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Overview

Hours is how we set when a study room is available to be reserved in advanced. Open Room automatically pulls study room hours from the main hours website so must of the work is done for us. As a result, the room coordinator only uses the hours function to manipulate study room hours for special situations which include:

  • closing a room due to damage or regularly scheduled maintenance
  • extended hours during the weekend between dead week and finals week. 
  • limiting how far out in advance a room can be reserved

If the hours are not being pulled correctly, contact Unlicensed user, the hours coordinator. If he is not available and Open Room is having significant issues, contact ETS.

Hours are manipulated using two different functions within Open Room.

  • Hours function
    • To close a room completely.
    • You can close the room for the entire day
    • You can close the room for part of the day
    • You cannot open and close the room in the same 24 hour period
  • Cleaning function
    • To close a room for part of the day.
    • We use this so ABM can get into the rooms to clean
    • We use this during the weekend of extended hours in conjunction with the hours function
    • You can only have one cleaning time scheduled per day. 
  • Open Room Quirks

    • Open Room gives precedence to special hours set for a room over the default hours. So if you give one room "closed" hours, Open Room will keep that room closed until whatever date you have set, even if you delete that hours function. You have to create a new hours function for those dates telling Open Room the room is now "open" again. 

    • This will affect cleaning hours, extended hours, etc.
    • Set your cleaning hours and Extended Hours first each term. Then add in any closures you need to make.

Setting available hours for the term

    • Rooms are only set to be available one term at a time. This prevents people from making advanced reservations into the next term.

    • Typically towards the end of finals week is a good time to open the rooms for the next term.
      • The first hour setting on the hours page has dates for the rooms to be closed. 
      • It is set for the first day of the following term until about three years out.
      • Each term, you will need to adjust the dates in this hours setting.
    • At the end of the term, set the cleaning hours and extended hours for the following term as well.

Setting Cleaning Hours

Cleaning hours allows you to close a room for a few hours a day to allow for cleaning. While it may be tempting to use this to temporarily close a room due to maintenance, this feature can only be set once per day per room. We need this feature for cleaning so don't use it for other reasons (except during extended hours).

All the study rooms are cleaned two times a week. The cleaning schedule is coordinated by ABM (the custodial company for the library) and the building manager of the library. Most of the term, all rooms are cleaned during the same time frame. During Dead week and Finals week, we split the schedule so that there are always rooms available to reserve in advance. Currently the cleaning schedule is as follows:

Weeks 1-9
  • Tuesdays & Fridays : 3-5 AM
Dead Week and Finals Week

Tuesdays and Fridays

  • 2nd & 5th floor - 1 AM – 3 AM
  • 1st floor - 3 AM – 5 AM

To set the cleaning schedule, you need to use the "Cleaning" function within the Admin panel.

  • At the bottom of the page you will see a button that says "New Cleaning Record". Click this button.
  • The panel will give you several options to set:
    • Start and End date: You can set either a specific set of dates or regularly repeating days such as every Tuesday.
    • Start and End times
    • Rooms: You can select individual rooms or an entire floor.
  • Once you have filled in the necessary fields, click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.
  • Important notes: 
    • Because you cannot have more than one cleaning time set per day, you will need to set the cleaning times for weeks 1-9, Dead week, Extended Hours, and Finals Week. Even though the hours for Dead Week and Finals Week are the same, you can't set it as one two week period because it will overlap the Extended Hours weekend and not allow you to set a separate cleaning schedule for that weekend. 
    • Be sure to read how to set extended hours below before setting them. It is a multi-step process that must be done in a specific order.
  • Once you have set the cleaning schedule and the extended hours, it should look like this when you are done:

                                               

Setting Extended Hours

Open Room is not able to close a room and then open a room up again in the same 24 hour period. As a result Open Room is unable to adjust for the library closing at 3 am then opening again at 10 am. The workaround involves both the "Hours" function and the "Cleaning" function.

The order that the hours are applied matters, so follow the sequence exactly.  

  1. Go to Hours in Open Room.
  2. In the hours function, set all rooms to be open 24 hours for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday between dead and finals week. 
  3. In the cleaning function, set all rooms to be "cleaned" (closed) from 3 AM - 10 AM for the Friday and Saturday between dead and finals week. 
  4. This is a good time to also set the cleaning hours for the rooms for dead and finals week.
  5. Double check your work by looking at the schedule on those dates on the Front Page.
  6. Alternatively, if you accidentally set the cleaning hours first, you can go back and add an additional line on the hours page. Set all the rooms to be open 24 hours for that weekend and then check the front page. It should show the rooms as closed from 3-10 am but open the rest of the time.

Setting Summer Hours

During the summer, when things are quieter, we unlock the 5th floor study rooms using the auto unlock feature in Schlage SMS. If a patron finds a 5th floor room empty, they are allowed to use it without checking out a key for as long as they want. 5th floor rooms cannot be reserved ahead of time. Only 1st floor rooms. To prevent someone from placing an advanced reservation for a 5th floor, we need to make them unavailable (or closed) in Open Room.

  • Before you open the rooms for summer term, set 5th floor to be "closed" all of summer term using the "Hours" function in the Admin panel.
  • Then adjust the dates of the "all rooms closed" hours setting. It should be the line of set hours on the page. Start date should be the day after summer term ends. End date should be about 3 years out.

Closing a room for repair 

Sometimes a room must be closed for maintenance or damage. For detailed instructions on how to do this, go to closing a study room.

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