In a workflow where you have a team of Producers that should request their Resources from a centralized Bookings Person or Team, there are 3 approaches you could use. All of them are listed and explained below.
Using "Requests"
A Request is a specific Booking type, that only a 'User' (not 'Resource') can create for it's OWN Object. Usually this is used to request Vacation, Time off or similar from a team head or other User.
In a different way, the Request Bookings can be used to ask for one or multiple Resources to work on a Project, e.g. requesting editing work. In detail it can be done the following way:
- Producer 1 books a Request on own timeline at the day and time of the work he'd like to request and he adds into the NOTE field what he needs.
- The Request is 'sent' to "All" (everyone who has "Can Receive Requests" in the User Permission Profile), or a specific Bookings person.
- The Requestor enters the name of the project into the Request Name and e.g. the Service requesting. All needed Resources should be listed in the "Note".
- Bookings person receives request, views it, books it and the Producers and accepts/declines request.
- The Request is accepted and booked to the corresponding Project or you can create a new Project from here. A Booking is then added to that Project with the date/time of the Request. The Booking person will then add all requested Resources and add the Requestor as well so he'll be notified on the newly created Booking. Alternatively if the Requestor should not be added to not be spammed with Bookings, the Request is set to Accepted and the Requestor can see this in its timeline.
Using special Booking Objects
Preparation
In this solution so called "Booking Objects" are created in the Object Manager. They should be set to not cause conflicts.
In the Hourline, create a view with these Booking Objects at the top and/or a single view with just the Booking Objects.
The Requestor browses the Hourline view and books the 'Service' by booking the Object at the requesting day/time. Additional comments can be added into the "Note". The Global Booking Status is set to "Request".
Workflow
By monitoring this view, the Booking person/team can see the incoming "requests"Create ‘Booking’ objects* > Producers ‘books’ e.g. object: Editing > the person responsible for bookings edits, sees it (no notification, unless….?) and changes Booking Status from ‘request’ to ‘confirmed’…. and adds the suite, personnel…
producers requesting time on the web with booking objects (similar to option 2) these were just seen by the booking coordinators - ie visually looking at what bookings were on this object!
Using Object Classes
Producer/Requestor books Object Class* through Web client or Desktop client and then the class will be replaced with real Object/Resource.
Note: In addition to all 3 workflows you can enable Object Permissions to force Users to only be able to preliminary book Objects.