Rooms and capabilities

A slot is only as good as the room behind it. Each room capability record holds the room’s name, its seating capacity, its equipment, such as projectors, lab benches or video conferencing, and the times it is unavailable, such as cleaning, exams or maintenance. Instructors record what they find in the rooms they teach in, and the Timetable Coordinator reads these records when approving slots.

A new capability record does not overwrite an earlier one. When a lab gains new equipment or loses seats to a rearrangement, the change is recorded as new evidence, so the coordinator can see what the room offered when an earlier slot was approved. Each record names who captured it.

• Capacity and equipment. Every room states how many it seats and what it holds.
• Unavailable intervals. Times a room cannot be used are written down so slots avoid them.
• Evidence over time. Changes are added as new records, with the person who captured them.

Agree room names and use them everywhere, including on the door. Agree how equipment is listed, for example a short fixed list such as projector, whiteboard, 20 workstations. Agree how unavailable intervals are written, such as “Fridays 14:00 to 17:00, cleaning”. Decide who may record room changes and who checks them. Walk each teaching room before go-live and record its current state.

Lab 2 seats 24 and has a projector and 24 workstations. In March the facilities team removes four workstations for repair. The instructor who teaches there records a new capability: capacity 20, 20 workstations, unavailable Tuesday mornings while engineers work.

The next week another instructor proposes a 22-learner course in Lab 2 on Tuesday morning. The coordinator reads the latest record, sees 20 seats and the Tuesday unavailability, and turns the slot down with the reason “Lab 2 seats 20 and is unavailable Tuesday mornings”. The instructor proposes Lab 4 instead, which seats 30.

• Room Register — Rooms with capacity, equipment and unavailable intervals, read before approving a slot.
• Published Timetable — Published slots by room with start and end, showing how each room is used.

• Course plan to published timetable: Use room capabilities when approving slots.

Review the data model before loading rooms.