TMS Scheduler Room vs. System

[andybit2]

I am trying to use the TMS Scheduler to book a regular class in the the conference room (a system under the TMS), and want the conference room to show up as busy so that no one else can schedule a conference in that room at that time.

Is there a preconfigured option that one can use. Also, could someone please explain the difference between Room and a System. Will this be relavent to my situation above.

Thanks much for your help.

andy.

[ChuckF]

Within TMS you can create a ROOM or a SYSTEM. That is to say, you can create just a room that does not have a codec system in it so that you can schedule that room and it show on your schedule as being "in use" or busy.

A SYSTEM is something you can also schedule - it is a ROOM that has VTC equipment in it. You schedule (and also control) it with TMS.

Does that clarify some things for you? Are you scheduling the room but it is not showing up as busy at the time you scheduled it for?

[andybit2]

ChuchF,

Thanks for your reply.

Actually, I am trying something non-traditional. Sometimes, the conference room (defined as a SYSTEM in TMS, as it has VTC equipment) is in use for other reasons than a video conference. However, this fact is NOT currently visible to the person trying to schedule the conference room, which has resulted in double booking.

I am trying to solve the above issue. I guess from what you tell me, I could define a ROOM seperatly for each SYSTEM and tell everyone to check if the associated ROOM is booked before scheduling a SYSTEM that correspondes to that room. However, someone could still forget and end up with double booking.

Is there a way to configure the TMS Scheduler so that a SYSTEM and a ROOM are associated, like, maybe by giving them the same name? Currently, I simply schedule the SYSTEM, and book it as "reservation only", but this does NOT seem like a clean solution and I am not sure how I would guard against false warnings/alarms/statistics that may be generated by doing this.

Any additional insight would be helpful. Thanks.

andy.

[Darren Goulden]

Is there a way to configure the TMS Scheduler so that a SYSTEM and a ROOM are associated

Hi Andy,

I have just looked on TMS (v9.61) to try and do what you are wanting and to my suprise i could not find a way to link a Room with a System or visa versa. Maybe you should feed this back to TANDBERG as a request for the next version of TMS as it would be a useful feature.

It looks like the only way you could do it is to have either one or the other and use it for VTC and non-VTC.

I think the obvious choice is to add the 'system' and use that for both VTC and non-VTC as TMS would then have control over the system for management purposes...

Hope it helps.

Daz

[Morgan81]

Andy,
There really isn't a reason as to why you should create a room and a system for the same conference room provided that this system stays in this room (permanently installed). If you aren't booking any other rooms (a standard meeting) the "reservation only" option will be fine.
I'm not sure what you mean by false alarms but you will generate statistics in the booking part, but not the system usage part of TMS that way you can see how many times your room is booked, but not how often the system is used.

[andybit2]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the confirmation that the "reservation only" option is OK for standard meetings.

My concern was if the TMS would automatically raise events or send emails to the person making bookings if the endpoint was booked "reservation only" but the video conference equipment was never started. This would then be a "false warning/alarm". From what you are saying, I understand that such event or emails would not be raised.

Also, under statistics, I played around here and noticed that reservation only or single room (I am not sure due to which) conference booking do not show up under statistics-scheduling-conferences (I am using TMS 8.0) and do not seem to be part of other screens under stastics. I was hoping I could still get reports like who was making bookings of this type, what their billing codes were, how many hours were such bookings as a portion of total bookings etc.

Is there a way to generate such reports for single room reservation only usage?

andy.

[Morgan81]

I'm not sure why you wouldn't be seeing your "resevation only" meetings in statistics. You might want to check the time settings and see if the right systems are selected in "filter systems". I am using 8.0 as well, but do not allow our clients to use the booking function. However, I just booked a "reservation only" on a test system and it shows up fine in the "Statistics-Scheduling-Conferences" screen.

[andybit2]

Thanks for letting me know. I will have to investigate more.
andy