Creating Reservations for Conference Calls

For some deployments, it is important to know how many attendees are expected to be physically present for a meeting, rather than knowing the number of invitees, some of whom might attend the meeting remotely. This information can be useful for setup personnel, and for reports that capture capacity use. For these reasons, the application enables you to track the # of Attendees in Room. See Capturing the number of attendees physically present for a meeting for more information on the Capacity field.

When creating conference calls (before confirming the reservation), each time you enter a value in the Capacity field in the Filter, and click Apply Filter, the application sets the # of Attendees in Room (reserve_rm. attendees_in_room) field for each room in the conference call to the Capacity value in the Filter console. This will overwrite any manual modifications you made to the individual rooms via the Edit Room Reservation pop-up window on the timeline.

Tip: When creating conference calls, make changes to the # of Attendees in Room field for individual rooms after you have selected your rooms and no longer need to use the Filter. This way the application will not overwrite these changes to specific rooms. For information on how editing conference call reservations affects the value in the Capacity field, see Editing conference calls and the Capacity field.

For reporting, each room reservation in a conference call is treated as a separate reservation. Since attendees are not assigned to a specific room, all attendees will be added to each reservation in the conference call when calculating capacity utilization for reporting. Be aware that this will artificially increase the average capacity use for the Room Capacity Utilization report.

To get a more accurate total for conference calls in reports, you can edit the value for the # of Attendees in Room field for each room directly from the timeline by clicking on the room's reservation, and changing the value in the Edit Room Reservation pop-up window. However, be aware that whenever you make an entry in the Capacity field and click Apply Filter, the application overwrites the # of Attendees in Room field with the capacity entered. For this reason, you should make changes to the # of Attendees in Room field when you no longer need to use the Capacity field to locate specific rooms. This way the application will not overwrite the changes you make.

If you do need to make subsequent room selections using the Capacity field as a filter criteria, making changes from the timeline pop-up window is the easiest way to update the # of Attendees in Room field to more accurately reflect attendance.

Step 1. Finding rooms for conference calls

1. Working from the Filter Console, you enter criteria to find rooms suitable for your conference call.
   • Date and Time: Select a date from the calendar, and enter the time for the meeting in the From and To fields.
   • Time Zone: By default, the Time Zone fields shows the time zone for the logged-on user. This can be changed if needed. The time zone is applied to the From and To time fields you enter, so the availability for a building is shown using this time zone. If the logged-on user doesn't have a location, and no time zone is entered, the time zone for the default application server is used.
   • Locations: Select the buildings where you want there to be rooms available for the conference call. By default, the Filter includes only the building associated with the logged-on user. However, you can select multiple buildings to find rooms. There are four fields to specify single buildings, and a fifth field from which you can select as many buildings as you need. If you select buildings in different time zones, their availability is shown using the time zone you enter in the Filter.
   • Video conferencing equipment (optional): If needed, select a room arrangement type or room attribute to find appropriate rooms for video conferencing. Your business process owner can optionally define room arrangement types or fixed resources that are associated with rooms that have the necessary equipment for video conferencing.
   • Capacity: Capacity is an optional field that restricts the timeline to show only rooms that can accommodate the capacity you enter. Whether or not you enter a Capacity in the Filter, you can review the room's capacity by mousing over the room on the timeline, or by clicking the Room ID to access the Room Information pop-up window. See Conference Calls and the Capacity field.

   Note: When you select rooms in multiple buildings, the same filtering options are applied to all buildings.

   Tip: To clear the arrangement type, external guest check, time frame, and attribute selections from the Filter, click Clear. When you click Clear, the selected buildings are not removed, but the timeline refreshes to reflect the other changes you make. To remove the buildings, you can clear the Building fields.

2. Click Apply Filter and the time line shows rooms that meet the criteria you entered. The number of rooms that are shown for each building is controlled by and application parameter, TimelineMaxRoomsPerBuilding. See Configuring Parameters for the Reservations Application.

Step 2. Selecting rooms

Rooms that match the criteria you entered in the Filter appear in the time line. Otherwise, if you do not specify a time frame in the Filter, you can select a room by clicking and dragging the time in the time line. The time period in the Filter is updated when you drag a time frame on the time line,

Once a time frame appears in the Filter, each room on the time line has a check box. You can add or remove rooms to the reservation by clicking the check box for that room. If the room is available, it becomes selected. If not available, an error pop-up informs you of this, and the room does not become selected.

When you drag a time period on the time line, the time periods for all selected rooms are updated to match this newly selected time period. Rooms not available for this new time period are removed from the selection. A notification "Selection changed" appears on the panel header. To see which rooms were removed, hover over the notification and a tooltip provides this information.

Each time you select a room arrangement or configuration in the Timeline, the application performs the following checks:

• If another arrangement of the same room and configuration was selected previously, it will be unselected

• If you previously selected a configuration that is excluded for your present selection, that configuration will be unselected.

Step 3. Adding Attendees

Attendee availability is shown on a separate timeline using the time zone entered in the Filter Console. As the requestor, you can add and remove attendees just as you can in the Create Room Reservation view.

Note: Equipment, services, and catering are not displayed when creating a conference call reservation. You add these resources to each room separately by editing the individual room reservation.

Step 4. Confirming the reservation

After selecting the rooms and optionally adding attendees, you can confirm the reservation.

1. In the Create Conference Call Reservation form, click Confirm Reservation.

   The Confirm Conference Call Reservation form appears. The Location field on the Confirmation view lists all rooms selected for the conference call, in the same order as on the time line. Each location is shown on a separate line.

2. In the Confirm Reservation form, you can assign the chargeback costs for all rooms to a single division and department. If all the rooms are not assigned to the same department, you can change the chargeback for individual rooms by editing the individual room reservations. See Editing a single reservation.

   Note Costs are calculated for all dates and rooms. Since resources are not added when creating a conference call, these resource costs are calculated (but not shown) on the Confirmation pane when editing all locations of a conference call reservation. After submitting, you can check the total cost of each reservation, including resources, by clicking the Details button of the reservation in View and/or Edit My Reservations.

3. Enter the Subject Line for the email notification.
4. Click Submit.
   • The notifications sent to the requestor and attendees will indicate only the primary location of the meeting in the Location field. The primary location is the first room selected on the time line.
   • The other locations are listed in the meeting body on Exchange. When ARCHIBUS Reservations Extension for Microsoft Exchange is not used, the locations are included in the calendar event description of the generated ICS invitations.
   • The list of locations in the comments field will be generated according to a template defined in a localizable message CONFERENCE_CALL_LOCATIONS.

     The following image is an example of the list of locations:

**************************************************

Additional locations to join this meeting by conference call:

HQ-17-101

BRUSOFF-02-203

ROMEOFF-03-312

BUENOS2-05-524

***************************************************

Each location will be formatted on a separate line, matching the formatting done for single reservations in both Web Central and the Reservations Plugin for Outlook

If any of the individual room reservations are later on modified, rejected, or cancelled, or if someone edits the conference call reservation, the application replaces the additional locations content.

• The Location field of a meeting in any calendar application will only indicate the primary location. The others are listed in the meeting body in Exchange and in description for .ics files
• Invitations (Exchange and .ics): All attendees will receive the invitation including all location information

Step 5. Adding resources to specific room locations as needed

If resources are needed for any of the room reservations included in the conference call, you add them to each reservation individually. See Creating a Resource Reservation.

To create a conference call from the Reservations Plugin for Outlook:

1. From the Room Finder task pane, click Add Rooms to select multiple rooms for the conference call.
2. Locate available rooms by using the filter in the Add Room popup window.
3. Select the rooms you want to reserve, and click Add Room.

   The currently selected room is added to the list of selected rooms on the Conference call task pane, and in the meeting body. The Conference Call task pane lists the rooms in order; the first room in the list is the primary room.

   Note:  If you enter a value in the Capacity field in the filter, the Reservations Plugin for Outlook copies that value to the number of attendees field for the room.

4. Add additional rooms as needed:

   Note:  Each time you add or remove a room, the list of rooms is also updated in the meeting body. You can always edit the meeting body freely, but be aware that the locations' section in the meeting body is reset each time you add or remove a room.

5. View room details, and specify the number of attendees:
   • Select a room in the list to display details on the lower half of the Conference Call task pane, and to specify the number of attendees that are expected to attend in that room. The PlugInCapacityRequired activity parameter determines whether specifying the number of attendees in each room is required. See Configuring Parameters for the Reservations Application and the Reservations Plugin for Outlook, and Capacity field provides the number of attendees physically present.
   • To view additional room details, click the information icon for the room.
6. Change or remove any unavailable rooms. When a room becomes unavailable, for example, when you change the meeting time, the application marks this room with a red x icon next to the information icon in the panel showing the selected rooms. You must change or delete the unavailable rooms before saving.
7. Click Save.

   When you save the meeting, the application first verifies that all selected rooms are available. If any room is no longer available, the process is aborted.

If a reservation has no attendees and ARCHIBUS Reservations Extension for Microsoft Exchange is not used, the application sends regular email notifications to the requestor instead of ICS invitations.

A conference call reservation without attendees generates an email to the reservation requestor showing the details of the primary room reservation. All rooms booked for the conference call reservation are listed in the comments section. The link included in the email opens a view with the details of the primary room reservation.

This applies to both single- and multi-room reservations. For multi-room reservations, only one email is sent each time (as opposed to a separate email for each room). This email shows only the details of the primary room (or the room that was just modified). All locations are always included in the comments section.

Note the following about the templates used:

• The locations reserved for a conference call are listed in the meeting body text instead of in the location field, according to the CONFERENCE_CALL_LOCATIONS message template. All locations are listed (including the primary location).
• The Reservations Plugin for Outlook retrieves the processed template from the server each time you change the selection of rooms.
• The template defines the formatting of each room in the list. By default, it includes a link to the room information view for each room
• You can configure the location field shown in the Meeting window for conference call reservations through the CONFERENCE_CALL_MEETING_LOCATION message template. The application does not apply any substitutions in this template, only this text is shown there.

If an approver rejects a single reservation for a conference call, the requestor and attendees are notified

The updated ics or Exchange notification will show the remaining rooms

If no more rooms are available, the meeting is cancelled instead of updated