Creating a New Reading Room Calendar | Policies Tab | Open Hours Tab | Deleting a Reading Room Calendar
Creating a New Reading Room Calendar
To create a new reading room calendar follow these steps (click on the name of each section to view detailed configuration instructions):
- In the Aeon Customization Manager, click the Appointment Scheduling tab.
- Click New on the Appointment Scheduling ribbon.
- Complete the fields in each group of general settings for the room located on the Policies tab:
- Reading Room Settings: The name of the reading room, number of seats available for appointments, minimum and maximum appointment length, etc.
- Associated Sites: If you have multiple sites configured, this section will allow you to choose the site with which the reading room should be associated. If no additional sites have been configured, then this section will be hidden.
- Click Add Policy and add at least one group of Status-Specific Policies for the reading room (see below for best practices)
- Click Save to save the settings configured in the Policies tab
- Click on the Open Hours tab and complete the following settings:
- Open Hours: The hours and days of the week that the reading room will be open for appointments.
- Exception Dates (Optional): Any dates and time slots during which the reading room is closed or has fewer seats available during the normal Open Hours.
- Click Save to save your entry. You can also click Cancel to discard your entry at any time before saving.
- The new reading room will be saved in the "Reading Rooms" menu on the left side of the Customization Manager
Policies Tab
The Policies tab contains general settings for the reading room as well as a group of status-specific settings that can be configured to apply differently for users of different statuses (i.e., faculty, staff, undergraduate, etc). The Associated Sites section is used to choose which sites are associated with the reading room if multiple sites have been configured in Aeon and will be hidden if only one site is configured.
Reading Room Settings | Status-Specific Policies | Associated Sites
Reading Room Settings
The Reading Room Settings section contains the currently selected reading room's name and time zone, the number of seats available for appointments, and the settings that control scheduling and appointment duration options for patrons booking appointments on the Aeon web interface.
The Reading Room Settings section contains the following fields and restrictions:
| Reading Room Name |
The name of the reading room where the appointments will be held. This name must be a unique value.
Tip: Make your reading room name as descriptive as possible to help guide your patrons to the correct location. For example, you may consider adding the name of your institution or the building where the room is located to the end of the reading room name.
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| Reading Room Description |
A description of the reading room that can be added as a merge field on appointment-type email templates to customize them with reading room-specific policies or other information related specifically to the room in which the appointment has been booked. For more information on this field and using it on the appointment email templates, see Configuring Appointment Notification Email Templates.
Note: The Reading Room Description field is only used on email templates and will not be displayed by default to patrons on the web interface. This field is limited to 1000 characters.
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| Time Zone | The time zone in which the reading room is located. |
| Seats Available for Appointments |
The number of "seats" or spots available at any one time for appointments. This value must be greater than zero.
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| Minimum Appointment Length (minutes) |
The minimum duration for an individual appointment (including time for checking in). Example: To require that all appointments are at least 30 minutes long, enter "30" into this field. This value must be a multiple of 15 and greater than 0. It must also be a number divisible by the value entered in Appointment Time Increment.
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| Maximum Appointment Length (minutes) |
The maximum duration for an individual appointment. Example: To restrict appointments to a maximum of an hour and a half in length, enter "90" into this field. This value must be a multiple of 15 and greater than or equal to the Minimum Appointment Length value. It must also be a number divisible by the value entered in Appointment Time Increment.
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| Appointment Padding Time (minutes) |
The time between the end of one appointment and the start of the next appointment. This is important to set if the room must be cleaned or inspected between appointments. This value must be either zero or a multiple of 15.
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| Appointment Time Increment (minutes) |
The number of minutes between possible appointment start time options and the amount by which appointment length can be increased/decreased. Example: If this is set to "30," appointments will be available every 30 minutes and patrons will be able to increase or decrease their appointment duration by 30-minute intervals (within the minimum and maximum appointment length settings). This value must be a multiple of 15 and greater than zero. Minimum and Maximum Appointment Length, and the difference between Minimum and Maximum Appointment Length must all be a multiple of the Appointment Increment value.
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Configuration Tips and Considerations
- Padding time ensures that time will be left between one appointment and the next for a given seat, but will not prevent an appointment from running to the end of the day's Open Hours. To ensure that some extra time is left at the end of the day for cleanup tasks, you will need to adjust the end time of your Open Hours settings (e.g. end at 4:45pm rather than 5:00pm to leave 15 minutes for cleanup time at the end of the day).
- If you have more than one reading room configured for your site, users will need to choose a reading room when booking the appointment. To reduce confusion and potential incorrect selections, we recommend including some information to guide users on which room to choose on both your appointment scheduling web pages and on your web request forms.
- Readings rooms will display on the Aeon appointment scheduling web interface in the order in which they are configured in the Aeon Customization Manager. Therefore, if you would like your list of reading rooms to display to patrons in a certain order on the web (e.g., busiest rooms listed first), please ensure that they are configured in this order in the Customization Manager.
Status-Specific Policies
The Status-Specific Policies section contains a table for configuring settings that control scheduling, patron notification, and appointment confirmation options for the reading room. This table can be configured with a group of default settings/policies that will be applied by default for users booking appointments in the room from the Aeon web interface and also with separate groups of status-specific settings/policies that will override the default settings only for those users of the selected status(es) (faculty, staff, etc.).
Best Practices for Configuring the Status-Specific Policies Table
The Status-Specific Policies section contains the following fields and restrictions:
| User Status |
Select from the dropdown options to define a group of settings for a specific patron/user type:
The user statuses available in the dropdown selection are drawn from the "Status" group entries defined in the Aeon Customization Manager's CustomDropDown table.
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| Appt Min Lead Days |
The minimum number of days in advance that an appointment must be requested. Example: To require that users book appointments at least a week in advance, enter "7" into this field. |
| Appt Max Lead Days |
The maximum number of days in advance that an appointment can be requested. Example: To restrict appointments to within one year of the current date, enter "365" into this field. This value must be greater than the value in Appt Min Lead Days.
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| Request Min Lead Days |
The minimum number of days before the appointment's start date that new requests must be added to an appointment. After this time, additional requests cannot be added to the appointment, but existing requests associated with the appointment can still be edited. Example: A value of "7" in this field means that patrons must finish adding new requests to an appointment at least a week in advance of the appointment date. This value cannot be negative. Entering a value of '0' will allow users to associate requests with the appointment on the day of the appointment up until the appointment's start time. Requests cannot be added to an appointment that has already started.
Requests associated with an appointment for the reading room will be routed from Future Request Processing to Awaiting Request Processing once the current date has passed the timeframe allowed by the Request Min Lead Days setting for associating new requests with the appointment. Any settings configured in the FutureRoutingDays customization key will no longer apply.
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| Request Max Lead Days |
The maximum number of days in advance that a new request can be added to an appointment. Example: A value of "14" in this field means that patrons can add requests to their appointment no earlier than two weeks in advance of the appointment date. This value must be greater than the value in Request Min Lead Days.
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| Appointment Required |
If checked, users will be required to associate all requests with an appointment. This setting will apply the appointment requirement only to the individual reading rooms and user statuses for which the Appointment Required setting is enabled. When using this feature, please ensure that a rule used to validate the Reading Room ID field has been added to the WebValidation table in the Aeon Customization Manager for all request forms on which the appointment scheduling fields have been configured. For details, see Configuring the WebValidation Table to Enforce the Appointment Requirement. |
| Auto-Confirm Appointments |
If checked (enabled) then all appointments booked by patrons of that status for the reading room in the Aeon web interface will be automatically confirmed and will not need to be manually reviewed and confirmed by staff If unchecked (disabled) then all appointments booked by patrons of that status for the reading room in the Aeon web interface will be unconfirmed until staff manually reviews and confirms the appointment in the Aeon Desktop Client or Aeon Web Client For more information on the appointment confirmation process and configuration, see Appointment Confirmation and Notification Settings.
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| Reminder Days |
The number of days before a confirmed appointment that the Appointment Reminder email will be sent. Example: Entering "1" into this field will notify the patron of a confirmed appointment 24 hours in advance of its start time/date (e.g, an appointment scheduled for 9am on Monday would have the reminder email sent at 9am on the Sunday before) To disable reminder emails, set the value of this field to -1.
A value of 0 will send the reminder email at the appointment's scheduled start date and time.
For more information on configuring reminder emails, see Appointment Confirmation and Notification Settings.
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| Notify Appt Received |
If checked (enabled) patrons will receive the Appointment Received email upon booking/requesting an appointment in the room from the Aeon web interface. For more information on configuring appointment-received emails, see Appointment Confirmation and Notification Settings.
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Best Practices for Configuring the Status-Specific Policies Table
The Status-Specific Policies table should be configured at minimum with a group of blanket default settings/policies that will apply to all users booking appointments for the reading room except those with a status that has been configured in a separate row of settings in the table. After a group of default settings/policies is defined, you can then optionally configure additional rows of status-specific settings/policies for any user status that should not use the default settings. Status-specific entries in the table will create a separate group of settings that will override the default settings configured for the reading room only for users in that status.
Recommended Configuration Steps:
- Click Add Policy in the Appointment Scheduling ribbon:
- A new row will be added to the Status-Specific Policies grid that can be configured with a new group of settings/policies
- In the new row, click the dropdown in the User Status field and select (Default) to begin configuring a row of default settings/policies for the reading room
- Configure the remaining settings in the row with your preferred default values (i.e., Appt Min/Max Lead Days, Request Min/Max Lead Days, Appt Required, etc.)
- Click Save
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[Optional] After a row of default settings/policies is configured, optionally configure additional rows of status-specific policies:
- Click Add Policy
- Another row will be added to the Status-Specific Policies grid
- In the new row, click the dropdown in the User Status field, select a specific user status (i.e., Faculty, Staff, etc.) to begin configuring a row of status-specific settings/policies that should be applied only for users of that status booking appointments in the reading room
- Configure the remaining settings in the row with your preferred status-specific values (i.e., Appt Min/Max Lead Days, Request Min/Max Lead Days, Appt Required, etc.)
- Click Save
- To delete a group of policies, click on the appropriate row within the Status-Specific Policies table and then click Delete Policy in the Appointment Scheduling ribbon
Associated Sites
If multiple sites are configured for your instance of Aeon, this section will contain a list of those sites to allow you to choose the site with which the reading room should be associated.
Parent and Child Sites
Sites may be set up in a parent-child relationship wherein one parent site can have one or more child sites that are associated with it. If a child site is associated with a reading room, then the Customization Manager will also automatically associate its parent site with that reading room. For example, if the parent site is named "Apple" and it has a child site named "Fuji," selecting Fuji in the "Associated Sites" section will automatically select Apple, and unselecting Apple will automatically unselect Fuji. A child site will appear indented underneath its parent site in this section.
Open Hours Tab
Open Hours
The settings in this section will define the days of the week the reading room is open and the times during which appointments are available each day. The open hours for each day can be entered as a single time span (e.g. 9:00-17:00), or as multiple time spans (e.g. 09:00-12:00, 13:00-17:00).
Formatting and Configuration
Time can be entered in either 12 or 24-hour formats, but if the 12-hour format is used, AM/PM markers must be included. Any of the following formattings will be accepted when inputting times into the Open Hours fields:
- HH:mm-HH:mm (e.g., 09:00-17:00)
- H:mmam, H:mmpm (e.g., 9:00am-5:00pm)
- Ham, Hpm (e.g., 9am-5pm)
- HHmm-HHmm (e.g., 0900-1700)
To enter more than one span of time for a certain day, separate each time span with a comma. For example, entering "09:00-12:00, 13:00-17:00" will set the open hours for that day from 9am-12pm and 1pm-5pm (12pm-1pm will be unavailable).
Exception Dates
The Exception Dates section contains a list of dates and times that the reading room will be fully or partially closed during the normal Open Hours (e.g., a holiday, 1-hour training every Monday, or fewer seats available during a class visit).
The Exception Dates section contains the following fields and restrictions:
| Exception Type |
There are two options:
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| Start Date/Time |
The date and time on which to start the closure or restriction. This time must occur before the End Date/Time.
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| End Date/Time |
The date and time on which to end the closure or restriction. This cannot be entered as a time in the past.
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| Seats to Reserve |
The number of seats that should be reserved for a Reduced Availability exception. The total number of available appointments for the room will be reduced by the number entered into this field for the duration of the exception. This field will be automatically set to 'n/a' for a Closed exception. Example: To set aside 25 seats for a class visit, enter '25' into this field. This value must be greater than zero for a Reduced Availability exception.
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| Public Notes | A note to explain the reason for the closure or reduced availability. |
Creating a New Exception
To create a new exception for your reading room calendar, follow these steps:
- On the Appointment Scheduling ribbon, click Add Exception.
- Select either "Closed" or "Reduced Availability" for the Exception Type.
- Select a Start Date/Time and End Date/Time for the exception.
- If creating a Reduced Availability exception, enter the number of seats to reserve for the exception in the Seats to Reserve field.
- Enter text into the Public Notes field to note the reason for the closure/restriction.
- Click Save to save the exception, or Cancel to discard your entry.
Deleting an Existing Exception
To delete an existing exception for your reading room calendar, follow these steps:
- Click on the exception in the Exception Dates table.
- Click Delete Exception on the Appointment Scheduling ribbon.
Make sure to click Delete Exception and not Delete, which will delete the reading room calendar!
- A warning will appear asking you to confirm your deletion. Click Yes.
- The exception will appear crossed out in the Exception Dates table. From this point, you can click Cancel to reverse the deletion.
- Click Save to save the deletion. The exception will be removed from the table.
Deleting a Reading Room Calendar
To delete a reading room calendar follow these steps:
- In the Aeon Customization Manager, click the Appointment Scheduling tab.
- Click the name of the reading room you would like to delete in the Reading Rooms list on the left side of the screen.
- Click Delete on the Appointment Scheduling ribbon.
- A warning will appear asking you to confirm your deletion. Click Yes.
- The reading room will be deleted and removed from the Reading Rooms list.