Learn how to reserve and book rooms. Take a look how the room booking approval system works (mediation) and how easy it is to manage your room bookings and reservations.
Overview
User roles
Action Center
Booking a Room
1. Pick a room, date and time
2. New Reservation Form
3. Room Configuration
Mediation and Approval
1. Approval Status
2. Approving and Declining
Managing Room Bookings
1. Edit a Room Booking
2. Cancel a Room Booking
3. Delete a Room Booking
Zoom Integration
Learn about Reserve's features
Reserve a room
3 mins, 43 secs
It's easy to book rooms. Get an overview of the booking process and using ecommerce within Reserve...
Approving room bookings
2 mins, 48 secs
Learn how mediation works. With the right permissions set, users have the ability to approve or decline room bookings. Room bookings can also be approved automatically ...
Managing room bookings
3 mins, 21 secs
How to manage your room bookings. Edit, cancel and view room reservations made for, and by, patrons and staff. You can also manage event room bookings made in Attend.
Learn the basics of Reserve with step by step illustrated guides.
User permissions and room settings will determine whether staff can use the control panel to make an immediate booking, or to request a booking that can then be approved.
All existing bookings can be viewed in a list or calendar format, where they can be viewed, edited, approved and cancelled. Old, current and future bookings can be viewed in the control panel and pulled into reports at any time.
Your bookable rooms can be set up to interact differently with users belonging to different user classes. Fundamentally, how a booking is made by a user will be determined by whether it is mediated or unmediated. This is decided by an interaction of room settings, user class settings and individual user settings.
Administrators will automatically have full access to Reserve, with the ability to make or approve a booking in any available room. Administrators also have access to other staff members’ user profiles, where they can set their roles by updating their access permissions.
Can make an unmediated room booking on behalf of a patron or any member of staff.
Can request a mediated room booking on behalf of a patron or any member of staff. This request will then need to be approved.
Can make an unmediated room booking on behalf of a patron or any member of staff.
Can make a mediated room booking on behalf of a patron or any member of staff
Can view and approve, or decline, mediated booking requests made by patrons or Level 1 staff users
The Rooms tab of the action center shows a list of any bookings that are awaiting possible action.
Level 1 (Basic) users can see their own events that are awaiting approval, and can make an edit or review the booking details from here
Level 2 (Advanced) users can see any events that are awaiting approval, and can make an edit, review the booking details and decline or approve the booking from here
Rooms can be booked or requested on behalf of a patron, yourself or another staff member from within Reserve
Navigate to the Reserve section of the control panel
Click new booking
If your library has multiple branch locations, the first step will be to pick which location you’d like to see availability for
Adjust the date, using the calendar tool
Set the time of the booking using the time picker, or by clicking and dragging the green block along the timeline
Click Available next to your chosen room in order to proceed with the booking
Each line represents a bookable room in that location. You will see the room name and an image of the room - hover over the image to see the room details. The light green timeline shows current availability and existing bookings, and the button will show Available if the room can be booked at the selected time, or Unavailable if not.
Available - the room is available to be booked at this time
Opening hours - the branch opening hours on this day. Use this as a guide when choosing your time
Your booking - you can click and drag this to change your booking time
Set up and/or breakdown time - these will be automatically added onto either side of your booking
Reserved - another booking that has been requested, but not yet approved, or is associated to an event that has not yet been published. Hover over the block to see the details
Booked - the room has been booked and approved for this time period. Hover over the block to see the details
On the next page, fill in the form with all the details of your booking, starting with selecting whether this is a patron or staff booking.
If available, enter the patron’s library card number. Depending on your settings, this may be a mandatory step, but even if it’s not mandatory, you can use the Look up details function to autocomplete the form with some of the patron’s details.
Enter the patron’s first name and last name, and any required contact details, such as email address and phone number. These contact details will be used for confirmation, notification and reminder messages.
Enter a group name. This refers to the group who will be occupying the room, and will not display anywhere publicly. It can be viewed by staff in the control panel and in reports.
Enter a booking title. This is a name given to this booking, and may be displayed on room scheduler screens (if these are used). It can also be viewed by staff in the control panel and in reports.
Complete any other mandatory fields, and click
Certain fields of the form will autocomplete with the details of the logged in user, but these can be changed manually if the booking is being made on behalf of another member of staff.
Enter first name and last name, and any required contact details, such as email address and phone number. These contact details will be used for confirmation, notification and reminder messages.
Enter a group name. This refers to the group who will be occupying the room, and will not display anywhere publicly. It can be viewed by staff in the control panel and in reports.
Enter a booking title. This is a name given to this booking, and may be displayed on room scheduler screens (if these are used). It can also be viewed by staff in the control panel and in reports.
Complete any other mandatory fields, and click
On the next page, you will see details of the room, and your booking. You may also be able to choose layout options, and select any additional bookable resources.
If the room has layout options, you will be able to select your required layout from the dropdown. Once you’ve made a selection, you will see a diagram and the details of that layout.
If there are any additional resources available to book, they can be picked in the checklist. You may need to enter the quantity required as well.
Read the terms and conditions and accept them by checking the box.
Check the details of your booking, and click
Unmediated bookings will be confirmed at this point, and no further action will be required.
Mediated bookings will have been submitted as a request, and will now need review and approval by an authorized user before they are confirmed.
The approval status shows in the Reserve listing and calendar, as well as in the action center. It indicates at what stage of the approval process the booking currently sits, and can be easily identified by the color coding.
The room booking has been requested and is awaiting approval from an authorized user.
The booking won’t show on any public facing room schedules, but the time and room have been provisionally reserved to avoid the possibility of double bookings.
The room booking has been reviewed and approved by an authorized user, and is now confirmed.
The booking will now show on any room schedules, as well as in the Reserve listing and calendar. The booker will receive a notification email to advise that the reservation has been approved.
The room booking has been reviewed and declined by an authorized user, and is now cancelled.
The booking will not show on any public facing room schedules, and the provisional reservation has been cancelled. The declined booking will still be visible to staff in the Reserve listing, so that they can still view the details and history if needed, or delete it completely. The booker will receive a notification email to advise that the reservation has been declined.
The room booking had been approved, but has since been cancelled.
The booking will not show on any public facing room schedules, and the time slot will now be available for new bookings. The cancelled booking will still be visible to staff in the Reserve listing, so that they can still view the details and history if needed, or delete it completely. The booker will receive a notification email to advise that the reservation has been cancelled.
Room requests can be approved or declined on the Details popup, which can be reached by clicking Details next to your booking on the Reserve listing page, or by clicking review next to your booking in the Action Center.
Click edit booking to make any necessary changes to any of the details of the booking
Click Approve to instantly confirm the booking, change the status to Approved, and trigger the confirmation email
Click Decline to decline the booking, change the status to Declined and trigger the notification email. You’ll need to enter the reason for declining, and this reason will be included in the email, and will be recorded in the History panel.
Navigate to the Reserve section of the control panel.
Find your booking. Use the date range options and filters at the top of the page to make this easier. You can show a specific range of dates, or limit the list by room, approval status or booking type.
Click edit
Make any necessary changes to the details of the booking. You can change anything about the booking, including date, time, room, layout and additional resources.
Navigate to the Reserve section of the control panel.
Find your booking. Use the date range options and filters at the top of the page to make this easier. You can show a specific range of dates, or limit the list by room, approval status or booking type.
Click more
Select 'cancel booking' from the dropdown.
Enter a reason for cancellation. This reason will be included in the email that is sent out to the person named on the booking, so use suitable wording for that purpose.
Click Cancel reservation
After cancelling, the booking will disappear from calendars, and public room schedules. It will still be listed in the Reserve listing, where it will be clearly marked as cancelled. This means you can always find the booking and access its details and History. The alternative is to Delete the booking from the listing altogether.
Deleting a booking is the only way to remove it completely and permanently from the Reserve listing. You can only delete a booking that has already been cancelled or declined. Cancelling or declining is enough to remove the booking from all Reserve calendars and public facing room schedules, and to free up the room and resources to be booked again. You do not need to delete it as well, but you may choose to do so if you want the booking removed from the listing at all, and are sure you won’t need to refer to the details or History in future.
Navigate to the Reserve section of the control panel.
Find your booking. Use the date range options and filters at the top of the page to make this easier. You can show a specific range of dates, or limit the list by room, approval status or booking type.
Click more
Select 'Delete booking' from the dropdown.
Click OK to confirm.
Creating a room booking
Booking a virtual room is identical to booking a physical room and follows the same process on both the staff and patron-facing side. Communico will configure the room and room booking policy based on the specifications outlined on your questionnaire.
Please note: In order to use Zoom integration within Reserve you must be using a Zoom Rooms account.
