Screen Description

The Rooms screen provides an overview of rooms that can be used for classes, examinations or events together with the properties of these rooms, such as room features or room availability. The screen now also has the capability of filtering rooms by a variety of criteria. The same Rooms screen can be accessed from different parts of the application (Courses, Examinations, Events).

The screen is divided into two parts - a filter and the actual list of rooms.

Filter

The filter can be used to filter the available rooms by various parameters.

• Department
• It is mandatory to select a department (or e.g. the "All Managed" option) from the drop down list; then either continue specifying other filter criteria or click on Search, Export PDF or Export CSV
• Capacity
• Indicate the range for the room capacity of the rooms that you would like to find
• Format: "minimum capacity" - "maximum capacity" (it is possible to fill in just one of these fields)
  
• Name
• Filter by (a substring of) the room or outside location name
  
• Room Types
• Any of the room types as defined in the Administration → Other → Room Types screen can be checked
• If nothing is checked, all room types are included in the search
• Room Groups
• Any of the global room groups can be checked
  
• If nothing is checked, all room groups are included in the search
  
• Room Feature types
• The features that are grouped into room feature types are listed under each room feature type separately from the section Room Features
  
• Room Features
• Any of the global room features can be checked
  
• If nothing is checked, all room features are included in the search

Operations

• Search
• Search for rooms that meet the criteria from the filter
• Export PDF
• Export the list of rooms that meet the filter criteria into a PDF
• Export CSV
• Export the list of rooms that meet the filter criteria into a CSV file
  

List of Rooms

The resulting list of rooms is divided into parts based on room type (defined in the Room Types screen). An example of such division from the UniTime demo:

• Classrooms
  • Instructional rooms assigned to the selected department from the central pool of rooms
• Computing Laboratories
  • Computing laboratories assigned to the selected department from the central pool of rooms
• Additional Instructional Rooms
  • Instructional rooms that belong to the department
• Special Use Rooms
  • Rooms that belong to the department, exist in the room inventory, but are not instructional rooms (for example, conference rooms or offices)
  • Not all Special Use Rooms of the selected department are listed here, because most of them are never used for instruction (use the "Add Room" button to add a room which is not yet in your list or use the Contuct Us screen to request an addition of a special use room)
• Outside Locations
  • Locations that are not in the room inventory, e.g., a hospital in town

Click on the room type name below the filter to easily navigate to the list of rooms of that type.

Room Information

Classrooms, Additional Rooms, & Special Use Rooms all have the same column headings, listed below.

• Bldg & Room
  • Building abbreviation and room name (in most cases the name is the room number)
• Capacity
  • Seating capacity of the room (the maximum number of students who can have a class there at the same time)
  • For rooms on campus (not non-university locations), it has to match the room inventory; for some rooms (e.g., not Classrooms), you can request a change in capacity in the Contact Us screen (the category "Request any other administrative change" is best suitable)
• Area
  
• By default it is the square footage of the room
• The unit can be changed using localization
  
• Availability
  • A time grid showing how times in the room are divided among departments that share this room (the list of these departments is in the Departments column)
  • All times in white (which is the default color) are shared by all departments listed in the Departments column (and nobody else)
  • All times in gray are not available for timetabling
  • Roll your mouse over the grid to see exact times of special assignments (such as if a particular department is assigned some particular hours - for example, Instr has TTh 1:30p - 3:30p in EDUC 101 in the demo)
  • The department that controls this room can change the availability in the Edit Room Availability screen (if you control a given room, the Control column is checked)
    • Otherwise, a department can only change sharing of the times that are already assigned to it (e.g., to pass some of these times to another department)
• Departments
  • A list of departments sharing this room
  • The department that controls the room can add/remove departments to/from the list in the Edit Room Availability screen
• Control
  • Checked if the department selected in the drop-down list controls the room
  • If checked, the department can set up sharing of this room with other departments (in the Edit Room Availability screen)
• Events
• Department that controls the room for the event management
  
• Groups
  • A list of groups to which this room belongs (for example, EDUC 101 belongs to the Classroom room group)
  • You can add (or remove) the room to (or from) a group in the Edit Room Groups screen (you will get there from the Room Detail screen by clicking on the Edit Room Groups button)
  • Read more about room groups in the description of the Room Groups screen
• Features
  • A list of room features
  • An example of global room features defined for all rooms:
    • Audio Recording (Audio)
    • Chalkboard<20 Ft (Chkbd<20Ft)
    • Chalkboard>=20 Ft (Chkbd>=20Ft)
    • Computer (Comptr)
    • Computer Projection (CmptProj)
    • Tables and Chairs (T&C)
    • Tablet Arm Chairs (TArmC)
  • By default, all room features are displayed in a single column; however, there is an option to display them in multiple columns (one column per feature); to change this option, go to the Manager Settings screen (main menu: Preferences → Settings), click on "Display Room Features In One Column", select "No" and click on Update

For Examination Rooms (the Department option All Final Examination Rooms or All Midterm Examination Rooms), a few of the columns are different.

• Exam Capacity
  • Displayed for examination rooms
  • Examination seating capacity of the room (it can be different from the "regular" capacity if there e.g. need to be free seats between students for exams)
• Period Preferences
  • Displayed for examination rooms
  • Preferences for periods during which exams can be held in this room

The Outside Locations columns are as follows:

• Location
  • Name of the location
• Capacity
  • The maximum number of students who can fit in that location at the same time
• Area
• By default it is the square footage of the room
• The unit can be changed using localization
• Ignore Too Far (IgnTooFar)
  • By default unchecked, which means that the distance is checked between classes in this location and other classes (to see if students can manage to get from one class to another)
    
  • When checked, there is no time conflict between following classes (e.g. one at this location, the other one e.g. on campus) and the classes can be taught by the same instructor
• Ignore Checks (IgnChecks)
  • By default unchecked, which means that the location is considered to be an equivalent of a room - meaning e.g. that there cannot be two classes at the same time
  • When checked, there can be two or more classes taught at the same time at this location (this makes sense e.g. if the location is a hospital, where there can be different classes throughout the hospital at the same time)
• The rest of columns is the same as for the other room categories (see above)

You can sort the list of rooms (within categories) by any of the columns that show "Order by this column." when you roll the mouse over its header. Sorting is done by clicking on the column header.

When working with rooms from your department, click on any line with information about a room to get to its Room Detail screen. You will be able to change some properties of the room, such as availability or room sharing, in screens accessible from this Room Detail screen.

Operations

Buttons with the following operations are available before and after the list of rooms

• Add Room (Alt+R) (admin)
  • Go to the Add Room screen to add a new room of any type (but not an outside location)
• Add Non-University Location (Alt+N)
  • Add an off campus location to your list of rooms.
    
    • This takes you to the Add Non-University Location screen

Back to Timetabling Documentation.

©2013 UniTime LLC

Content available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.3.