Introduction

After the intake in which the lab and equipment have been assigned, an account for the SSH Lab Booking Tool will be created. It is obliged to book the lab, when you will use it. Even it is for a training or pilot session. Researchers who share a lab must coordinate their schedules among themselves. The Booking Tool is also used to monitor lab occupancy and schedule maintenance. Information about using this booking tool will be sent by email after the account has been created.

TES RoomBooking, is the calendar platform used for booking slots in the SSH research labs, including labs at the Sylvius, Pieter de la Court (PdlC/Agora) and FGW.

Below you will find instructions, tutorials and F.A.Q. for most common activities on RoomBooking.

Additionally, official support documentation from TES RoomBooking can be found here:

• All support documentation
• General user guide.

General Information

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Questions and Contact

Contact for questions related to

• Accounts and booking permissions, the Labmanager:  labmanager-ssh@leidenuniv.nl .
• Use and functionality of RoomBooking: labsupport-ssh@leidenuniv.nl

Accounts

Getting an Account

Staff and students do not automatically have an account on RoomBooking.

To request an account, please use the SSH Request Form (form not available yet contact labmanager directly)

For account request not covered by the SSH Form, please contact the Labmanager (Questions & Contact)
Please be as descriptive as possible in your request (e.g. include project name, PI name, type of account desired, and reason for the request).

Account Types

Technically RoomBooking only knows two real types of accounts: users and admins, but we distinguish between various functional account types based on their intended use and the assigned permissions.

• Project account:
  An account that can be used by all members of a project / study. Login details can be shared. Booking permissions and viewing permissions are specific to the labs assigned to the project.
• Principal Investigator (PI) account:
  A personal account for a PI (senior staff member). Should only be used by the PI. Grants access to all the project accounts (and permissions) associated with the PI. May have extended viewing permissions.
• Labcoordinator account:
  A personal account for labcoordinators. Generally speaking these don't have booking permissions but have viewing permissions for all the labs instead.
• Researcher account:
  In rare cases a (non-PI) researcher may want or need to have a personal account. Booking permissions will be set in consultation with the Lab manager.
• Student: most relevant in cases many students need the exact same booking rights (e.g. to an analysis room), unrelated to a particular research project.

Booking Permissions

Booking permissions refer to the ability to make reservations in the various SSH labs.

Usually, this is limited to the specific labs assigned to a particular research project, e.g. the ability to book sessions in a specific EEG lab.

Although in some cases accounts can receive broader booking or viewing permissions (see also Account Types).

Booking permissions are generally requested as part of a project submission, through the SSH Request Form and are set when the account is created. (form not available yet contact labmanager directly)

For anything else, please contact the Labmanager (Questions & Contact)

Extensions

If you need to extent booking permission for a research project, please use the SSH Request Form and select the "Extensions for lab reservation permission" option.(form not available yet contact labmanager directly)

For all other extension request, please contact the Labmanager (Questions & Contact)

Getting Started

Log in

Go to: https://leiden.roombookingsystem.co.uk/user/  and log in using the login details sent to you email (or shared with you by your PI / Supervisor)

Interface

The screen should look something like below.

Categories: Under the Categories heading, you will see the available types of labs (e.g. VR labs or cubicle labs). Categories of labs are separate for each location, such as Pieter de la Court (PdlC/Agora). Note, you will only see labs that you have viewing and/or booking permissions for. This will be very limited for most accounts.

Day / Week view: You can switch between a day or week based overview of bookings, in the left menu:

Select Room: in the Week View of the calendar, you will see one lab/room of the selected Category, for instance the Sylvius has multiple VR labs. Using the dropdown menu underneath the Select Room heading, you can switch between available rooms.

When using the Day View of the calendar instead, the available rooms will be shown side-by-side instead, and you can use horizontal scrolling if necessary to view all the labs.

More Info: For more general info on the interface, see the RoomBooking General user guide.

Booking a Lab

Simple booking

To make a simple (one-time, one-lab) booking:

1. Select the desired lab (Category + Room)
2. Navigate to the desired date
3. Click on the starting time
4. Adjust the end time if needed
5. Optionally, fill in the remaining booking notes:
   • Description [Optional]: this is mostly relevant if the booking was not made by (or on behalf) of a Project account.
   • Phone Number Experimenter [Required]: phone number for the researcher/experimenter present for this session (may be work phone number). If this isn't known at the time of booking yet, fill in "tbd" and make sure to update it later!
   • Participant [Optional]: Here you can indicate if you have a participant for this booking. You can of course update this later as well. This is particularly useful if you share a lab with other researchers, as they may reach out to you (and vice-versa) to request to take over unused bookings (see also Sharing a Lab).
   • Activity [Optional]: the type of, e.g. data collection, setup & development, testing or maintenance.
6. Finally, click on "Book"
7. To see the booking notes of an existing booking, you can hover over the booking, or if it is your own booking, click on it to edit it. (Booking notes can also be viewed in the Bookings tab)
   

Multi-lab Bookings

If you wish to book session in multiple labs of the same Category at once (e.g. in all the VR labs available to you):

1. Start a booking as usual, but click on More Options
2. Select and select the relevant labs in the Room / Resource tab.
3. Note: only rooms that do not have a conflicting booking on the selected time will be shown.
4. Finalize the booking by clicking on  "Edit Booking"
5. Multi-lab booking can be later be edited (or cancelled) as an entire series
   

Recurring Bookings

If you wish to book a recurring session, e.g. every Monday at 10.00 for two months:

1. Start a booking as usual, but click on More Options
2. Go to the Recurrence tab
3. Select the appropriate recurrence pattern and range
4. Click on "Check Recurrence" to make sure the recurrence is as expected
5. Any booking conflicts will be shown in red, and if available, you can select different rooms for those times. If you do not, no booking will be made for the conflicting dates.
6. Finalize the booking by clicking on "Edit Booking"
7. Recurring bookings can be edited (or cancelled) per instance, or for the whole series
8. For more info on recurrent booking see the RoomBooking guide.
   

Adding Attendees

The last tab in the extended booking menu allows you to add Attendees to the booking.

Attendees are notified by email of the booking details, when the booking is changed or cancelled. Most email clients will also allow the recipient to note the details in their calendar.

The attendees feature may be useful to keep project members up-to-date on their personal email, or to confirm session details with a participant.

To add attendees:

1. Start a booking as usual, but click on More Options
2. Go to the Attendees tab
3. To add an existing user of RoomBooking as an attendee, you can use the address book.
4. To add someone without an account, simply manually fill in the fields
5. Finalize the booking by clicking on  "Edit Booking"
   

Keeping track of Bookings

There are multiple ways to keep track of your bookings:

Bookings View

In addition to the Calendar View, the Bookings View will give you a list of all your booking, which can be filtered by lab or date. Booking can directly be edited or cancelled from this view as well.

By default the Booking View will only show you your own booking. However, you can select "All" under the User heading to see all bookings in the rooms you have access to.

Attendees

Attendees can be added to bookings, these will be notified by email of the booking details and any made changed or deletions. For example, you can use this feature to add your personal email (or project member emails) to bookings made from a Project account.

Calendar Feeds

It is also possible to create a calendar feed from your account to add to Outlook or any other calendar application. Be aware that it may take up to an hour for new bookings to show up on the calendar feed.

1. Go to the Bookings View
2. Click on "Subscribe to Feed" and choose the desire application
3. OR right-click on "Subscribe to Feed" select Copy Link and use the link in your application of choice. E.g for Outlook:
   
4. For more information from RoomBooking on calendars feed see here.

Sharing a Lab

When a lab is shared between multiple researchers and/or projects, you can take steps to use the available time as efficiently as possible.

A important factor in making this work in ensuring your booking information is always up to date, i.e.

• Have the relevant experimenter contact information in the booking notes
• Update the participant status so that other users know (and vice-versa) if slots are potentially unused

Contact Scheduled Experimenter

Check the booking note information, by hovering over the booking body to find contact information for the experimenter.

Contact Booking Owner

It is possible to send an email directly to the owner of a booking.

1. Go to Booking View
2. Make sure "All" is selected under the User  heading to see booking from other users of the lab
3. Hover over the relevant booking to reveal the email icon on the right
4. Click on the email icon to send an email directly to the booking owner
5. Note: the recipient can only reply to the email associated with your RoomBooking account. So if you want them to contact you in any other way (e.g. different email address or by phone) make sure to include that in the email text.
   

Request Booking Transfer

Finally, it is possible to directly request a booking owner if you can take over a booking. For instance if you see that a booking for later in the day does not have a confirmed participant yet.

1. In the Calendar View
2. Left-click on a booking from another user.
3. Include a text message and send the request.
   
4. The booking owner will be sent an email, and will also be notified in RoomBooking.
   
5. Once the booking owner accepts or rejects the request, you will be notified by email.

PI Project Management

Generally, each research project / study will receive its own Project account, which can be used by all the members of the project (e.g. students, PhD's, etcetera).

As a Principal Investigator (PI), you may be involved with multiple such projects. With a PI account you will be able to access all the Project accounts associated with you and view, make, edit or cancel bookings on behalf of them.

1. Go to Calendar View or Week View
2. Under the "Add Booking for User" or "User"  heading, select the relevant project account. Note: Project accounts always start with an underscore e.g.: "_TastyMRI, 2023"
3. You can now book on behalf of the selected account.
4. Some important notes:
   • Booking permissions: Even though you are booking on behalf of another account, you have the combined booking permissions of all associated Project accounts. This means that you could potentially make a booking for Project A in a room that actually only Project B has permissions for. In other words: be mindful of booking in the appropriate labs for the selected account.
   • Email notification: notifications for bookings on behalf of a Project account will only go the email address associated with that Project account. If you wish to receive email notifications as well, you can for instance add yourself as an Attendee to the booking.
   • Calendar feed: using the calendar feed from a PI account only shows you the bookings that you made on your own account, not those made on behalf of Project accounts. Since calendar feed links are public, you can retrieve the calendar link by logging in to the relevant Project account instead.
   • Multiple PI's: Project accounts can only be linked to one PI account at a time, if you wish to change ownership of a Project account to a different PI account, please contact the Labmanager (Questions & Contact)
     
   • Project account email:
     Project accounts are usually assigned the email address of the PI. Often it is advisable to then change this email address to that of one of the other project members (who will be mainly responsible for making the bookings). See here for changing account info
     If for some reason a PI needs to get back access to a Project account and is unable to do so themselves, please contact the Labmanager (Questions & Contact).

Changing Account Info

Most information related to an account (including email address) can be changed by the user, by clicking on the "My Account" button at the bottom left:

Please adhere to the following rules.

For Project Accounts, the naming conventions is:

• First Name: Year of the project (e.g. "2023")
• Last Name: _ProjectTitle (e.g. "_EmotionalFaces")

For PI Accounts, Student Accounts or other personal accounts, the email address must be the PI university email.

FAQ