ULab help - manage equipment & booking groups

Booking groups

Equipment booking groups allow you to create a set of related equipment that a user can book with one booking action, while reserving each piece of equipment in the booking set. Booking items in a set can be reserved in sequence or at the same time.

Equipment groups

Equipment groups allow you to group together identical/ similar equipment to allow users to book 'any one of' the equipment in the group. This feature also allows equipment owners to copy booking settings to all the equipment in the group, simplifying the management of identical equiment. 

To create an equipment group:

 Click on the equipment list link on the lab home page

 Under the list of equipment, click the add equipment group button

You will see the list of existing equipment groups (if any). Click on add new to create a new equipment group.

Enter the name for the equipment group, and select which equipment belong to the group.

- click the make group button

The group will be saved and then users will be able to select it from the lab home page.

Booking an item in an equipment group

From the lab home page, click on the booking group:

 Select the start and end date/time you wish to book then click find:

 The page will update and show you which of the equipment in the booking group is available in the time slot you have chosen:

Click on view calendar to book the item - this is then the same process as booking any other equipment item on ULab.

If there are no equipment available in the selected time slot, you can click on the +/- hour and +/- day buttons to change the date and time to find an available booking slot.

Booking settings

The equipment group allows the equipment owner to quickly copy the booking settings/options to all the equipment in the equipment group.

From the equipment listing page, click the booking settings link next to the equipment group:

 Simply click the copy booking settings button next to the item you have set up the various booking options for, and it will be copied to all the other equipment in the booking group.

 This removes the need to manually replicate any custom booking options you have created, including all the options such as booking managers, bookers, charging etc.