approval state, and always visible to the Override Approval Group. Moves the reservation to the next state.

    3. Deny: Visible to Initial Approvers in the Pending Initial Approval state, and to Final Approvers in the Pending Final Approval state. Always visible to the Override Approval Group. Marks the reservation as Denied.

    4. Request Changes: Visible to Initial Approvers in the Pending Initial Approval state, and to Final Approvers in the Pending Final Approval state. Moves the reservation to the Changes Needed state. When clicking this button, we recommend writing a note to tell the reservation contacts what need to be changed.

    5. Override: Visible to the Override Approval Group, this button instantly approves the reservation regardless of the normal approval process or room/resource conflicts.

    6. Cancel: Visible to anyone with edit access to the reservation, this button marks the reservation as Cancelled.

22. Copy Reservation: This button will create a duplicate of the reservation for you to edit.

23. Download Reservation: Downloads a .ics file you can import into Google or Outlook calendar.

24. Notes Tab: This tab displays any notes associated with the reservation. This will mostly be used during the approval process when requesting changes.

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25. Events Tab: This tab lists all events tied to the reservation, and allows users to add new ones.

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26. History Tab: This tab lists the history of the reservation.

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When Making Reservations

When selecting locations for a future reservation, red items typically indicate the location is already reserved – either directly or indirectly. For example, if an entire campus has already been reserved, all the buildings and rooms under that campus will be marked red. In this case, selecting a room will provide a message indicating where the reservation conflict exists.

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The conflicting event name(s) shown in the message can be clicked to view the details about each reservation.

Similarly, resources from other reservations that conflict with the schedule will be shown when adding or editing the resource.

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Linking Events

You can also link events to your reservations. By default, you can only link to existing event items, but you can change that in the block settings. We will be walking through creating our own event item. Navigate to the Events tab. After clicking the ‘+’ button, you will be taken to the page below to fill out Event Item information. This will auto populate with the reservation name, and photo if one exists.

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Next, you’ll be taken to the Event Item Occurrence screen. This will auto populate the schedule and campus of the occurrence with the reservation’s values:

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Then you will see a summary of the event you are about to create:

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And finally links to the newly created items:

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When viewing Event Details, you will be able to see a list of reservations tied to the occurrences:

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As well as see further details on the Occurrence Detail page:

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Search Reservations Page

This page allows you to perform more advanced searches for the reservation you need than the main page allows for. You can search by time, name, type, ministry, resources or locations used, and even by creator. Once you find the reservation you’re looking for, simply click on the row and you’ll be directed to the detail page for that reservation.

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Available Resources Page

On this page you can search for resources and locations that are available during your event time. Once you’ve found the resource or location that you need, simply click it and you’ll be directed to the New Reservation page with that resource or location already entered in.

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1. Search For: Here you can switch between searching for Resources and searching for locations.

2. Availability: This will display whether the Resource / Location is available, and how many are available in the case of Resources. If the item is reserved, this will display the reservation that has booked it.

Admin Tools

Here is where you can edit how the Room Management system is set up.

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1. Resources: Here you can add and edit Resources to Rock.

2. Resource Categories: If you want to add, edit, or remove the categories used to sort resources, do so here.

3. Reservation Types: Here you can edit how the reservation types are set up.

4. Printable Reports: Here you can add and edit the available report templates used to print PDFs

5. Reservation Views: Here you can add and edit the available Reservation Views that determine how reservations are displayed on the main page.

Resource Detail

This is the page where you’ll be adding or editing resources.

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1. Name: The name of the resource.

2. Is Active: Determines whether this resource will be displayed in any resource pickers.

3. Category: The category the resource falls under.

4. Approval Group: If this resource requires its own approval, add the group in charge of that here.

5. Quantity: The number of that resource that you have (e.g. ‘150 Gym Chairs).

6. Campus: If this resource is on a particular campus, specify the campus here.

7. Attached Location: If the resource is tied to a location, and can’t be moved from that location, specify that here.

8. Notes: Any additional notes on the resource go here.

9. Reservation Questions: Any additional questions you want answered when someone reserves this resource can be added here. You can specify what field type you would like the answer to be. Be sure to specify ‘Required’ if you want them to be required questions.

10. Copy Questions From: This button lets you copy a set of questions from another location or resource to this resource.

Reservation Types

Here you can view and add to the configured Reservation Types. Most of the settings and configuration for reservations, including approval groups, ministries, and workflows, are set on the reservation type to allow for a more customizable experience.

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1. Reservation Type: Click here to view or edit this reservation type

2. Add Reservation Type: Click here to add another reservation type.

Reservation Type Detail

Here you can fine-tune all the settings for your reservation types, as well as edit security for them. Editing security on a reservation type focuses on who can edit the reservations, and works as follows:

• View Access: A user can only view these reservations

• Edit Access: A user can create reservations but can only edit reservations that they created or that they are the administrative contact for.

• Administrate Access: A user can edit any reservations of this type. By default, people in the Staff and Staff-Like Security Roles have this level of access.

• Edit After Approval: Dictates who can edit a reservation after it’s been approved.

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1. Name: The Reservation Type’s Name.

2. Active: Whether the Reservation Type is active or not.

3. Icon Css Class: The Font Awesome icon representing this Reservation Type.

4. Description: The Reservation Type’s description.

5. Is Setup Time Required: Whether the setup and cleanup times are required

6. Is Number Attending Required: Whether the number of people attending is required.

7. Are Contact Details Required: Whether the Event Contact and Administrative Contact details are required.

8. Is Campus Required: Whether the campus is a required property.

9. Is Reservation Booked On Approval: Normally, locations and resources are blocked out from being reserved by other reservations as soon as one is created, and held on to until the reservation is denied. This is a first-come-first-serve system, so we added a new feature that only reserves them after the reservation is approved. To ensure no conflicts, the following messages will be displayed at the top of the reservation if any occur:

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   • The Red notification box will list all locations / resources that are part of an approved reservation, and need to be removed from yours

   • The Yellow notification box lists other unapproved reservations that want to book the same location / resource for the same time. This is mostly for the benefit of the Final Approval Team.

10. Reservable Location Types: If any are selected, these are the location types allowed to be reserved.

11. Do you want to hide, allow, or require locations for new reservations on the Reservation Details page? This dictates whether the locations grid is hidden or shown, and if at least one location must be present.

12. Do you want to hide, allow, or require resources for new reservations on the Reservation Details page? This dictates whether the resources grid is hidden or shown, and if at least one resource must be present.

13. Default Setup Time: If you wish to default to a particular setup time, you can supply a value here. (empty or -1 indicates no default value).

14. Default Cleanup Time: If you wish to default to a particular cleanup time, you can supply a value here. (empty or -1 indicates no default value).

15. Contact Phone Type: When selecting an event or admin contact, this is the phone number that will be automatically pulled from their record.

16. Default End Date: The default end date ( in days from today) for reservations without a configured end date.

17. Max End Date: The furthest date ( in days from today) that reservations can be booked for. ( Empty includes no max value).

18. Door Lock Settings: For those of you who integrate with door lock systems, they previously usually unlocked the doors at the beginning of reservations, and locked them again at the end of reservations. These are new settings that customize the door lock schedules that you can pass to your providers over the API.

19. Display Door Lock Schedules? If enabled, this adds a new grid of Door Lock Schedules to the Reservation Detail page right below the Resources grid, as shown below:
    
    

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    From here, you can add or edit door lock times.

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    Typically, door lock providers that integrate with Room Management use the duration of the reservation including setup and cleanup times to determine door status. If you would like to create custom door lock times to forward to your provider, enter the start and end times here. If your reservation spans over 24 hours, or a single occurrence extends for multiple days, you can use the "Start Day Offset" and "End Day Offset" options, relative to the first day of the reservation's occurrence, to dictate what day the start or end time is for. For example, if you have a weekly recurring reservation that runs from Monday to Wednesday, a start and end day offset of 1 would cause the door lock time to occur on Tuesdays.

20. Door Lock Instructions: Here you can edit the instructions displayed in the door lock grid.

21. Reservation Attributes: Here you can edit any additional fields you want on all of your reservations.

22. Approval Groups: Here, you can set global and campus level approval groups for your reservations. For information on the differences between approval group types, see the Approval System section. People in any of these groups will have edit access to all reservations of this type.

23. Ministries: Here you can edit the list of ministries you can choose from when creating a reservation. Oftentimes organizations use different ministry structures for different tasks, so here we allow you to customize the ministry list for reservations.

24. Workflow Triggers: If you want any workflows to fire off when events happen on a reservation, such as one being created or a status on one being changed, add them here. Room Management is shipped with ‘Reservation Created’ and ‘State Changed’ triggers tied to the Room Reservation Approval Notification workflow. These are used as part of the out-of-the-box approval flow.

Location Detail

This is the Core Rock Location Detail page. On this page, we’ve added some new features:

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1. Approval Group: If this location requires its own approval, add the group in charge of that here.

2. Location Layouts: Here you can add or edit layouts to locations for selection on reservations. Be careful to only have one default layout if you are setting defaults, as the plugin will grab the first default layout there is.

3. Reservation Questions: Any additional questions you want answered when someone reserves this location can be added here. You can specify what field type you would like the answer to be. Be sure to specify ‘Required’ if you want them to be required questions.

4. Copy Questions From: This button lets you copy a set of questions from another location or resource to this location.

Printable Reports

This page allows you to create new Printable Reports. These dictate what the PDFs that you print will look like. There are several configurable settings for the printable. For example, you can change the logo that appears in the printed reports. You can also choose which template to use when printing or create your own using the new Lava Template.

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Each Printable Report consists of several Attributes:

1. Report Template: This is the template your report uses. For more information on this, take a look at the Report Templates section below. Generally if you’re creating your own Printable Report you’ll use the Lava Template.

2. Report Font: This is the font the report will use

3. Report Logo: This is the logo url the report will use

4. Lava: If you’ve selected the Lava Template, this is where you’ll place the lava that will be used.

Reservation Views

This page allows you to create new Reservation Views. These dictate how reservations are displayed on the main page.

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Each Printable Report consists of several Attributes:

1. Lava Commands: If your lava needs any special commands, set them here.

2. Lava: This is where you place the lava that dictates how the reservations are presented.

Included in the update is a new view that lists reserved items:

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Reservation Lava Kiosk

While not added as a default page, we do also include a Reservation Lava Kiosk block. This block, when passed in a valid LocationId page parameter, will display upcoming events for that location. This is best used on any tablets or kiosks placed next to your room. The block displays a lava template, so you can customize it to fit your needs.

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Approval System

You should understand few more administrative details before you unleash your users on the new system. Namely, how the reservation approval system works.

Approval Groups

Besides the basic security access used to grant your users to see the Resource Reservation system, four other groups control the approval process for reservations: the Initial Approval Group, any Special Approval Groups, the Final Approval Group and the Override Approval Group.

Note: If an Initial Approval Group or Final Approval Group is not set up, then Reservations without locations or resources that require special approval will be automatically approved if they do not conflict with existing reservations.

We recommend using the least restrictive settings, such as only putting an Approval Group on those locations and resources that absolutely must be approved by a person or group of people. However, we believe these configuration options give you the ability to set up more a more extensive approval system.

Campus-Level Approval Groups

Version 2.3 adds the ability to use Campus-Level approval groups. When assigning approval groups to a reservation, Rock will first search for applicable campus-level approval groups, before defaulting to the global approval group of that type.

Approval Process

A reservation flows through several different states as a part of the approval process. These states are managed by the Approval Process workflow.

Draft

This is the default state for any newly created reservation. In this state, users can tweak any fields or attributes on their reservation before hitting the Submit button to set the reservation to Pending Initial Approval

Pending Initial Approval

When a reservation’s approval state has been changed to Pending Initial Approval, the Approval Process workflow will check for a configured Initial Approval Group. If there is not one, the workflow will move the reservation into the Pending Special Approval state. If an Initial Approval Group has been configured, the workflow will send them a notification. Any member of the Initial Approval Group can then go to the reservation and select one of the following approval buttons:

• Approve: This will set the reservation to the Pending Special Approval state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

• Deny: This will set the reservation to the Denied state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

• Request Changes: This will set the reservation to the Changes Needed state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

Pending Special Approval

When in this state, the workflow will mark any locations or resources without a special approval group as approved. If after this all locations and resources are approved, it will move on to the Pending Final Approval state. If there are any relevant Special Approval Groups, the Approval Process workflow will launch a Special Approval Notification workflow for each one. This workflow will send them a notification with a link to the reservation. Any member of the Special Approval Group can then navigate there and select one of the approval buttons next to the location / resource they have oversight over:

• Approve: This will mark the location / resource as approved. If that was the last location / resource to be approved it will then set the reservation to the Pending Special Approval state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

• Deny: This will set the reservation to the Changes Needed state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

Pending Final Approval

When a reservation’s approval state has been changed to Pending Final Approval, the Approval Process workflow will check for a configured Final Approval Group. If there is not one, the workflow will move the reservation into the Approved state. If a Final Approval Group has been configured, the workflow will send them a notification. Any member of the Final Approval Group can then go to the reservation and select one of the following approval buttons:

• Approve: This will set the reservation to the Approved state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

• Deny: This will set the reservation to the Denied state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

• Request Changes: This will set the reservation to the Changes Needed state and launch the Approval Process workflow.

Approved

When the reservation is approved, an email will go out to the reservation’s admin contact and event contact notifying them. By default, reservations can be edited after being approved, but you can modify that in the Reservation Type’s security settings.

Denied

When the reservation is denied, an email will go out to the reservation’s admin contact and event contact notifying them. A reservation that is denied will be hidden from the hub page, and any resources or locations booked by it will be marked as available for that time frame.

Changes Needed

When the reservation is marked Changes Needed, an email will go out to the reservation’s admin contact and event contact notifying them. After making changes, the user can then hit the Submit button, and the reservation will be set to the previous state.

Cancelled

At any point, the user can click the Cancel button to cancel the reservation. A reservation that is cancelled will be hidden from the hub page, and any resources or locations booked by it will be marked as available for that time frame.

Workflow Types

Caution!
If you want to make changes to these workflows, we recommend you make a copy of these stock workflows and make your changes there. When finished, simply add your new workflow triggers (under Room Management | Admin Tools | Reservation Types | Reservation Type Detail) and remove the ones that came shipped with the plugin. Otherwise, you could have problems with a future plugin update that needs to modify the stock workflows.

Approval Process

By default, Room Management is shipped with a ‘State Changed’ trigger tied to the Approval Process workflow for the Standard Reservation Type. This workflow notifies relevant parties that the reservation requires their attention and moves reservations through their various statuses. If you wish to extend or build on the approval system, you can do so by expanding on these.