We are a Makerspace that use Discourse Calendar to manage room and equipment bookings. It can get very messy with people overlapping bookings and people booking equipment they do not have permission to use. So we are look for options to improve the processes.
Can Custom Wizard (or another plugin/or group of plugins) be used to simplify and verify Room and Equipment Booking
Some example conditions/context:
You can only book a room if you have the @Keyholder role
You can only book equipment if the room is booked (you don’t need to be the person who has booked the room - booking the room means the room is open for use for the specified time period for other people to come in a use the equipment)
You can only book the 3D printer if you have the @3DPrinter role
You cannot book equipment if someone has already booked it.
Ideally this will maintain relevant Topic(s) to update the calendar view
I’m still learning Discourse - so any thoughts, comments, pointing in the right direction would be useful
This is mostly possible with a combination of the Custom Wizard and Events plugins, however it would need a decent amount of testing, and probably some minor feature additions. It’s not something we’ve deployed before, but it’s definitely doable.
We can point you in the right direction documentation wise if you want to give it a shot yourself, or we can explore a consulting arrangement where you’d get some hands-on assistance with the process (with software support if / when needed).
I’m excited to see this come to life, as it’s an interesting use case (and I used to be the CTO of a co-working space where room booking was a big issue!).
Good to know it’s not just me who’s been thinking about Room bookings.
If you can point me in the right direction i’ll give it a stab - sadly we’re a volunteer ran organisation, so don’t have much money around for things like consultancy
