A calendar for booking rooms

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
We are adding rooms to be booked in 4 more of our libraries. All of these libraries have reserve departments and so their calendars (tab17) reflect the open and close hours of the reserve desk, which is shorter than the hours the rooms can be made available. But the buildings are not open 24 hours, so I cannot use option A in colum 17 of tab15 (allow booking for open and closed hours).

I thought we could adjust the web page to list and display only 9 am to 10 pm and turn the switch to A, but the library open hours are not consistant across the days of the week - the grid would show slots available on Saturday and Sunday when the buildings aren't open until 11 am.

What I need is a calendar(s) just for the rooms. I am very reluctant to add sublibraries in order to do this.

Is there any other way around this problem?

In tab_sub_library, what is

! 3 - pickup location that is not a library

How does it differ from a real sublibrary? Could I use it?

Resolution:
[From site:]

The pickup location idea seems to work. I added it to tab_sub_library as a type 3, using the established lines in tabs 15 and 16 and then made it its own calendar in tab17, which it uses.

The location doesn't show on the GUI dropdowns for sublibraries, but you can type it its code. It shows up on the booking filter under pickup locations.

It also doesn't show in the list of sublibraries for p_cir_33 (booking reminders), but we run this via the job_list, so I assume the code can be used there.

I guess the only place I WOULD like it to show would be the "Open Dates" in the Circ client where staff could check the hours... Interesting - there are 2 locations right at the bottom called "remote-location-1 and -2". I gather from a table we don't use but didn't comment out the examples.

Because the booking reminder report is run based on sub-library, it looks like I will have to create a 'pickup location' for each library, because they all want a separate report.

[Later:]

A bit more testing. When I change the sublibrary of the item to the new 'pickup location', the existing bookings follow along. So that is good. Inside the booking, the delivery check is turned on, to return the item to the original sublibrary, which is in the pickup field. As we do not lend these rooms, this will not impact us. We will also have to adjust the booking notices and cancellation letters to the borrowers, from sub-library to pickup location.. So I believe it is possible to use a pickup location rather than a sublibrary in order to map to a calendar that is not tired to the hours for reserves.

[Final:]

Seems to be a viable possibility, except for the lack of display in the GUI's calendar interface.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013