Calpendo has always been a deeply configurable system, and with the new reality many facilities are now facing with the need for social distancing, we are able to support these required changes within your system.


In this KB, we will cover some ideas for how Calpendo can support social distancing through restricting user numbers in your facility.  For each of the methods outlined below, we would recommend talking to the support team, as these additional configuration requirements would need to take into account existing configuration already within the system.  To submit a request to the team, please email support@exprodo.com


TABLE OF CONTENTS


About the Double Booking rule


Calpendo includes a number of booking rules which can be used to control your bookings.  One of the frequent ones in use in our facilities is the No Double Bookings Rule, which as the name says, controls double bookings.  However, we can do some interesting things with it.  We will now take you through some scenarios which we can use this rule for, and how it could help you with social distancing.


Prevent more than one booking at the same time for the same resource


This type of configuration is used with a number of facilities. It ensures that no one can make a simultaneous booking for the same resource.  However, if you have an office space in your facility where previously one did not need to make bookings, for that we could implement this rule for that office space. If it's added as a resource to Calpendo, and by increasing the number of allowed simultaneous bookings to 4, you would ensure that your office space could only be booked by up to four people at a time.


Allow only one booking at a time across multiple resources.


The double booking rule can be customised to only allow one booking at a time over a range of resources.  This could obviously suit you if you want to severely restrict how many users could be in your entire facility, or a room with a number of resources, at one time.  However, as in the previous scenario, if we change the number of allowed bookings to be higher, you could allow for a specific number of people across multiple resources.  So if you have 10 bookable resources but a double bookings rule which applies to those 10 and only allows four bookings at any one time on any resource, this will give you a limit on your usage within the facility.


Increase the number of allowed bookings in specific scenarios


It may be the case that in your facility, you would like to keep a restriction on the number of bookings which the majority of users can make across resources, but allow users from specific projects or project groups to make more bookings.  This would help in a situation where covid-19 research (or any urgent research) needs to be prioritised.


If a room is booked for a specific purpose, then other resources are no longer available for booking.


If you have a scenario where a set of resources are normally available to be booked regardless of which resource is being used, you may need to block off other resources if a single resource is being booked for a specific purpose.  This could account for an instrument or room being booked for use for a covid-19 study, and you wish to make sure that other resources or rooms which are physically nearby are automatically blocked from use.


Prevent users from different groups or teams from booking at the same time


If you have your users divided into groups or teams who are able to work with each other, you may want to ensure that users from other groups or teams can't book at the same time.  We can do this using the double bookings rule.