automatically delete a booking

[jberanek]

Is there a way to automatically delete a booking reservation after 15 minutes without a claimer?

Reported by: *anonymous

Original Ticket: mrbs/support-requests/1445

[jberanek]

How would you know that it hadn't been claimed?

Original comment by: campbell-m

[jberanek]

We have an information desk with a person who books and then releases the rooms when students (university) come to claim them. Sometimes, students never show up the claim the room they have booked. We want to know if there is a way to automatically delete the booking when this happens.

Thank You.

Original comment by: *anonymous

[jberanek]

Not sure I understand this workflow, are you saying that bookings will only ever exist for 15 minutes or less?

Original comment by: jberanek

[jberanek]

No, when students show up at the information desk to book a study room, the person in charge of the information desk will book a study room (our policy is for 2 hours at the time) for the time and room number the student wants, and then when students show up later in the day to claim it, the same person at the information desk will release the room to them. As I said before, sometimes students never show up to claim the room, can we delete the booking automatically from the system if the student has not claimed the room after 15 minutes.

Original comment by: *anonymous

[jberanek]

I must be missing something here. Isn't your information desk person going to have to do something manually to MRBS for each booking: either to mark the booking as taken, or else to delete the booking if it's not? Assuming that the students are more likely to turn up than not, wouldn't it be easier just to delete the booking if they don't turn up?

Original comment by: campbell-m

[jberanek]

Makes sense what you are saying, but during exam periods a lot students show up at the information desk to either book study rooms or claim them, so to avoid traffic (line-ups) and help out the person in charge of the information desk.

Original comment by: *anonymous

[jberanek]

I am still lost. What does the information desk person do when someone turns up to claim a room?

Original comment by: campbell-m

[jberanek]

Every time students go to the information desk to book a study room (our policy to book a study room we need 2 students at least, and the room is booked for 2 hours) the person behind the desk clicks on the study room and the time if available that the student wants, (we customized the booking system with an input form that allows the scanner to directly fill the form with student id number) when the input form opened on the screen, the person of the information desk scans the student id number and books the study room. Later when the students come back to the information desk to claim study room, the person of the information desk will scan the student id number again to release the room. This is the process we use for booking study rooms. Just wnat to know if it is possible to have the system automatically delete a booking if the students have not claimed it after 15 minutes.

Original comment by: *anonymous

[jberanek]

OK, I'm beginning to understand. You'd have to modify MRBS so that when the student returns to claim the study room and you scan the student number, you find the reservation in MRBS and mark it as claimed. Then you'd have to have a cron job that runs, say, every 5 minutes and searches for bookings that are more than 15 minutes old and unclaimed and deletes them.

Original comment by: campbell-m

[jberanek]

Thanks for the quick response, we will try to create a cron job like you suggested.

Original comment by: *anonymous