Linking bookings and events

Introduction

While resource bookings may be for external customers for their events, you'll also use the Bookings module to book rooms and resources for your church's events, to ensure your internal and external resource bookings don't conflict.

The Bookings module Planner is designed to help you visualise all your pending and confirmed bookings but for those Users responsible for managing your internal events (who may not necessarily have Bookings module permissions) it's especially helpful that they can easily identify which events have resource bookings and which don't. The process of adding linked resource bookings for your internal church events is easy.

The Calendar module's Events list shows a visual B icon for events that have a linked booking already created. Events without a B icon do not yet have a linked resource booking.

Similarly, the Bookings module's Bookings list shows an eye icon for each unlinked booking set to Show on the calendar...

...and a Calendar icon for bookings linked to events in the Calendar module.

It's not necessary to set all unlinked bookings to Show on the calendar but many organisations find it helpful for Calendar module users, who may not have Planner access, to be able to visualise external bookings in the Calendar alongside their internal events. Bookings set to Show on the calendar are distinguished with a B next to the entry in the Calendar.

Depending on your workflow, you may wish to add bookings to events you have already created or you may have pending bookings that have now been confirmed, meaning you are ready to add the linked event. We will explore both scenarios below.

Adding a linked booking for an event

Head to the event you have previously added that you wish to add a linked booking for. On the event's "View" page, click the Add button and select Add booking (this option is only available if there is not already a linked booking).

The Add booking pop-up opens. If the event is part of a multi-date sequence - like the example below - the pop-up will list all the event sequence dates so that you can easily create linked bookings for one, some or all events in the same sequence. Simply untick any event dates that you don't want to create linked bookings for; typically, though, you would likely want to create linked bookings for all events in the sequence.

Review and update the other booking details, optionally adding a Customer if appropriate and selecting the booking Type. Respond to any associated booking type questions that are set Required - it is not possible to save a booking until all required questions are completed. Click Save.

The booking View opens, with an 'Add resource' pop-up open over the top of it. You can now assign the relevant Resources required for this booking. If the booking is part of a multi-date sequence, the Add to sequence option is surfaced and will allow you to add each Resource to every booking in the sequence. Click Save to add your selected Resource(s).

Once you've added your Resources, the booking View is in full view. If the booking is part of a multi-date sequence, the Sequence tab is shown. Notice also the clickable link to the linked event, which provides a quick navigation link back to the linked event in the Calendar module.

Note that if you need to change the Status of a booking - for example, the booking date needs to be changed, so the booking needs to be Set as pending or you need to Cancel the booking - you can do this from the More menu:

Selecting either Set as pending; or Cancel opens a pop-up that also enables you to apply the same status change to the linked event:

Adding a linked event for a booking

You may find that it is the case that you have a set of planned events for which the date has yet to be fixed. In this instance, you may wish to create a pending booking, to ensure the venue spaces are kept available, but not wish to create an event in the Calendar until everything has been confirmed. In this context, when you subsequently come to confirm the booking, you will want to add a linked event to it.

To do so, head to the booking. If it is still pending, select Confirm to update the booking status:

In the Confirm pop-up, select to update the booking sequence, if the booking is part of a sequence, tick to indicate that you are happy to proceed with this action and click Save:

To add your linked Event, select Add event from the Add menu:

The Add event pop-up is shown. For a sequence booking, all the sequence dates are surfaced, allowing you to unselect any bookings for which a linked event is not required.

Scrolling down the pop-up, complete any relevant information. Note that event Category is a required field, as is, for multisite customers, Site. Remember to click Save when you have made all the appropriate updates.

The event View page is now shown. Note that you can easily navigate back to the linked booking by clicking on the link to it on the right of the screen:

Identifying mismatches between booking Resources and events

To minimise the chance of mismatches occurring between events and their linked bookings, if a User edits the date of an event, the linked booking date is also updated. However, the User will need to update the associated resources that have been added to the booking, to ensure that the correct dates and times are in place.

In the example below, the Wednesday Morning Kids Club event has been changed from 30th November to 1st December and this is correctly reflected in the associated booking date but the resources still need to be edited, so that the resource usage date/time agrees with the new booking date/time. A warning message will be displayed if any resources are completely outside of the booking time range:

The Bookings module's Mismatched Events report also provides a summary of all mismatched bookings and events within a range of dates, enabling you to easily identify mistakes in your data.