Booking of
University Venues on the Web
By
M. H. Leung
|
|
|
Is
it possible to book University venues on the Web? The answer is
yes and it can be achieved through the Venue and Classroom
Booking System under the Facilities Booking
menu on the CityU Intranet. Through a common Web interface, all
CityU staff and student societies can access this system both
on- and off-campus easily and quickly.
Figure
1: First
Page
The first
version of this system was launched in October 2000 for staff
to book lecture theatres, tutorial rooms, language laboratories
and video laboratories. The current version, which was launched
in February 2001, extends the booking facilities to student societies
as well. In this new version, other types of venue like special
room, common area, meeting room and multi-purpose room are also
included for booking.
The system
is built on the Location Management Module of the Administrative
Information Management System (AIMS). All booking records are
stored centrally in the AIMS Database. The system supports both
direct booking and submission of booking request. Direct booking
is for venues like tutorial rooms, lecture theatres and meeting
rooms. Users can make this kind of booking directly through the
Web and each successful booking can be confirmed on the spot.
Figure
2: Room Availability List
On the other
hand, submission of booking request is for the booking of special
venues such as the Covered Terrace. Users are required to book
extra hours for the preparation and clearing work before and after
a booking session. This kind of booking is in the form of e-mail
request being sent to the venue owner for processing. Once the
booking request is endorsed, an e-mail confirmation will be sent
to the requester.
The system
also has a user-friendly function to enable users to check the
availability of venues by different criteria such as the venue
category, date, time, capacity and room number. In addition, the
weekly schedule of a venue can be presented graphically in a timetable
format to ensure the ease of use as shown on the next page:
Figure 3:
Weekly
Schedule for a Room
In summary,
the Venue and Classroom Booking System has indeed
provided a paperless means to streamline the workflow of venue
booking in the University. Through this on-line system, the availability
of venues is now more transparent to the end users than ever before.