Conference Room Activities in IT-UDS Mick.Draper@cern.ch

Conference Room related activities Within the IT-UDS group there are several related activities which concern conference rooms: The AV section provides technical support and filming in the main building rooms CDSAgenda has been developed initiated by a request from ATLAS to help manage their collaboration meetings CRBS – Conference Room Booking System has been developed to automate and facilitate booking rooms for meetings. The group has been a partner in the InDiCo project funded by EU. Will become the new CDS Agenda later this year.

Conference Room Booking System (CRBS) Started in 1997 to manage main conference rooms 5 or 6 rooms Now about 60% of all conference rooms (74) managed by CRBS. 26,700 reservations in 2003 1,773 distinct users Supports “private” rooms not available for general booking.

Conference Room Booking System (CRBS) Uses an Oracle database with a web interface Uses the concept of pre-booking Users send requests to the room “owners” “owners” accepts or reject requests Prevents anarchy ! Available from outside of CERN Guest access with password Added some primitive support for video conference rooms These rooms are tagged as having special equipment Generates pop-up warnings when these rooms are reserved. No direct link between booking the physical room and the virtual one

CRBS Pop-ups

CRBS Pop-ups

Using CRBS with video conferences It would be relatively easy to link CRBS at CERN with other compatible reservation systems. Other systems need to send a well formed request to CRBS via http e.g. check if any suitable room at CERN is free on a certain date & time CRBS will return a list of rooms Select a room and send a pre-booking request back via http All the above can be done automatically The actual reservation still needs a “human touch” Confirmation send by e-mail

Using CRBS with video conferences It is conceivable to make an exception for video conferencing rooms. In this case: The rooms would be bookable directly, with no need for a confirmation. Would need some kind of verification; could be done on a machine basis or user id Rooms could be booked automatically from outside of CERN Managing conflicting bookings might be a pain ! Need the agreement of the “owners” In any case, we are happy to work with you to make CRBS better integrate with Video-conferencing.