Workplace Services / Reservations

Create a Single Room Reservation

You can create a single room reservation for a unique event that will occur on one day.

When you set up a single room reservation, you first search for all available room arrangements that correspond with your search criteria for a given start date. You can then choose a room arrangement and define a time period for the reservation.

You also have the option to create a recurring room reservation for an event that occurs at regular intervals for a certain time period, such as each Monday at 2:00 PM for two months. For information, see Create a Recurring Reservation.

Rooms and Resources

In this topic you learn how to set up a single room reservation without adding resources for the room reservation.

You can set up resource reservations for a room reservation as a separate task. For information, see the Create a Resource Reservation topic.
You also have the option to set up a resource reservation while you are creating a single room reservation. For more information see the Create Room and Resource Reservations topic.

Room Availability

Before creating a room reservation, it is important to know that some rooms that you are trying to reserve may not immediately appear as available when you try to book them.

The most obvious reason that a room would not be available is because someone else has booked the room. If the room you want to book does not appear after you conduct your search, click the Check Alternative button to see all rooms, including those that are already booked. For more information, see Check for Reservation Alternatives.

In addition, for the general user (including the AFM user), the following variables determine whether a room arrangement will appear after you conduct your room search. Consult your business process owner for information on how these variables have been defined.

Note: Restrictions vary based on your role. For more information, see Understanding User Roles.

The room must be defined as reservable.
The user who is reserving the room arrangement must be a member of the group that is allowed to reserve the room arrangement.
The group size that you are requesting must be below the maximum capacity that is defined for the room arrangement and above the minimum required value.
You must be reserving the room arrangement after the maximum number of days ahead value and before the minimum number of days value (Announcement Number of Days Ahead) allowed before the reservation.
The room arrangement's or resource's Announcement Time - the cutoff date/time to make a reservation - must be later than the current date/time at the site where the room or resource are located.
If you are reserving on the final day a reservation is allowed, you must be reserving before the deadline reservation time (Announcement Time) value.
If you are inviting external guests, the room has to be defined as allowing external guests.
If you specify certain resources in your search, the selected resource standards must be allowed for this room.

Specifying a Single Reservation Time

When you create a single room reservation, you have a choice of two ways of specifying a reservation time:

You have the option to enter Time Start and Time End values in the restriction console. You can then select a radio button next to a room arrangement displayed in the timeline to select it.
Alternatively, you can use the graphical timeline to specify a time period for a room arrangement. To select a time period in the timeline, you click and drag your mouse over the time period.

The time period for the room arrangement that you selected is highlighted by green and yellow. For detailed information on using the timeline, see Understanding the Timeline.

The green area specifies the time of the actual meeting.
The yellow areas before and after the meeting time specify the setup time before the meeting and the cleanup time after the meeting.
The gray areas in the timeline define times when the room arrangement is not available.

To create a single room reservation without resources:

From the Process Navigator's Reserve Rooms and/or Resources process,select the Create New Room Reservation task.
Enter the date of the event in the Date Start field. (Enter a date after today's date.)
Enter Group Size and # of External Guests values.
Select Regular as the Reservation Type.
1. Note: After selecting Regular as the Reservation Type and clicking the Search button, you view the results for a Regular reservation. If you then change the Reservation Type to Recurring, you must click the Search button again to view your new results.
In the search console area, enter additional search criteria for the room reservation. Make sure to enter values for all required fields.
Click the Search button.
1. Available room arrangements for the date and search criteria that you specified are displayed. Room arrangements are ordered first by default arrangements then by capacity.
2. Any existing room reservations will appear as blue blocks. Double-click on a blue block to view detailed information on the existing reservation.
3. Some rooms might be established to have multiple configurations. For example, if a room can be divided into two sections using removable walls (sections A and B) the room can be used as A alone, B alone, or both A and B. If configuration A is already reserved, the search results will show that the configuration for using the entire room (both A and B) is marked as reserved. This is because the entire room cannot be reserved if part of it (configuration A) is already reserved. Likewise, the search results will show that configuration B is available. If you are considering reserving a room for whose other portion is being reserved at the same time, you may want to contact the reservation requestor and find out the details of the room use. You may prefer to choose another available room to eliminate any potential distractions from the adjoining configuration. To access more information about a reservation for a configuration, double-click on it in the timeline and review the information in a pop-up window.
Select a room arrangement and a time, such as 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, by clicking and dragging this time period in a room arrangement on the timeline.
Use the Next Day, Next Week, Previous Day and Previous Week buttons to review available room arrangements on other dates.
Change to a different room arrangement and time period by setting Time Start and Time End values. For example:
1. Specify the Time Start and Time End values of 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM in the restriction console.
2. Click the Search button.
3. When the search results appear, click on the radio button to the left of a room arrangement to select it. A reservation time of 1:00-2:00 PM appears on the timeline for the room arrangement that you selected.
Review information on the room arrangement you selected by clicking the "i" button in the left-hand column of the selected room arrangement.
1. Information on the room arrangement will be displayed. If there is an associated drawing for this room, the DWG Viewer will load to display the floor plan drawing, with the room you selected highlighted.
Notice whether there is an "A" icon for the selected room arrangement. Mouse-over this icon to see that this icon signifies that the room reservation requires approval.
Click the Next button to continue.
In the Confirm Room Reservations area of this page, click the Requested By button and select an employee such as Anderson, Caroline.
1. The system adds the specified employee as the value for both the Requested By and Requested For fields.
Select the Add Internal Employees button and choose an employee such as Adams, Albert. This specifies that Albert Adams will receive an email invitation to the meeting.
Click the Add External Visitor to invite an external visitor to the meeting.
Use the memo field to add instructions for sending meeting invitations to other email addresses.
Enter text in the Comments field as necessary.
Select the Confirm and Finish button to complete your reservation.
When you click Confirm and Finish, the system checks that the reservation's start time is later than the site's current time. It also confirms that the room arrangement's or resource's announcement time is later than the site's current time.
Review the reservation you created in the Reservation list.
1. Note that the Status of Reservation value is Confirmed if the room reservation does not require approval. If the room arrangement does require approval, the Status of Reservation value is Awaiting Approval.
You are now ready to proceed to another task.

Note: The application permits you to add more employees to a meeting than specified by the capacity of the room housing the meeting (the Employee Capacity field of the Rooms table). For example, if a room has a capacity of 3, the system enables you to add more than 3 employees to the meeting. This behavior considers the fact that some employees may be attending the meeting using remoting services and will not be physically present in the meeting room. Thus, you do not need to consider the physical space they would occupy and the capacity of the room.