Shelf-nu
[Feature request]: Improvements on Bookings
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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe?
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Ability to create a booking starting in past, for items picked up in hurry.
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Ability to edit bookings end date while it's going on (need to pull stuff for another place early, or to extend the booking)
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Ability to rename booking while on-going
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Ability to add items to a booking QR-Code scanning, makes it easier to add items while packing, and making sure all items get added. Scan Item -> "Add to a booking" (grey out if already added to booking?)
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Change "check out" and "check in" to "Load out"/"Load in" making it a bit more clear of it's intention (at least I always go confused as I read it "checked out", would propably help people with dyslexia as well) and shorter word selection.
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Make a "pack booking"/"shelf booking" states; "Draft" -> "Reserved" -> "Packed" -> "Ongoing" ->"Loaded in" -> "Shelved", Each items would be marked on it's own - in the after scan popup, to pack/unpack an item - but you could also mark multiples in the booking page.
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Describe alternatives you've considered
Additional context
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hey @arthurkallinen . Thanks for your suggestions. @jurrejansen could you please process the requests so we can discuss then internally and see what is realistic and fits within our vision for bookings.
hey @arthurkallinen, I have been looking at this and I have some updates for you for some of the points:
Ability to create a booking starting in past, for items picked up in hurry.
I am still not certain about this but I understand the use case. It will however cause a lot of undesired side-effects related to conflicts between bookings and so on. So if we allow users to do this, we would have to somehow figure out a good way to do it to handle all those exceptions.
Ability to edit bookings end date while it's going on (need to pull stuff for another place early, or to extend the booking)
This is kind of the same concept as the one above. The way I see it is that we should rather create a button called extend-booking where you enter the new end date, and we let you know what conflicts it will cause and ask you to confirm. Because those items could be booked for other bookings for the new period.
Ability to add items to a booking QR-Code scanning, makes it easier to add items while packing, and making sure all items get added. Scan Item -> "Add to a booking" (grey out if already added to booking?)
Okey so there are a few things there. We are currently working on a new feature that from inside the booking itself, will allow to you add assets to it via scanning them. We want to do it very fast and smooth so the process will be way easier.
The second approach you are suggesting is also nice, however we have to decide which approach to use as there are quite some options. Do we only want to add to existing bookings or maybe allow to add and create a new booking? We already have some designs related to this. We will review them and see what we can do about this.
Change "check out" and "check in" to "Load out"/"Load in" making it a bit more clear of it's intention (at least I always go confused as I read it "checked out", would propably help people with dyslexia as well) and shorter word selection.
Thanks for the suggestion. We have discussed this point a lot and thought of a lot of different terms. We will consider your recommendation as well when we are further looking into this.
The ability to extend bookings would be very helpful for my team.
Often users will check out equipment and find that they still need it beyond the booking's check-in date. Checking it in and then immediately creating another booking is the current workaround. However this isn't quite ideal for us because when we "Check in" assets, we want the item to be present so that we can personally check for any damage or issues, but if someone is still using the item it is often not present. For documentation purposes, we want to know that any item that has been officially Checked In was cleared and in proper condition. Thus, it would be great if we can simply "extend" a booking so that we have clear documentation that the user had custody of this item for the entire duration.
Hi @ej-mediacenter! Carlos from Shelf here. Thank you for sharing your perspective on booking extensions. You raise a great point about wanting to maintain accurate custody records and avoid unnecessary check-in/check-out cycles.
I'd like to understand more about a specific scenario: When an administrator extends a booking, other users might see those assets appearing as "Available" in the system during the original booking period (before the extension).
This could lead to them planning around that availability, only to find they can't actually check out the equipment due to the extension.
How does your team currently handle these kinds of scheduling conflicts? Do you have any specific workflows or communication channels in place to prevent double-booking situations?
Your insights here would be really valuable as we think through the booking extension feature design to ensure it works smoothly for all users while maintaining accurate asset tracking.
I'd like to understand more about a specific scenario: When an administrator extends a booking, other users might see those assets appearing as "Available" in the system during the original booking period (before the extension).
This could lead to them planning around that availability, only to find they can't actually check out the equipment due to the extension.
How does your team currently handle these kinds of scheduling conflicts? Do you have any specific workflows or communication channels in place to prevent double-booking situations?
To avoid conflicts, we utilize Reservations to ensure that a user will have access to the asset when needed. This is done on a first come first serve basis here. We encourage our users to Reserve equipment as far in advance as they want to ensure they have what they need. Our users know that we have new bookings on a daily basis and so the availability / their access to an asset is not guaranteed until an official reservation is made. I would hope that an Extend feature would change the availability of a booking's assets at the time the booking period is extended.
We currently book reservations if our users email us or come in person with requests, as we are still new to Shelf and haven't had in-platform requests yet and we are also very hands-on in terms of customer service. However the ability for users to request bookings in Shelf online will be very useful for certain users.
As an example: If User 1 is planning around the asset availability they see in Shelf, they should at that time make a reservation request for X asset at their desired time, which an administrator will then accept and book if there are no conflicts.
If, then, User 2 has custody of X asset leading up to just before User 1's reservation, they will not be allowed to extend their booking and must return the asset so that User 1 can take custody of the asset during their reserved booking period. We will only ever extend a booking if there are no existing conflicts for the desired time period.