Forum .LRN Q&A: room reservation system available?

Posted by David Kuczek on 04/15/04 10:31 AM

A friend of mine from a Grande Ecole in Paris called me yesterday and asked about two features in .LRN:

A grading system and a room reservation system. I know about the grading system effort being on its way. What is the timeline for it? What about a room reservation system for universities? I found a thread that Malte started: https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=124891

Off topic: I somehow get the impression that it is a bit easier to market .LRN than OpenACS, because people see exactly what .LRN does, for what purpose it is being used and what problems it solves. Maybe the configuration discussion that we had in the past was on the right track to a better marketability of OACS. I mean a configuration for intranet environments called .WRK, a configuration for a personal site with blogger, CMS called .whatever and other possible configuration options.

2: Re: room reservation system available? (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Koot on 04/15/04 04:09 PM

David,

I just send you the roomreservation module I received recently form Caroline. I have been playing with it and although it's relativly basic module, I will be using it as one of the core modules for my travel application. (projectname .TVL) Like you I have found that creating an integrated set of tools for a specific industry makes it less abstract for potential clients.

To be cont.

Ben

3: Re: room reservation system available? (response to 1)

Posted by Caroline Meeks on 04/15/04 04:17 PM

Room Reservations is available from the contrib directory on CVS

http://cvs.openacs.org/cvs/openacs-4/contrib/packages/room-reservation/

And for the record I agree with both of you. :)

David: Yes, a huge problem with marketing openacs is it is hard to communicate to any one market that yes it solves your problem. I don't think we are alone in this. I hear proprietary platforms like Lotus Notes face the same challenges. Of course they have a bit more marketing resources to put towards the challenge.

Ben: Yes, I'd also like "Room Reservation" to move toward becoming a service package (Resource Reservations perhaps?) that you can build reservation applications on top of. (e.g. appointment booking)

4: Re: room reservation system available? (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Koot on 04/16/04 12:19 AM

Caroline,

Just what I had in mind. I hope to have a basic outline thet traveltrade could use written up before Heidelberg. Right now I
I am struggling trhough designer manuals of existing reservations systems to pick out the nuts and bolts that are realy essential. The most basic ingredient is add RSS to the room reservation module. That's the futute for all reservation applications worldwide.

to be cont.
Ben

5: Re: room reservation system available? (response to 1)

Posted by Rafael Calvo on 04/16/04 03:55 AM

The new dotlrn site has a simple but interesting events/booking package built with ETP (ask Carl for details).

http://www.dotlrn.org/events/

does anyone know more about this?

Rafael

6: Re: room reservation system available? (response to 5)

Posted by Caroline Meeks on 04/16/04 04:56 AM

Hi Rafael,

Looks like dotlrn.org is using the events package from contrib.

Great package. It keeps track of venues, capacity, waiting lists. Try it out. :)

7: Re: room reservation system available? (response to 1)

Posted by Nagita Karunaratne on 04/16/04 08:38 PM

Off topic: I somehow get the impression that it is a bit easier to market .LRN than OpenACS, because people see exactly what .LRN does ...

... or what .LRN can do for them.

There is a marketing adage that its easier to market benefits than features.

And it's all a matter of perspective. A feature in OACS (intergrated permissioning datamodel) may be a benefit to the developer but still a feature to the business-minded.