Serial / recurring bookings
Overview
Recurring bookings can be created by the administrators in the dashboard, and it can be enabled optionally for the normal users in the application. Generally, we only recommend using the serial bookings for special use case as an administrator. Before activating it for the users, please read our recommendations.
The following table shows you the configuration options for serial bookings:
| Settings | Options / Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Start date | Date | The series booking starts from this date. |
| From | Time | Start time of the booking on the respective day applies to each serial element. |
| To | Time | End time of the booking on the respective day applies to each serial element. |
| Frequency | Daily | The rule is repeated daily until the "end". |
| Weekly | The rule is repeated weekly on the selected days of the week until the "end". | |
| Every 2 weeks | The rule is repeated every 2 weeks on the selected days of the week until the "end". | |
| Every 3 weeks | The rule is repeated every 3 weeks on the selected days of the week until the "end". | |
| Every 4 weeks | The rule is repeated every 4 weeks on the selected days of the week until the "end". | |
| Monthly | The rule is repeated once a month. | |
| Days | M, T, W, T, F, S, S | For weekly repetitions, you can select the days of the week. |
| End | Repeat until... | The rule ends on a fixed day. |
| Repeat ... times | The rule ends after x repetitions. | |
| Repeat indefinitely | The rule never ends. |
Serial booking as an admin
Administrators can always create serial bookings, without limitation, in days. To do so, navigate as an administrator to Dashboard > Bookings > New booking. Here You can see at the second step Time selection a tab called Recurring.
The conflict checking is showing you if the user already created a reservation for another object, which may conflict with the reservation that you are planing to create. You can also ignore these conflicts.
All the created serial bookings are also listed in the admin area. You manage them there to see who created a serial booking and when.
Serial booking for normal users
A normal user can not create a serial booking by default and this is also recommended to stay like this, unless you have a very important reason to allow the normal users to create a serial booking.
To enable the serial booking in Flexopus for the normal users, navigate as administrator to Dashboard > Settings > Booking settings > Recurring bookings and enable the option Allow recurring bookings. Additionally, you can enable the forever bookings separately.
Once the option is enabled, the users will see, similar to the admin, a third date selection option in the booking flow.
Use cases for normal users
Meeting rooms
Most probably, you already use recurring bookings for meeting rooms in your daily business. For example, you create an event such as a project status meeting or a team meeting, which is supposed to be repeated on the weekly basis. For this event, you book a room for multiple participants.
In case you integrated Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange Online with Flexopus, the meeting room booking are going to be synchronized to Flexopus. In this case, Flexopus creates recurring reservations for the rooms as well.
Flexopus supports the recurring reservations to mirror the bookings into the Flexopus database to process the external bookings. Based on the synchronized bookings you can create statistics, show the status of the rooms on the live map, use the digital signage displays to book the free time slots or use the Flexopus application to book a meeting room.
In this case, you don't really need to enable for the users to book serial bookings in Flexopus, since they are able to do so in their calendar and the bookings get synchronized in the background to Flexopus.
Work stations and parking spots
You use Flexopus as a booking software for your hybrid office, where resources and objects can be booked on demand in flexible way. To have a working hybrid office concept, the objects need to be booked in advance, if they are needed. If the users are able to create a serial booking such as Monday to Friday, 08:00 - 18:00, forever, then you are back at the fixed seating and parking concepts. At some point, each desk will be booked by a serial booking. If every employee can create a serial booking, then the user's can book object's recurring bookings for the whole week, which can have a disadvantageous effect on the hybrid office concept. Therefor, we do not recommend enabling the recurring reservations for the parking spots and the work stations.
User cases for admin
Fixed seat assignment via serial bookings
Let's say that you have a department leader with a nice private office, which usually booked for the department leader. However, this department leader is willing to share the office with other, when he is on holiday, sick leave, business trip etc. In this case the department leader shall not book the office, but free it, when he is not on-site.
You can create a recurring reservation as an administrator with the following parameters: from Monday to Sunday, 00:00 - 23:59, never ending, check in for the future. This way the work station will be booked for the department leader for each day, having a separated booking per day. The department leader can see the booking for each day and delete the once, that are not needed for him. Doing so, the work station and the private office becomes available for the other colleagues.
The utilization of one of the best work stations will be better and the other colleagues gets the feeling the same rules applies for the department leader as well. The same applies for the parking spot as well. In this case the normal users can not book a serial booking, but you can create one, if it's necessary.
Temporary blocking an object
Let's say that you want to temporarily block an object for two weeks, because there is a technical issue with a work stations. You can create a recurring reservation for every day until a certain date and assign the object to a system user to book the object. To delete the temporary blocking, you can simply delete the recurring booking rule in the admin area.
Additional Notes
Unlimited forever bookings
After successfully creating a serial booking (= booking rule), individual bookings are created internally. This enables the user to release/delete individual bookings if, for example, the user is on holiday in a certain week. The individual bookings are created continuously up to the maximum booking limit - but up to a maximum of three years (1096 days = 3 x 365 + 1 days = ~3 years). After creating a serial booking, the rule is checked daily for “extension”, i.e. Flexopus checks whether new bookings need to be created in the next 1096 days.
To illustrate this with an example:
- If you create a recurring annual booking today (19 September 2022) that starts for forever on 26 September, Flexopus will create each booking in the next 1096 days. So a total of 3 entries will be created (26/09/2022, 26/09/2023, 26/09/2024). The 1096th day is 19.09.2025.
- The rule is then checked every day for the next 1096 days. For example, on 22.09.2022, the last day checked is 22.09.2025. No new entry needs to be created on that day because all entries have already been created by then.
- The next “create booking” event takes place on 26/09/2022, because on this day the last checked day is 1096 days later (26/09/2025), which is again a 26th of September. Flexopus creates this booking and thereafter no new booking is made for the next year.
Checking for booking conflicts
When creating the serial booking, conflicts are checked up to a maximum of three years into the future or, if available, up to the maximum booking limit in the future.
- If a conflict occurs during initial creation, the entire booking fails with a conflict error.
- If new bookings are created during the daily check and a scheduling conflict occurs, the system deletes the rule and does not create any further bookings for it. The previous bookings remain.
This conflict check should be sufficient in most cases, as:
- Administrators can configure a maximum booking period of 365 days for users. This means that no normal user can create a single booking that later leads to conflicts in a serial booking.
- Administrators can book up to the 1096-day mark in advance and no further into the future, so the above also applies to them.
- A future conflict can only lead to a rule being deleted if it conflicts with another rule. However, this is very unlikely. The three years catch most cases, but since there are leap years and "non-leap years" and each month has a different number of days, it is theoretically possible for two rules to conflict.