Tutorial
Introduction
In this page, we are explaining how this tool used for booking items between friends, family and colleagues works. We are explaing all the steps to setup and manage a group, add bookings... The explanation is for both normal users and admins.
In order to use this tool, an account is needed to create and enter groups and to add bookings. To create an account, you only need to provide an email address, a unique username and set a password. Also, before being able to create bookings, you will need to create groups, add users to those groups and add resources.
If you are a normal user invited to join a group already created, you just need to create an account and you will directly be able to create new reservations.
Groups Management
In this part, we will present how to create a new group of people with which you want to share items and how to manage those groups.
Groups Page
In the navigation bar, you have a tab My Groups. In this tab, you can see all the groups you are in as admin, all the ones you are in as user and finally, you have the option to create new groups.
Group Creation
To create a new group, from the My Groups page, click on .
You will then have the following group page creation displayed. You will first need to choose a group name and, optionally, a description as well to help people in your group understand the role of this group.
You then have 3 options for your group:
- Open group: if this box is ticked, any user having access to the group will be able to share a link for other users to join the group. If the group is a closed group, only admin users are able to invite new users to join the group. In an open group only admins can see the username of all the users.
- Everyone can add resources: define if only admins can add and modify resources or everyone can.
- Automatic Approval: if this option is selected, each booking (that is not at the same time as an existing booking) is automatically marked as approved. Else, an admin need to approve the booking manually before they are marked as approved. An admin also has the possibility to reject the booking.
Example of configuration:
- If you want to create a family group to organize the sharing of your cars and motos, you can create a closed group where everyone can add resources and there is automatic approval. This way, the first one that books a car will have it.
- Now, if you want to create a group to manage the rental of equipment by customers, you will want to create an open group so that new customers can join via a link you put in your website for example. You will then deactivate the option that everyone can add resources and also the automatic approval so that you will be able to review the bookings before approving them.
Group Modification / Deletion
To modify or delete a group, you can do so with the button from the group page.
To be noted for group modification:
- If a group was Open but you change it to Close, the link to join the group will now be invalid. It will not affect existing users but new users will not be able to join this group anymore.
- The changes will only be applied to new bookings (e.g. if you change to automatic approval, bookings that were made before the change will still need to be manually reviewed).
When you delete a group, the action is irreversible: all the users are removed from the group and all the bookings and resources are also permanently deleted.
Users Management
We will now explain how to manage the users in the group, how they can be added or removed and made admin from the group page.
Add users to Group
To add users, as an admin, you can click on from the group page. There, you will have a text field in which you can paste all the email address of the users you want to add.
Once you click on all the users already having an account will be automatically added to the group and the others will receive an invitation link to join the app in their mailbox.
Share Group with link
In the case of Open Groups, at the bottom of the group page, you have a link that you can share by email/message or put on your website.
Users having this link will just need to create an account if they don't already have one to be able to place a booking.
Manage Users
From the group page, if you are an admin of the group, you can directly remove users from the group or make user an admin .
Resources Management
Here we are going to introduce how to add resources to group. Resources are the things you want users of the group to be able to book (e.g. cars, house, equipments).
Categories
Categories are used to group resources together, to increase the readability. In the previous example where we were having bookings of cars and motos, a category could be Cars and another Motos.
To create a category, click on at the bottom of the group page. Then you just have to give a name to the category and press and the category will be created.
To edit a category, click on next to the category you want to modify.
From this page, you can also delete a category. Deleting a category will delete all resources of the category and associated bookings.
Resources
To create a resource, click on next to the category in which you want to put the resource.
When creating a group, you have several field to fill in:
- The resource name and optionally, a description
- The resource color (color that will appear in the group page)
- The minimum and maximum time slot as well as the unit in which those time slots are. This correspond to the minimum and maximum times you want a booking to be. For example, if you are renting equipment with a minimum of one hour and a maximum of 1 day, you can set the unit to Hours, the minimum to 1 and the maximum to 24. Bookings cannot be placed if they don't respect this condition.
Resources can be modified or deleted from the group page by pressing next to them.
If you delete a resource, it will also remove bookings associated to it.
Bookings Management
Now we enter in the core part of the tutorial, how to place bookings.
Calendar in group page
In group page, you can have an overview of bookings that are placed and therefore, you can see when are the availabilities of the resources.
From this view, you can quickly identify which resource is available at the time you need.
To increase the readability, you have different views that you can use:
Add a Booking
To create a booking, you have the button next to the resource you want to add your booking for.
Then, you need to define a start and end date and time for your booking. You can also input a name for your booking that will be displayed in the agenda.
When you submit your booking, it will either be directly approved or pending approval from an admin (depending on the group configuration).
Edit / Delete Booking
You can view, edit and delete your bookings from all the groups via the My Bookings tab.
Recurring Events
There is now also the possibility to add recurring events. Those events are repeated in time according to a rule that you define.
To create a recurring booking, go to the normal booking page and click on . You will then arrive to the following page:
From there, you can choose the recurrence pattern you need and the interval you need. Here are few example of configuration:
- For a booking every weekday, select Daily and input every 1 day and tick the box of every week day. If you wanted to have a booking every 2 working days, you would just put every 2 days instead of 1.
- For a booking every 2 weeks, select Weekly and input every 2 weeks and select the day of the week you want your reservation to be. Note that if you select multiple days, you will have one booking for each of those days every X weeks.
- Finally, for a booking every 2 months, select Monthly and input every 2 months. The booking will happen in the same day of the month as the start date. Warning: if the selected start date is a 31th of the month, we will not be able to create a booking every month.
Finally, you have the choice to choose until when we need to repeat the booking. If you decide to define an Until date we will repeat the event until this date. If you prefer to input a Number of events,we will stop after a number of bookings.
If one or more events of this recurrent booking are happening at the same time as an already existing booking, they will not be added to avoid double booking of resources. In this case, you will receive a warning message in Yellow at the top of the screen to inform of the dates in which the events couldn't be created. Even though not booked, those events are still counted for the optional limit of Number of events.
You can also manage and see the details of your recurrent bookings from the My Bookings tab.
Approvals
If you are an admin in some groups, you will see here the bookings that are waiting for your approval or rejection.
If you reject a booking, it will disappear from the calendar view and the slot will become again available for other people's bookings.