How to let members make personal bookings

Members can request bookings for personal use through the Bookings page of your website, which is how the church hall ends up hosting a child’s birthday party without a single phone call to the office. Every request still goes through a booking manager, so nothing gets promised by accident.

Making a personal booking

1. First, the setup: personal requests are only possible for resources whose ‘bookable by’ setting is ‘Groups and My Bookings’. Nothing else appears to members, so you choose exactly what’s on offer.
2. The member logs in to the website and opens Bookings from their my-area menu (if you’ve renamed that app section, the menu label follows your name for it). Any existing bookings are shown with the status of what they’ve requested.
3. They click the ‘+’ button, which opens the ‘New Booking Request’ dialog, then give the booking a title and set the date and time. The ‘+’ only appears when the site has resources members can book, so if it’s missing, check step 1.
4. They pick the resources they’d like from the browser, which shows each one’s availability, and can add setup and clear-up time before submitting.
5. The request arrives as ‘Pending’: the booking manager is emailed, and the member hears back when it’s been confirmed or declined.

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Good to know

• Members can open any of their bookings on the Bookings page to check how many resources are confirmed, pending or declined, and edit the booking.
• Auto-confirm works here too: a clash-free request for an auto-confirming resource is confirmed on the spot.
• If you’d rather members didn’t self-serve at all, simply leave every resource at a stricter ‘bookable by’ level and this area stays empty for them.