Configuring Parameters for Meeting Space Reservations and the Reservations Plugin for Microsoft Outlook

Set this parameter to determine if VPA restrictions are enabled for the Reservations application, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook, Workplace, and the Workplace Services Portal mobile app when creating room, resource, or conference call reservations. If users have a VPA restriction based on geography, this prevents them from booking outside of their VPA. The VPA restriction affects the reservations that are shown, and the buildings available when creating reservations. A setting of 0 means the VPA restriction is disabled; a setting of 1 means that it is enabled.

If users have a need to make reservations for buildings from which they are restricted (such as when traveling or when booking for others), disabling the VPA enables them to do so. If this application parameter is not defined, the VPA restriction is applied as usual. As with all application parameters, this is a global setting, not per individual user.

Note:  When working in the Reservations application, the VPA restriction works in all places for Bl VPA, Site VPA and custom VPA, except in the selection lists shown in pop-up windows used to select floor or room values. For most of the views in the application, these selection lists are not correctly filtered when the connected user has been assigned a custom VPA. This issue only occurs when using selection lists from pop-up windows; other actions, such as creating a new reservation, or even listing the reservation in the View and/or Edit My Reservations will be correctly restricted by the user VPA

When you mark a room as reservable, to ensure that there’s at least one room arrangement and room configuration for this room Archibus creates these records if they do not exist.

For the room configuration, Archibus creates a configuration with values for config_id and config_name that match the rm_id and rm_name values of the room that you are making reservable.

Archibus searches for the arrangement type defined in this application parameter, and checks if that arrangement type exists in the database. If it does not exist, Archibus creates the arrangement type

Once it is confirmed that the arrangement type specified in the activity parameter exists, Archibus creates a new room arrangement with the specified arrangement type.

Configure the level of filtering (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4) for room conflicts when users create a recurring reservation. The following rooms will be displayed depending on the setting. The default value is 3, but you can change this as needed.

• 0: all rooms available for at least one occurrence
• 1: all rooms available for at least 50% of the occurrences
• 2: only rooms available for all occurrences (if any), otherwise all rooms available for at least one occurrence;
• 3: only rooms available for all occurrences (if any), otherwise all rooms available for at least 50% of the occurrences;
• 4: only rooms available for all occurrences.

• 5: all rooms available for at least the first occurrence;

• 6: all rooms available for the first occurrence and at least 50% of the occurrences;

• 7: only rooms available for all occurrences (if any), otherwise all rooms available for at least the first occurrence;

• 8: only rooms available for all occurrences (if any), otherwise all rooms available for the first occurrence and at least 50% of the occurrences.

Enter the units to use in the timeline. For example, if you set the units to 15, the user can only reserve at 15-minute intervals: 10:00, 10:15, 10:30, etc.

Note: The MinutesTimeUnit parameter determines the units that can be used for Pre-block and Post-block settings that are defined in the Room Arrangements and Resources tables. For example, if the MinutesTimeUnit is set to 10, then the Pre-block time must be in units of 10, such as 10, 20, 30, etc. For information on defining the Pre-block and Post-block settings, see Define General Resources and Define Room Arrangements. 

Limits the number of dates to check for attendee availability. Having a large number of dates can cause performance issues if rooms and resources are reserved for recurring schedules that have many occurrences into the future. The default value is 10.

This parameter applies only in the Web Central Reservations application (with and without the Archibus Extension for Microsoft Exchange). It is not applicable to the Reservations Plugin for Outlook.

For the Create or Edit Resource Reservation task, limits the number of occurrences to process when creating a recurring reservation for either a resource or room. By default, this is set to 250. This parameter is not required for the Reservations Calendar Console because you must specify either a Start Date or Number of Occurrences when specifying the recurring pattern.

For example if MaxRecurrencesToCreate is set to 250, and you specify in the Recurrence panel to create 500 reservations, the program allows you to try to confirm the reservation, and then presents an error message suggesting that you enter a smaller number of occurrences.

Because of performance and technical limitations, it is not recommended to enter a numeric value higher than 500 for the MaxRecurrencesToCreate application parameter.

With this parameter, users with the Archibus Extension for Microsoft Exchange can create a meeting from Exchange and attach the Teams meeting link there; the Reservations application will then include the link as part of the stored reservations comments

Enter a semicolon-separated list of URL patterns to identify online meeting links. For example, enter: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/;https://*.zoom.us/j/

Note the following about entering the pattern:

• It is not required to indicate the protocol (https://) in the parameter. If missing, Archibus will add it at the beginning of the pattern.

• The basic wildcard * can be used to match any number of characters except a forward slash.

• The URL needs to match the pattern from the start of the URL. Only suffixes are allowed.

If your site implements touch panels or tablets mounted outside a meeting room for users to make reservations with the Archibus Extension for Microsoft Exchange, set this parameter to specify the Employee ID that will be used to complete the Created By, Requested By, and Requested For fields of the meeting record.

Note: the employee specified here should have an email address other than a room email address. None of the room mailboxes should correspond to a Web Central user and/or employee.

The default value is RESERVATION HOST, which is a record in the Employees table.

If the meeting organizer is not a user and employee in Archibus but has used Exchange to create the meeting, Archibus can map these unknown email addresses to a "dummy" user specified with this parameter.

Enter the "dummy" Employee ID that should be populated to the created_by, requested_by and requested_for fields for reservations created by an external user.

Enable or disable the requirement of entering a Capacity in the Plugin for saving a reservation.

• Set to 1 to enable the requirement. When enabled, the application enforces that users must enter the capacity before proceeding with the reservation. This means that rooms are filtered to include only the ones having at least this capacity. Requiring the user to enter the Capacity can make the Capacity field a more reliable gauge of attendees in that room.
• Set to 0 to disable the requirement. When entering the Capacity field is not required, the Capacity field defaults to five, and the user can change this at their discretion.
• The entered Capacity value is stored in the database, and it's intended to store the actual number of attendees that will be in the room. See Capturing the number of attendees who are physically present.