Facilities scheduling will improve room reservation process
The days of back-and-forth emails and phone calls trying to reserve a room at Lee are soon to be over, thanks to the new Facilities Scheduling application being made available to students and staff by IT Systems.
IT Systems is currently perfecting the technology that will allow members of the Lee community wishing to reserve an on-campus facility to do so online, rather than by less efficient means.
“The new software is more centralized and user oriented,” Business Analyst LeAnn McElrath said. “Students can now see what rooms are available at what time, and there’s a filter for specific criteria.”
In the past, students had to call or email Director of Special Events Kim Brooks or her secretary Abby Black to ask if a certain room was available at a certain time.
Brooks or Black would then review reports from different departments on room availability, before replying to the student and contacting the person in charge of the room to reserve it.
The new tool eliminates a step on each side of the process. Instead of asking if a facility is available, students, faculty and staff can see for themselves when the place they desire is already booked.
In addition, those who do not have a certain room in mind but do need a room with certain criteria (such as specific seating capacity) can use the filter function to find rooms that meet their needs.
On the user side, Facilities Scheduling removes an element of stress from event planning. Not only can planners use it to find rooms that have everything they need, but they can also look at the schedule in advance before setting the date or general time frame for their event.
The new software has advantages on the administrative side as well.
In fact, McElrath said Kim Brooks was the one who found the software and suggested that they try it. With the advent of Facilities Scheduling, the person in charge of the room simply receives an email to approve a pending reservation request.
“All the [administrative] staff who will be using it have been trained, too,” McElrath said.
As for user training, McElrath has created a How To Guide through Portico that goes through all the steps of reserving a room, from logging in to Portico to hitting the “Submit” button. These submissions will hopefully make scheduling easier for everyone.