Vehicle Booking System
Mobile Vehicle Booking — Developing a custom vehicle booking and tracking system. The project included mobile and web applications.
Exchange 2010 (on SBS 2011) The intent is to have an efficient booking system for 6 company vehicles Staff should be able to view all vehicles' status at any given time (which cars are free, which cars have been booked and by whom). They use Outlook 2010 & OWA. In the past we have used simple public folders - but lack of proper Free/Busy in public folders calls for something more elegant here. We have gone ahead and created a Resource mailbox for each vehicle - then stopped to think about best way to achieve the goal.
The examples I see around the place, all seem to suggest a workflow where users open the calendar of the resource mailbox (car). Here's an example of this approach - With this setup, the user needs to open 6 calendars to see what vehicles are available and when - seems kind of clunky and cluttered. My latest thought is to create a new user named 'Vehicle Booking' and share their calendar. Then the resources (cars) are invited to meetings by the relevant staff, and all can see on the shared calendar, who has what vehicle at any given time. No doubt, would need to do some permissions adjustments so that all authorized staff would have full read/write to the Vehicle Booking calendar.
Sound reasonable and will work? Or do better alternatives exist? Completely thinking outside the box here. Do you HAVE to use Outlook and Exchange Server as your booking system? What if you: 1.
Set up a WordPress site 2. Install one of the many 'appointment' plugins (like ) 3. Have your staff go to this site to view reservations and make requests You can make the page 'private' so you can't see it until you log in. It can have a domain name that suits you - something like 'booking.mycompany.com' or 'staff.mycompany.com' You could have this set up in a few hours. This all comes down to how you want to work.
The meeting invite system can work well, but if users are likely to be using the vehicles to go to meetings, this could result in conflicts. You would need to look at enabling the auto accept agent on each mailbox. You could look at a third party utility that integrates with the resource mailbox. There are others. Public Folders is still a valid solution, unless you want to automate a workflow with someone approving. I compare public folders to a paper based diary. Public folders have effectively no Free/busy - from OWA, no Scheduling Assistant tab for appointments, and no Invite Attendees button Sembee2 - I dont really understand how the conflicts could arise with the vehicles/meetings.
Auto accept is no prob. Thnx for the links, am checking them out shortly. How to achieve our goal though with public folders that you suggest as an option? (no free/busy)? Ecarbone - I like out of box thinking and your suggestion will be turned to at the point that I say to the boss - 'It cannot be done with Exchange & Outlook'.
Until then though. Rancy - Man I am sorry but I don't understand what you are saying, though I have read your sentence a number of times. For a projector or room, where you are inviting people to the meeting, I can understand the need for free/busy information. However for this process, where you are just 'booking' something which most likely will not have an associated meeting, I don't understand why you think you need free/busy? A public folder for each car, it will be very easy to scan through each folder for the date that you want. Resource mailboxes are designed for this, so another option would be to use web parts to have a sweb page that displays the calendars for each vehicle on the same page. No doubt someone with some code could probably write a web page where the user enters the desired date and all six, ten, whatever are shown.
Again using web parts you could have a web page structure where different requirements, locations etc lead you to a different set of vehicles shown. Exchange just becomes the backend, with auto accept to handle the booking, what you need to look at is the frontend. I don't think there is any need to move away from Exhcange for the backend, just find some way of displaying the information. Sorry interrupted transmission - been away with bad flu. What I'm chasing is exceedingly simple and, I would have thought, commonplace. But you guys are Exchange experts, I'm not, and it seems what I ask is tricky. Imagine a whiteboard that hangs in the staff lunchroom.
Vehicle Booking System Vbs Philippines
It has days/weeks marked on it, and staff pick up a marker and write on the whiteboard the vehicle they want to book and over what period At times, they will selecting a particular vehicle for its suitability to their needs (eg. 3 ton truck, small van etc). Other times they will just need 'a vehicle' - any vehicle. Approval is not required. With this system, worst that happens is that sometimes someone will not pay enough attention and book a vehicle that's already.marked as 'out'. But at a glance, staff can look at the current month on the whiteboard and see who has which vehicles, over what periods. This 'overview' is very helpful.
So my goal is essentially to replicate that - I hoped - in Exchange. Sembee2 - I thought Free/Busy would take care of the issue of sometimes accidentally double-booking - if vehicle is busy, it cannot be booked. A public folder for each car seems scrappy - especially when more vehicles come online - say 19 separate public folders, just for a small fleet? Web parts and writing code - I hear you that this might not be do-able with out-of-box tools.
But it seems so devastatingly simple - surely others have identical needs? Rancy- Distribution list method is good, but this way, I still dont have my 'group view' overview of all vehicles in one place do I? Someone said 'Use room mailboxes' for cars, not equipment mailboxes - which you mentioned earlier. There isn't really an option that mimics your 'whiteboard' in Exchange. If you don't want to tie it to a meeting, then I would suggest you look outside of Exchange completely for a resource management tool.
You may well be able to find something that sits on a web server for example and gives you the overview. It is all about choosing the most suitable task for the job, and Exchange isn't always the most suitable. When it comes to comparing the solutions, I tend to say the following: - Public Folders - this is the closest to an old paper diary.
No approvals, no tracking, no free/busy. It is stand alone. Resource Mailboxes (Room/Equipment) - designed for full integration in to the meeting system. So if you are booking room x and need projector y, then you can book it. Your scenario doesn't really fit either of those, so I would be looking outside of Exchange for a solution.
Fleet Vehicle Reservation Software
The shop has 9 small vehicle (car and pickup) bays with 7 lifts, 3 truck bays with 2 lifts, 1 body shop bay, 1 large truck wash bay, parts room, break room, 2 bathrooms (male and female), business office, fuel/rental office, 8 gasoline dispensers, 3 diesel dispensers, 10,000 gallon in ground gasoline tank, 5000 gallon diesel tank (both have double wall plumbing, vapor recovery capable, Veeter-Root monitor). A detached 6 bay storage shed and a 2 bay detached car wash with mechanical room complete the services offered by the Center.
Vehicle Reservation System
The program uses 3,000 miles for oil changes, 30,000 mile transmission service, and 180-day safety inspection. The program is designed to send monthly letters going to designated caretakers in each department notifying service due. Late/past due notices are also sent out. Shop records are maintained until the vehicle is deleted or surplused. To participate in this program, telephone the office at 542-6477 and ask for Cris Taylor.
The maintenance shop hours are 8:00AM to 11:00PM Monday thru Friday.