Room booking: blocked room and non-reservable room difference

Administrators
1

I saw that you have 2 different ways of making a room non reservable:

  • Define a period during which the room cannot be booked (except by the owner)
  • Mark it as blocked

I was wondering what is the actual difference as both approaches seem to make the room non-reservable. There is a warning that when you block a room it should not be during a long period. Is there any reason for that?

Michel

2

When blocking a list of rooms for a specified period of time you can still define a list of authorized users/groups that are able to book the room nonetheless.

3

Thanks. But it doesn’t explain why it should be used for short periods only…

I played a little bit more with the room blocking and I think I now understood the difference with the declaration of non-reservable periods: only the room owner (and room booking admins) can define non-reservable periods whereas anybody can request a room to be blocked with the actual blocking effective after reservation by the room owner. Is it right?

That said, I find the blocking management a weak area in the room blocking. In particular, the blocking request is sent to the room owner but is not visible in the room details. It would be good to see it and allow a room booking admin to validate it if the room owner is not available, in case of emergency.

Along the same line, it would be good to see the blocked periods in the room details (in addition to the calendar, similarly to non-reservable periods) to allow the room owner or room booking admins to unblock it if necessary. Currently, if I’m right, only the person who did the blocking (not mentioned in the calendar view or in the room details) can cancel it.

I now understand better why it should not be used for long periods!

4

Yes, this is right. The “blocking” system allows event organizers to request the room owners for permission to “block” their rooms for a period of time.

5

Thanks for the confirmation… but my other remarks still apply! Did I miss something? Would you like me to open an issue to follow-up on them?

6

You can go to “My blockings”, uncheck the filtering criteria (gives you all blockings) and then click on the room. If you have “Admin Override” enabled, you will have the option to validate it yourself:

image

I agree that it could be interesting to have an indication of this request on the room dialog. And I agree with you on the room details too.

7

Playing more with blocked rooms, I now find that room blocking is a great feature to mark options when you are organising a meeting but no final date has been decided yet. The only drawback that I see it that room blocking is defined by full days. Any good reason, it is not possible to request a blocking for a time interval during a period (that can be one day). This would avoid blocking the room for a full day if you need it for a meeting that last a few hours…

8

Any good reason, it is not possible to request a blocking for a time interval during a period (that can be one day).

The feature was initially developed to block groups of rooms for conferences. So, only day granularity was needed. Adding time granularity would of course complicate things.