Mar, 1 2021

BEMA Software Services has recently partnered with Central Christian Church to take over the upkeep of the Room Management Plugin. We’re excited to announce Room Management 2.0 is now available! We're now in open beta testing, which means we are still testing but working with current users to do so. If you are interested in participating in the open beta, you can find the Room Management Plugin in the Rock Shop.

Unreservable Location Types

You can now configure what location types are reservable on the Reservation Type Detail page.

Reservation Detail Tabs

Notes, Event Linkages, and History have been moved into their own tabs on the Reservation Detail page. Reservations can now be tied to more than one event.

Reservation Detail Approval Buttons

Approval changes are now handled manually instead of automatically, with Submit, Cancel, Approve, Deny, and Request Changes buttons available to select at different stages of the approval process. This process prevents accidental approvals from happening when a user is also an approver or when an approver is part of multiple approval groups.

Reservation Type Attribute Security

Reservation Type Attributes now have a security button to allow you to manage security.

Scheduled Location / Resource Picker Redesign

In past versions, locations and resources were gray if they weren’t available, but with additional data points that we need to track, we’ve updated these pickers to color-code items according to the following legend:

• Black: This location/resource is unable to be reserved.
• Red: This location/resource is already reserved for this time
• Orange: This location/resource has been requested by another reservation but has not been approved for that reservation yet. Used when locations/resources are only booked once the reservation is approved.
  • Orange is also used if the location’s firm threshold is less than the estimated attendee count for the event.
• Green: This location/resource is available

Unquantifiable Resources

For users who want to use resources to represent services or use them for optional additional reservation questions, we now allow you to create resources that don’t have a quantity attached. This allows for the resources always to be available for reservation.

Initial Approval Group

We’ve added an Initial Approval Group to the process that can approve or deny reservations before approvals are sent to location/resource-specific Special Approval Groups.

Override Approval Group

Formerly the Super Admin Group, we’ve renamed this to add additional clarity to its purpose: to override the approval process and force an approval for reservations. Only to be used for emergencies.

Approval States

We’ve modified and expanded the approval states available to users. The new ones are listed below:

• Draft
• Pending Initial Approval
• Pending Special Approval
• Pending Final Approval
• Approved
• Changes Needed
• Denied
• Canceled

Approval Process

New in 2.0, the Approval Process is managed by a workflow called Approval Process rather than the old one, Room Reservation Approval Notification. This new workflow manages all the approval steps that used to be locked behind the plugin’s service layer, allowing for further customization of your individual approval process. This new workflow also no longer requires the execute lava command, so users can disable it in their global attributes.

If you’ve customized the Room Reservation Approval Notification workflow type in the past, we recommend creating a copy of this workflow type and applying your changes to that. This workflow type only needs to be set up to a Reservation Status Changed trigger. With the new Draft approval state, a Reservation Created trigger is no longer needed.

Special Approval Notification

New in 2.0, the Approval Process workflow will now launch a Special Approval Notification workflow for every resource and location that needs to be approved. This process used to be managed behind the scenes by the plugin and the Notification Email configured on the reservation type but is now managed in a workflow for users to customize further how you want special approval to work.

If you’ve created a custom email template to use for the Special Approval Notification email in the past, you’ll need to create a copy of this workflow type and update it with your changes. Don’t forget to update your main Approval Process workflow to point to the new one!

(Optional) Post-Approval Modification Process

If you’d like to require approval on reservation changes made after a reservation is approved, we now include a sample workflow to configure that. Simply create a trigger that launches on Reservation Modification, and the workflow will do the rest.

Prevent Edit after Final Approval

We’ve added a new security option to each Reservation Type: Edit After Approval. Set to All Users by default, this security setting dictates who has access to editing reservations after they are approved.

Field Types and Workflow Actions

We’ve also added several new field types and workflow actions, listed below. Using these, you can create custom workflows that allow you to take a reservation from creation to final approval and beyond without touching the default pages.

Field Types:

• Reservation Location Approval State
• Reservation Resource Approval State
• Reservation Type
• Resource
• Workflow Actions
• Add Reservation Location
• Add Reservation Resource
• Create Reservation
• Set Reservation Locations Approval States
• Set Reservation Resources Approval States

We hope that you are excited about these features as we are. If you have any questions, please visit our website or contact us.