How do I login?

You need a COEP openLDAP account to login. This is often referred to as the Moodle account in COEP.

Only COEP Staff, Faculty have the openLDAP account. If you have forgotten your password, then please contact the helpdesk. If you do not have the account, then contact Prof. Abhijit A.M. .

Why can't I delete/alter a booking?

In order to delete or alter a booking, you must be logged in as the same person that made the booking. Contact the room incharge or the person who initially made the booking to have it deleted or changed. You can see the user id of the person who did the booking by clicking on the existing booking.

How do I create a booking?

Clicking on the desired time brings you into the booking screen. Fill in the details and click "Save".

Instead of clicking on the desired time you can select a time range and also a room or day range by dragging the cursor over a group of cells in the day or week views. When the mouse is released you will be taken to the booking screen and the time slots and the room or day range will have been filled in for you.

What is the difference between fifth and last?

When making a monthly recurring booking, the fifth weekday of every month is just that. If a month does not have a fifth weekday then no booking will be made for that month. If you choose the last weekday of the month then a booking will be made on the fourth weekday if there is no fifth weekday.

Fifth last works in a similar way, but counting backwards from the end of the month. Using first will give you the fourth last weekday of the month if there is no fifth last weekday.

How do I delete one instance of a recurring booking?

Select the day/room/time that you want to delete and select Delete Entry.

How do I schedule rooms at different sites?

You don't. Presently the system cannot book two different rooms simultaneously. You must schedule each one separately. Make sure that the time you want is available at both sites before making a booking.

My booking failed to be created because of too many entries!

No booking can create more than 365 entries. There needs to be some limit on the number of bookings created. This number can be increased if necessary.

What happens if multiple people schedule the same booking?

The short answer is: The first person to click on the Submit button wins. Behind the scenes, the system is using a proper multi-user, multi-threaded relational database than can handle many thousands of simultaneous users.

What is the difference between Internal and External?

Indicate "external" if you are doing the booking on behalf of non-COEP members.

How much did the system cost?

Nothing in monetary terms. The customization is a result of voluntary contributions of Prashant Gonarkar and Abhijit A.M. See the next section for more information.

How does the system work and who wrote it?

The Meeting Room Booking System is open source software that is distributed under the Gnu Public License(GPL). This means that software is free to use, distribute, and modify. COEP has customised the MRBS for it's own usage.

The system is written mostly in PHP, which is an open source programming language that can be embedded in web pages similar in concept to Microsoft active server pages. PHP is especially good at accessing databases.

The database used for the system is MySQL MySQL is a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server that is also GPL.

The system can run on multiple platforms, including the PC architecture using the Linux operating system. Linux, is a free, open source, unix-like operating system.

The web server being used is yet another piece of free, open source software. The Apache web server is the world's most popular web server.

The bottom line is: every piece of this system, from the operating system to the application, is completely free, as in Freedom, Mukt - source code and all.