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Reservations of Buildings/Resources

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:22 pm
by meporter
I have noticed that the building scheduling function/reservations allows buildings and resources to be double or triple booked for the same date/time. It gives a warning of a potential conflict but still allows the event to be scheduled and does not notify the building scheduler (me) that a double booking has occurred. How can this be avoided? Am I missing something? Because of this we are telling members they still need to contact the building scheduler directly.

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:04 pm
by aebrown
meporter wrote:I have noticed that the building scheduling function/reservations allows buildings and resources to be double or triple booked for the same date/time. It gives a warning of a potential conflict but still allows the event to be scheduled and does not notify the building scheduler (me) that a double booking has occurred. How can this be avoided? Am I missing something? Because of this we are telling members they still need to contact the building scheduler directly.
I haven't seen this. Are you talking about events in both cases, or are you talking about reservations and events. Because reservations and events can indeed coexist at the same time -- only an event truly books a resource (see the thread Double-booking Hazard if "Blocked" was used on "Resource for a situation where someone confused those two concepts).

But in no case would anything like triple booking be possible if the system is functioning correctly (and as I said, I haven't heard of problems in this regard). Are people who are scheduling events indeed selecting the right locations and resources?

One situation that has happened to a few people is that they somehow end up with duplicate locations. In that case, some people reserve resources on one of the locations and others reserve in the other, and to the system there is no conflict. Is that a possibility?

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 2:37 pm
by aebrown
aebrown wrote:I haven't seen this.

Well, it appears there is a particular situation where double booking can happen with v2.0.1. See the thread Feature/bug: Building scheduler can double book resources on blocked reservation. Could that be what is happening to you?

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:08 pm
by meporter
Thank you for responding.

For example, if I go to Reservations and reserve a location and a resource and then go back to the Calendar and schedule an event for the same location, resource and time, it gives a warning, as follows, but still allows the event to be scheduled:

"You successfully created "test event 4" on 10 Jan 2012
FYI - A cursory search detected potentially conflicting event(s). Make sure to check all saved event(s) to ensure no unanticipated conflicts."

Other times it will appropriately block the event and not allow it to be scheduled. I cannot figure a rhyme or reason to it, but it is not reliable.

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:59 pm
by aebrown
meporter wrote:Other times it will appropriately block the event and not allow it to be scheduled. I cannot figure a rhyme or reason to it, but it is not reliable.

From what I can see so far, this problem seems to be limited to times that have Reservations. In that case, a building scheduler is supposed to be able to schedule an Event on top of the reservation. But even a building scheduler should never be able to schedule an event on top of an event (that uses the same resource).

My guess is that the logic that allows a building scheduler to schedule on top of a reservation also (unintentionally and erroneously) allows a building scheduler to schedule an event on top of an event -- if a reservation exists for that resource at that time. I'll have to do some more research to see if that theory holds up. If so, it will be somewhat comforting if the problem is limited to building schedulers.

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:59 pm
by russellhltn
Reservations do not prevent building schedulers from scheduling an event.

Reservations only block calendar editors who do not belong to the unit that the resource is reserved for.

Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:01 pm
by aebrown
RussellHltn wrote:Reservations do not prevent building schedulers from scheduling an event.

Reservations only block calendar editors who do not belong to the unit that the resource is reserved for.
That could explain what someone might call "double booking", but not "triple booking" as mentioned in the original post (unless the apparent bug mentioned earlier is in play here).

Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 5:59 am
by aebrown
aebrown wrote:My guess is that the logic that allows a building scheduler to schedule on top of a reservation also (unintentionally and erroneously) allows a building scheduler to schedule an event on top of an event -- if a reservation exists for that resource at that time. I'll have to do some more research to see if that theory holds up. If so, it will be somewhat comforting if the problem is limited to building schedulers.

I have confirmed this theory. It indeed only applies to building schedulers:
  • The problem only happens if there is a reservation for a resource at a given time.
  • If there is no reservation, an event will properly book a resource. Then no one (including a building scheduler) will be able to book that resource again at that time -- if they try to create an event using that resource, they will be told of the hard conflict and will be unable to save the event. That is exactly as it should be.
  • If there is a reservation, then a building scheduler can schedule an event for that resource and time. That is also correct.
  • But here's the problem. If there is a reservation reserving a resource and an event booking the resource scheduled by the building scheduler, then the building scheduler can schedule a second event for the same resource, and the event will be saved. The existing first event will be listed as a potential conflict, but not a hard conflict. This is definitely incorrect behavior.
  • Interestingly, if there is a reservation and an event scheduled by someone else, the building scheduler will not be able to schedule a second event on top of it.
  • Also, if the new event tries to schedule the entire location, a hard conflict will be reported (which is the correct behavior). The incorrect behavior of allowing the second event to be saved only happens when specific room(s) are selected.
  • And a regular editor never sees this problem -- even if the reservation allows an editor's unit to schedule a resource, the conflict checking works properly, and a second event for the same resource is disallowed.

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 3:28 pm
by meporter
Thank you!

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 11:04 am
by jdcr256
This bug is logged and will be fixed as soon as we can get to it.