Roombooking System

This system is currently not in use, but might be reactivated if necessary

   

Roombooking Release status: beta [box doku]
Description	A system to allow members to reserve a part of the lab to work on stuff. Link to MuMaLab Rooms
Author(s)	Severin

COVID brings some interesting challenges with it. One thing is that in order to keep our space open, we were given a limit of people that can be in the space at the same time. Also, we are supposed to make sure there's only one person in one section of the space at the same time.

For the first part, we have a check-in system, but for the second part, we've been kind of lucky to keep that up just by sheer luck. However, sometimes you want to use the workshop, and it's already taken. Also, for post-COVID times, sometimes, parts of the workshop or tools can only be used by a single person. Like the workshop when somebody is welding. So we could totally use a room booking system.

tl;dr;

We're trying this out: https://rooms.munichmakerlab.de/

Requirements

• Simple - it should be as simple as possible really
• Webbased - obviously
• Accounts - When we started looking for tools, we noticed that logins/accounts might be an issue. Ideally, this would connect to some other solution we already have, which is basically just the wiki, or potentially loomio. Alternatively, it should have an easy system for creating accounts.
• Look&Feel - It shouldn't feel like it came out of the past century ideally

Candidates

Well, there isn't all that much out there. Corps usually use Exchange/Outlook for that kind of stuff, or GSuite, which is both not an option for us.

• MRBS
  • This looks like it's from 1998.
• Booked, formally phpScheduleIt
  • Now closed-source/hosted (Since 2020-11-01 🤦‍♂️, blog post with details), but used to be open source (archive.org version of ther website)
  • They've done a good job of "cleaning the internet" of their oss-past, but there's a mirror of an older OSS release on GitHub.
    • Found an even more recent repo, with explainations in the README: https://github.com/effgarces/BookedScheduler/
  • Seems to work fine with PHP7.2, doesn't work with 7.4 (v2.7.1,mnot checked with the latest version still available)
  • Very promising
  • They are also the team behind LabArchives Scheduler, which looked promising but is also not OSS
• ClassroomBookings GitHub Repo
  • Aimed at schools, very nice and easy to use
  • Setup is a bit tidious, as you have to setup a whole load of stuff by hand
  • No self-registration possible
• OxAlto Room Booking System
  • looks ok, but kinda difficult to operate
• Fab-Manager
  • Has a module for reservations but it's a bigger deal to set it up, so that's not really the best thing for now probably

Trials

We had two candidates, Booked and Classroom Bookings. Classroom Bookings looked great but was a little difficult to setup, and also did not offer any options for self-registration. Booked was easier to setup, while the installation itself was a tiny bit rougher. And it allows us to not have to signup everyone upfront. So that was the winner

Actual setup

We have a little bit older version of Booked running in a docker container on jupiter.munichmakerlab.de, on a MariaDB also in another Docker container.

The Past

A long time ago, we were given the task to build a roombooking sytsem for our first "landlord", the Werk 1. This is what this page was originally aimed at. This old revision has all the details.

• Self-aware Vending Machine - The second WERK1 project