Timetable and room booking system instructions From 22nd April 2013 the Department of Materials has adopted a new timetabling software system (joint with Earth Sciences and Engineering Science). The old MRBS room booking system has been depreciated and will shortly be removed. Timetable System http://timetable.earth.ox.ac.uk Contents Timetable and room booking system instructions... 1 Contact details in case of queries.... 1 Timetable Viewer... 2 How to view student timetables... 3 How to view bookings for all rooms for one week... 5 How to show bookings grouped by room... 7 Web room booking system... 8 How to make a booking... 8 How to make another booking... 10 How to change a booking... 11 Contact details in case of queries. Queries about timetabled teaching events should be addressed to Philippa Moss. Queries about room bookings should be addressed to reception staff Hettie Gonzalez 73680 or Rebecca Bradford 73777 (or Paul Warren 73727). Queries about these instructions (e.g. errors or omissions) or about any web pages (e.g. broken web links) or about the functionality of the system should be addressed to Paul Warren via itsupport@materials.ox.ac.uk Paul J Warren 20 th April 2013 1
Timetable Viewer Scientia Instructions April 2013 Timetable System http://timetable.earth.ox.ac.uk The timetables and room bookings for the 2012-2013 academic year are available at http://timetable.earth.ox.ac.uk/sws2012. This year ends at the end of August, after which the next academic year will start with at different address (2013) http://timetable.earth.ox.ac.uk/sws2013. There are a variety of forms for producing timetables of events whether by course, year, person, room or module. The examples below show several ways to view timetables. 2
How to view student timetables Scientia Instructions April 2013 Students are likely to want to display timetabled teaching events by course and by year. This example shows a Materials Science Year 1 student wanting to see their timetable for Next Week (which at time of writing happens to be Trinity Term Week 1). 3
Each timetabled event shows the topic name, the tutor s name and the room location with building abbreviations. HR: Hume-Rothery Building; HB: Holder Building; ETB: Engineering & Technology Building; BR: 21 Banbury Road; IEB: Information Engineering Building; SBS: Said Business School; Note that Weeks selector also offers Trinity Term or Trinity Term Week X. It is possible to use Ctl-click to select multiple items or Shift-Click to select a range of items (e.g. Trinity Term Week 1 through Week 8). If selecting a whole term, then the timetable system will combine consecutive weeks if they are identical. Whereas if shift-selecting the range of eight separate weeks it will display all eight weekly timetables in full separately. To keep this information for reference then just print the page, however note that one of the benefits of this system is that it is a live system which can be updated if there are any changes to the schedule (unlike the previous system of printed termly lecture timetables), therefore the expectation is that students should check the system at least weekly to see their up to date timetables. Provision of timetable information in ical format suitable for importing into student s personal calendar systems will become available soon and instructions will be added here. 4
How to view bookings for all rooms for one week Scientia Instructions April 2013 Staff and researchers are likely to want view by room since that displays all the ad-hoc room bookings for meetings in addition to the timetabled teaching events. Consider that you may want to view all Department of Materials bookings for all Materials Rooms for the whole of Next Week. (e.g. with the intention of seeing a summary of everything going on next week). 5
It is worth noting several features about the above view: - Note that in this example Next week is TT2013 Week 1 and the dates are not given. - Note that only timetabled teaching events include the name of the teacher in red. Any room bookings made via the web room booking system implicitly are not timetabled teaching events and do not have a teacher or course or year or module category etc. - Note that within each day the number of rows presented depends on the number of co-incident bookings. E.g. Monday has four rows because there are four events taking place in different rooms at the same time (14.00-15.00). - Note that each row contains events within different rooms. 6
How to show bookings grouped by room Consider that you may want to view all Department of Materials bookings for all individual rooms either by selecting just one room or by selecting multiple rooms. The example below shows an example for multiple rooms for Next week and just Monday. Note that the above view now shows the bookings for each room separately. Note that the web room booking system (below) offers rooms available for a specified date and time but does not show what other bookings already exist at that time. The above view is useful for users to check which rooms are available on a particular day at a particular time by providing information about all the bookings on the same day. 7
Web room booking system During the initial implementation stage for this new system access to the room booking system is being restricted to reception staff and other administrative staff. When we have more experience of using the new system it should be possible to roll out access more widely. If you are not able to see the following screenshots after authenticating via webauth then you need to contact reception staff (email to Hettie Gonzalez 73680 and Rebecca Bradford 73777) who will make bookings on your behalf. You should check room availability as above (probably following instructions for How to show bookings grouped by room. How to make a booking Starting at http://timetable.earth.ox.ac.uk follow link to Web Room Booking Location: select which Department that you want the system to offer rooms within (e.g. Department of Materials) Next if you want the system to offer only specific types of rooms then select room type (eg. Lecture Room or Meeting Room). If you already know which specific rooms you want to choose from then click view filtered rooms and then select the desired rooms using the tick-boxes in last column. Date: select the required date from the calendar. If you want to book a series of events click the Select multiple days/weeks. However note that it is probably better to repeatedly add single bookings such that if one booking needs to be moved, then you need only delete and recreate that one booking rather than deleting/recreating the whole series. Time: select the desired start time and end time for the event. Click Next to see what rooms are available that match your location, date and time criteria. 8
Tick the tick-box in the left hand column for the room(s) that you want to book for your event. Note that if your desired room is not listed that means that the room either was not in your selection or the room is already booked. The icon in the middle of each row can be used to look at the existing bookings for that room but not the unlisted/booked room! To find out what is already booked you need to view all the bookings for that day via the separate Timetable Viewer interface. Finally the system asks for some basic information about the booking. The most important field is the bottom Booking Description however the system requires Email, Firstname, Lastname and Booking Size. Note that the First Name and Last Name information is displayed on the booking and does not have to be your own name (e.g. when booking an event for someone else) although it is helpful to know who made the booking so I would recommend using your own name and using the Booking Description field to say who the booking is actually for. 9
The booking is confirmed (and each booking has a unique reference). If you only wanted to make one booking, then you are all done. How to make another booking After making your first booking as above you may now want to book another event. Using the Book Another button allows you to keep the existing parameters but then go back and modify the day/week. The following images show the procedure for booking the same event but in the following week. 10
Click Book Another, but now the system cannot offer the room you just booked already so click Back, select the next date (e.g. the following week), note that all the other parameters are retained as before, then click Next and select the desired room and click Next and modify the Booking Description if necessary before confirming the booking, with the parameters retained from before except for having to enter a Booking Size again! How to change a booking The only way to change a booking is for the person who made the booking to delete the incorrect booking and then for a new booking to be made. This may be awkward if it becomes necessary to move an existing booking to a different room. If you made a booking which needs changing you should go to my bookings at the bottom of the page. All your bookings are listed chronologically and a Cancel button is provided. (it is at this point that you might regret having booked a series of events because if you only need to change one event you have to cancel the whole series.) 11