Resource Booking by Calendar

Resource Booking by Calendar is available as a part of NICeMail-suite applications and will help you book conference, meeting, and training rooms in your organization across different branches. The administrator of the organization has to add other branches if any, buildings and floors to the branches, and rooms to the buildings along with the features available in the rooms. The room booking feature in Resource booking allows the members of an organization to find appropriate rooms and make a booking. All the members present in a single organization will be able to view the availability status of all the rooms in the organization. You can add or modify bookings as per your requirements and create these bookings as events on the Zoho Calendar.

Default Location

If your organization's administrator configures Resource Booking, you'll be prompted to set your Default Location when you access Resource Booking. Once you choose your default location, the rooms available in your organization will be listed under the respective branches and will be available for booking.

Resource Booking Grid View and Customization

The booking grid can be customized based on your preference. You can set the hour/ hay view and choose to show/ hide working hours and weekends in the grid.

The room booking feature in Resource booking allows the members of an organization to find appropriate rooms and make a booking. All the members present in a single organization will be able to view the availability status of all the rooms in the organization. You can add or modify bookings as per your requirements and create these bookings as events on your Calendar.

​Add Booking

If you want to book a room using your resource booking application, you can do it in two different ways.

• Quick Add
• Detailed Add

​Quick Add

Quick add lets you create a booking in resource booking in just a single click and drag. Select the location of your room from the left pane of Resources. Once you have selected the location, all the rooms in the particular location will be listed. Check the availability of the room for the date you want to book and make your booking in one click.

Steps to create a booking using Quick Add

1. Login to your Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Rooms available in your Default location will be visible. You can also select the Location from the list of locations displayed on the left pane of the Resources window.
3. To check the availability of the room for the required date and time, navigate using the date picker from the top centre of the window.
4. Once the date is selected, locate the time for which you want to book the room, and click and drag the mouse from the start time to the end time. 
5. In the booking pop-up, enter the booking title and click Book.
6. The booking will be added.

Detailed Add

When you create bookings using the Detailed add option, you can fill in extra details about the booking like description, participants and more. 

Steps to create a booking using Detailed Add

1. Log in to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Select the location from the list of locations displayed on the left pane of the Resources section.
3. To create a booking, click on New Booking from the left pane of the window or click and drag the mouse for a room and click on More.
4. Enter the booking title, edit the time if required, enter the description, add participants and click Book.

​All Day Booking

If you need a particular room for an event for an entire day, you can make an all-day booking and the room will be marked unavailable to others for the entire day.

Steps to create an all-day booking

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on New Booking from the left pane of the window or click and drag the mouse for a room and click on More.
3. Turn on the All Day switch in the Create booking window.
4. Click Book to save the booking.

​Private Booking

If you don't want the others in your organization to know the details of your booking, you can mark your booking as private. The room will be marked as occupied for the booked time slot in the grid.

Steps to Create a Private Booking

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on New Booking from the left pane of the window or click and drag the mouse for a room and click on More.
3. Select the Make it a private booking option in the Create booking window.
4. Click Book to save the booking.

​Repeat Booking

You can create repeat bookings for a period in Resource Booking. While creating a repeat booking, you need to set the recurrence conditions and the booking will be created. 

Steps to Create a Repeat Booking

1. Log in to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on New Booking from the left pane of the window or click and drag the mouse for a room and click on More.
3. Turn on the Repeat switch in the Create Booking window.
4. Fill in the repeat criteria in the pop-up and click Done.
5. Click Book to save the booking.

​Add a note to the admin

You can now add notes to your admin while booking a resource. You can request the admin to get the projector ready or provide tea/ snacks and much more using the add note for your admin option. These notes will be intimated to the branch maintainer.

Steps to add a note to the admin

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on New Booking from the left pane of the window or click and drag the mouse for a room and click on More.
3. Enter your notes in the 'add note for the admin' dialogue box on the right side.
4. Click Book to save the booking.

​View Booking

You can view the booking details of all the room bookings that you have made in resource booking. You can also view the booking details of the other bookings except for private bookings.

Steps to View Bookings

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. To view your own booking details, click on the booking from the grid. The booking details appear in the pop-up.
3. You can view the booking information in detail by clicking on More in the pop-up.
4. The View booking tab opens.
5. To view the booking details of the bookings made by others, click the booking from the grid.

Steps to View Upcoming Bookings

You can view a list of all your upcoming room bookings up to a certain time. To view your upcoming bookings:

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on Upcoming Bookings under My Bookings from the left pane of your Resource Booking screen.
3. You can narrow down your search for upcoming bookings by limiting it to a particular period. 

Steps to View Past Bookings

You can view a list of all the bookings that have been completed using the View Past Bookings option in Room Booking. To view your past bookings:

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on Past Bookings under My Bookings from the left pane of the Resource Booking screen.
3. You can narrow down your search for your past bookings by limiting it to a particular period by clicking on the drop-down.

​Edit Booking

If you want to make changes to the bookings you have made, you can use the edit option to modify the booking. 

Steps to Edit a Booking

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on the booking you have made from the grid.
3. In the view event pop-up, click the Edit icon.
4. Make changes to your booking and click Save.

​Delete Booking

You can delete bookings anytime you want to. Clicking on delete will permanently remove the room booking.

Steps to delete a booking

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Click on the booking you have made from the grid.
3. In the view event pop-up, click the Delete icon.
4. If attendees are added to the booking, you will get a pop-up asking you to Send a notification to : Attendees and Myself, Attendees and None. Select and click Confirm to proceed with deleting the booking.
5. To delete a booking created by others in your organization to which you have been invited to, click on the booking and click the Delete icon to remove the booking.

​Search Booking

Browse through and locate the booking that you have been searching for using the extensive search options in Resource Booking. Narrow down your search with terms like room name, branch name, capacity and more in our search bar. 

Steps to search for bookings

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. The search bar is present in the top right corner of the window.
3. Fill in the search terms in the search bar and tap Enter.

​Adding participants to bookings

While adding a room booking, you can directly add participants for the particular booking. All the participants added will receive an email notification regarding the booking.

Steps to add participants to a booking

1. Log in to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Create a booking or Edit an already existing booking.
3. On the right pane of the room booking window, enter the participant's email ID or pick the participant from groups using the Pick from groups option.
4. You can check the Free/Busy information of the participants by clicking on the View Free/Busy button. To exit the Free/Busy view, click Done.
5. Click Save.

​Filter Rooms

You can filter the rooms in your organization depending on the room type. The rooms in your organization can be categorized as conference rooms, meetings rooms and training rooms. 

Steps to filter rooms

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Select the Filter icon next to the Today button in the top right section of the grid.
3. Select the filter type as Meeting room or Conference room or Training room.
4. The rooms in the chosen filter type for your location will be listed. 
5. To clear the filter, click on the filter icon and select Clear Filter.

​Grid View Customization

The grid view in room booking can be customized to facilitate each user. You can choose to view the grid in days or hours, display or hide weekends and add working hours to your grid.

Steps to customize your grid view

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Select the More Options icon from the top right side of the grid, next to the filter icon.
3. In the Grid View Customization box, select if you want to view the grid in days or hours, and enable/disable weekends and working hours in the grid.

​Mark room as favourite

You can mark rooms as favorites and access them easily from the left pane of your Resources. When you mark a room as favorite, it will be added under My Favorites below your Location Tree.

Steps to mark a room as favorite

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Select the location from the left pane of Resources and click on a particular room from the rooms listed in the grid.
3. Click on the Favorite button (star icon) next to the room name, to mark the room as favorite.
4. Your favorite room will be listed under My Favorites on the left pane of the Resources window.

​Quick Room View

You can view the details of each room right from the booking grid without going into the room view using Quick Room View.

Steps to view the details of a room using Quick Room View

1. Login to Mail and navigate to Resources from the left menu. 
2. Hover over the room for which you want to see the details and click the More button next to the room name.
3. The room details with the capacity, type, location and photo is displayed. You can also add this room as your favorite from here.