Help adding custom functionality

[jberanek]

Hi, I would like to add some custom functionality to MRBS to allow for users to check the avaliablilty of some equipment we have for loan. I have attached an image of what I am trying to achieve. Basically, users should be able to see how many items are available, and an admin should be able to manually update these numbers.

I understand that this will require modification to the MRBS code, perhaps making a seperate version of admin.php, edit_area_room.php and other files. I'm also able to modify the sql database should I need to. I just want to ask if anyone has any tips on the best way to do this? Which files do I need to add and modify or are there simpler solutions using making use of the standard MRBS code? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks!

Reported by: *anonymous

Original Ticket: mrbs/support-requests/1184

Attachments: https://sourceforge.net/p/mrbs/support-requests/1184/attachment/Untitled.jpg

[jberanek]

Could the equipment (eg Arduino) be considered a "room"? Or is the equipment a separate resource that can be booked out at the same time as a room?

If the latter then this is quite a complex problem - unless you just treat the equipment and rooms as two separate resources (eg in two different areas) and then require users to make separate bookings for the room and the equipment in order to be able to hold a "meeting".

If the former, then can't you just create the equipment as a room? For example have an area called "Arduino" and then rooms called "Arduino 1", "Arduino 2", etc. Then you'll be able to see at a glance in MRBS how many Arduinos are free at any particular time.

Original comment by: campbell-m

[jberanek]

Hi Campbell, thanks for your suggestions! I didn't think of just treating the equipment as rooms. The only concern that I have is that each equipment is expected to be loaned for an extended period of time at any time, say a few days or weeks at a go. So I have some further questions:

1) Is it possible to change any setting so that users can just choose the dates they are loaning the equipment, rather than the exact time? Would just changing the resolution to 24 hours work or is there a better solution? 2) Currently the month and week view only show details for one room at a time, and with a large number of equipment it will be hard to get an overview of which equipment is available. Is there any way to get a better overview, such as in the screenshot or to display the month and/or week view all together?

Thanks for your help!

Original comment by: *anonymous

[jberanek]

Yes, you can change the resolution to 24 hours (or even say 12 hours with the day running from 0800 to 2000 for example).

Unfortunately you can only see one room at a time in the month and week views. For the general case where there might be dozens of rooms it's to organise the screen space, even though you can imagine particular solutions for cases where there are only a few rooms.

There is a case for a new view when the resolution is a whole day. This is quite a common scenario, eg for hotels, guest houses etc. Maybe one day we'll have such a view.

Original comment by: campbell-m