Anna Dębowska, programmer and systems analyst from APA Group, tells about what the Room Reservation System (SRS) is and how it can help in the efficient organization of our company's work.
What is the Room Reservation System?
SRS is a simple and intuitive tool for managing building space. Its basic task is to enable the booking of work spaces and conference rooms and informing about their availability.
So instead of a porter keeping a paper booking register and issuing keys, we have a coordinated and intuitive system at our fingertips?
Exactly. SRS is an easy and convenient way to arrange and book a meeting point. Moreover, it is a web solution, so its operation is possible from any device with Internet access - including a smartphone owned by each employee.
Interesting and practical solution. How exactly does this system work?
Through SRS, it is possible to configure locations (e.g., Office Floor 1) and rooms assigned to them (e.g. Conference Room) with equipment, as well as adding users and granting them privileges to rooms or administrative tools. Users with access to rooms can book them for their own meetings. Using the SRS, they define the start and end time of the meeting, its title, description, and invited persons. They can also set its cyclicality - days on which it is to repeat and the end date of the cycle. Appointments can be modified by extending them, adding new participants, changing the room or canceling the meeting.
Does SRS also have any benefits for participants?
Absolutely! After booking the room for the purpose of organizing the meeting, the participants are informed about it by e-mail. The appointment is also visible on their Microsoft calendars. Each invited person has the option to accept or decline the invitation. The SRS system notifies the organizer of the participant's decision.
Significant facilitation of the meeting organization process! There are more of them?
Of course. It is possible to install panels in front of the rooms (tablets) with an interface informing about the condition of a given room - occupied/free. The panel displays information about the meeting and there are additional options, such as: ordering coffee or tea, viewing all meetings in this room on a given day, booking an ad-hoc room (as an anonymous meeting) or sending an order to the NAZCA system (another solution developed by APA Group). SRS is integrated with Radicale calendar systems with the option of ordering catering for a meeting. What’s more connecting with NAZCA provides, among others, the functions of automatic shading of roller shutters, switching on the presentation mode or adjusting the lighting. Adding the access control form Salto allows for user authentication before entering the room.
SRS works out in offices. But what about meeting rooms with a commercial purposes?
SRS can operate in two modes: basic and room rental. The basic mode is intended for use by a company or corporation, where financial settlement of users is not required. The room rental mode is intended for a company that wants to rent its work spaces, sell of conferences and desks outside the organization. This mode assumes that the user has a limited time to use for booked room. In addition, a history of meetings is built so the topic of repair was fixed, because we have historical information about who has recently booked a given sale. The SRS system administrator has tools for allocating the number of hours and generating reserve generation reports. Reports can be easily and conveniently exported to PDF and downloaded to disks.
