Archibus SaaS / Reservations
Workplace Services / Reservations

Integrating Reservations with Other Archibus Applications, Mobile Apps, and Modules

The Archibus Reservations application and module have been designed so that they can be easily integrated with other Archibus applications, modules, and mobile apps.

Archibus Workplace

If your site has a license for the Reservations application or module, general staff can reserve meeting space and working space by running Archibus Workplace on a tablet, kiosk, or smart phone.

With Archibus Workplace, general staff and guests can reserve meeting space on a one-time or recurring schedule.

Reservations made from Archibus Workplace are automatically approved. Reservations made from Archibus Workplace appear in both the Reservations views. Users working with Workplace as part of Archibus Foundations will find that the reservations also appear in the Service Console of the appropriate users. See Using Archibus Workplace.

Mobile Apps

Mobile users can run the Workplace Services Portal mobile app. This is handy for general staff to make reservations directly from their smart phone or mobile device.

The Reservations module does not support this mobile app. The newer Archibus Workplace interface supports the same features and can be run on a mobile device.

Space

Bookings of working space (part of the Reservations module or the Hoteling application) can be charged to the departments occupying the seats as part of the Space chargeback procedures. See Hoteling Management reports.

Maintenance

If you want to further manage your work requests, you can integrate Reservations with the Maintenance applications, so that work requests for setup and cleanup tasks are generated for room reservations. If the Work RequestsOnly application parameter is set to 0 (No), then the application also creates a work order when creating the work requests. If you are using work requests only, see Using work requests only.

For each work request, a service request is created behind the scenes. The application generates Action Item (activity_log) records for the request, then it creates work requests, and then the work order.

The work requests created from Reservations can be tracked and managed in the Maintenance Console, or from the Maintenance mobile app. You can also review work requests by trades using the from the Review Current Work by Trade task.

Work request and reservation status

The work request and reservation status are interrelated.

• When you create a reservation, its status is Awaiting Approval. The generated work request is set to Assigned to Work Order
• If the status of the work request changes, this changes the Reservation Status; if you cancel or reject a work request, this results in the reservation also being canceled (for canceled work), or stopped (for rejected work requests).
• When you cancel or reject a room or resource reservation, the associated work request is canceled (for canceled reservations), or stopped (for rejected reservations). The application also closes and archives the corresponding work order generated for set up and clean up, if there are no remaining work requests for them.

Editing reservations and work requests

• If you change the reservation's time, the work request's time is also changed
• Comments for the reservation are shown in the work request Description.

• The work request's division and department defaults to the assignment for the user who created the reservation, but you can change this if needed.

Work requests' Description field includes the number of people who will be physically present

Work requests for room reservation setup and cleanup tasks can include the # of Attendees in Room (reserve_rm.attendees_in_room) field. This is the number expected to be physically present in the room, rather than the number of attendees, some of whom might be attending the meeting remotely. The # of Attendees in Room is shown in the work request Description field, so that the setup crew knows the actual number of people for whom they are preparing the space.

For information on how to manage this field, see Capturing the number of employees physically present for a meeting.

Procedure: Generating setup and cleanup work requests for a reservation

Note: When generating work requests for setup and cleanup, the application ignores VPA restrictions, so that users can create setup and cleanup work requests in buildings to which they do not have VPA access.

The process for generating work requests from reservations includes the following steps:

1. Generate setup and cleanup tasks for a reservation: You can have the application generate two work requests for a reservation - one for setup work and one for cleanup - by doing the following:
   • Set the Reservations generate Work Request? field to Yes for the trade or vendor for which you want to generate these work requests. See Define Trades and Define Vendors.
   • Associate reservations with this trade or vendor by adding:
     • The trade / vendor to a room arrangement type (for a room reservation). See Defining Room Arrangement Types.
     • The trade / vendor to a resource standard (for a resource reservation.) See Defining Resource Standards.
   • When you create room reservations using this room arrangement type, or resource reservations using this resource standard, the application creates the setup and cleanup work requests when the reservation is generated.
2. Review the work. Tradespeople or reservations managers can review the status of work requests generated from reservations for trades and vendors using the Review Current Work by Trade task.
3. Manage the work. Just as you would for any work request, you can manage the work using the Maintenance Console. See the next section, "How work requests generated from reservations are managed."

How work requests generated from reservations are managed

When the Reservations application or module creates work requests of problem types RES SETUP and RES CLEANUP, it does so utilizing standard Corrective Maintenance methods for advancing statuses, attaching to SLAs, and creating corresponding work order and/or activity_log records. These work requests follow the same workflow as other requests generated from Maintenance.

You can create your own SLA to manage work requests created for reservations, but if you don't, the default SLA handles the work. This default SLA auto-approves the work, giving it the status of AA, and assigns it to a work order as soon as the request is created.

Using work requests only

When your deployment is set to not use work orders (WorkRequestsOnly application parameter is set to 1), work orders and the work request status of Assigned to Work Order are not shown to the user, but rather are used by the application to track and manage the work. When you select 1 (Yes) for WorkRequestsOnly, the system assigns work requests to work orders in the background, and all work requests have a one-to-one relationship with work orders. The system still uses the 'AA' status, and renames the display value for that status to 'Approved.' In this case, the 'A' status is skipped because all SLAs auto-assign work requests to work orders and go directly to the 'AA' status.