We have a few Filemaker application developed in-house for our admin department. We are looking to add a booking system to manage our resources -> Rooms.

We like to know whether we can do the following with SE.

1. Users can make a booking for certain rooms at certain date and time. We need to record the user name and the room number. We like to use certain color code to indicate this is a booking for the room. Sometime the rooms are under maintenance for a few days. We want to be able to indicate that by another color code.

In the weekly and monthly view, we want to be able to see what are rooms under booking or under maintenance, indicated by the color code

2. When users show up, they will have to sign in. We will like to call up this booking and update the status to "In Use". When this happen, the color code will change to different color. In daily view, we want to to be able to see what are the rooms currently in-use

3. When users have done with the room, they will sign out and we will reset the in-use color code. In the same way, when the maintenance are done, we will reset the color code.

From your screen shot, you have different color code for type of appointment. We hope we can do the same for the our room status.

Many thanks

Visiting wrote:1. Users can make a booking for certain rooms at certain date and time. We need to record the user name and the room number.

Sounds good, the SE edition will let you book the resource (room) for a given date and time and associate the appointment with a "user" (short list of people) or a "client" (long list of people). The room number could be the name of your resource, or you could add a few fields to the resources table to describe your resources (room number, capacity). (Though you can use the resource "type" to indicate your capacity, letting you filter by capacity to see available rooms.

Visiting wrote:We like to use certain color code to indicate this is a booking for the room. Sometime the rooms are under maintenance for a few days. We want to be able to indicate that by another color code.

I'd do this using the appointment type, using some colors for various types of booking and other colors for the type "maintenance". In this way, when a room is in maintenance (or "planned maintenance") you'd create appointments for the maintenance duration. (CC Calendar supports multi-day events.) This allows maintenance to show up on the scheduling tab, participate in conflicts, etc.

Visiting wrote:In the weekly and monthly view, we want to be able to see what are rooms under booking or under maintenance, indicated by the color code.

Cool. All the calendar views will filter by this appointment "type" and that type color will show up on all these views.

Visiting wrote:2. When users show up, they will have to sign in. We will like to call up this booking and update the status to "In Use". When this happen, the color code will change to different color. In daily view, we want to to be able to see what are the rooms currently in-use.

I think creating an appointment type for "In Use" would work well here as well. That type color would then show all all views.

Visiting wrote:3. When users have done with the room, they will sign out and we will reset the in-use color code. In the same way, when the maintenance are done, we will reset the color code.

I can see resetting maintenance to "Maintenance Completed" but in the usage I'd recommend, the status of a room is *really* the status (type) of an appointment in a room. This provides many advantages, among them that a room can have multiple statuses at the same time (maintenance cancelled along side "pending meeting", for instance). It also lets you keep a history of room usage.

Visiting wrote:From your screen shot, you have different color code for type of appointment. We hope we can do the same for the our room status.

Again, you could certainly create a new resource (room) attribute for "status" and create the relationships needed to color it, but I believe you'd have a more accurate and flexible system if the statuses you've described were attributes of the appointment instead of attributes of the room. Among the other advantages this offers is it easily lets the status itself have a duration (how long is the room in maintenance?). Since these status-appointments don't go away, you could also search for the maintenance history of a room, for example, without any additional programming.

Hope that helps,

John