We are looking for software to use for facility room reservation scheduling. We are currently using EMS Lite, however they are no longer improving this version and the next level up is way to expensive.
Does anyone have software you love?
I know of several places using Planning Center Resources and love it.
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We are on Planning Center Resources and have had a fantastic experience. They are easy to work with and have been willing to implement changes that we have suggested. Let me know if I can help you out in any way!
Not to be self promoting… But check out eSPACE
I was a bit frustrated with Planning Center. Some of the issues I had were finding available room easily, also entering set-up and tear-down times was very cumbersome. Any suggestions for these issues?
I will definitely check out eSPACE. I had not heard of them. Thanks.
Setup and tear down is one of our biggest complaints with PCO. We are working with them to provide a solution for this. As far as trying to find an available room, we don’t really need a feature like that for our staff. They are content enough knowing that if a room is already scheduled, that it is unavailable. We also have a policy in place that they can work with the person who has already booked the room to reschedule if need be.
We still use ServiceU and while our staff don’t like it (because nobody likes structured systems that require you to read and follow instructions) but our ministry support and facilities guys love it for resource availability, setup/teardown scheduling, etc.
Hi, Kathy, Feel free to contact me directly at jennifer@coolsolutionsgroup.com - I’m the onboarding specialist at eSPACE. Have a great day! ~ Jennifer Erwin
Our facilities team had been using eSpace for work orders and we recently are evaluating the event scheduling module for managing events. It seems like it’s going to be our solution going forward.
Am I the only one leveraging the reservations capabilities in Office 365/Exchange?
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj215781(v=exchg.160).aspx
For simple reservation (including resource, not just rooms), it’s a very effective solution that ties right into Outlook and our (free-for-NPO) Office 365 account.
I tried Office 365 as well. It just couldn’t compare in features with our current system, however, since it is free with our license it may be an option.
We use mhsoftware.com. It’s bare bones, but very affordable and does what we want it to do; schedule rooms and events, and prevent conflicts.
Rooms & Resources are great if there isn’t any setup required for the space, or end-users are responsible for getting the room ready. It’s also pretty easy to integrate the data into other systems as you can publish the room calendars as iCAL feeds.
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Check on what you church management software offers. We are migrating to Church Community Builder and they have built in the ability to schedule rooms, resources, request layout type, etc. There is an option to include set up/tear down time as part of the request, so the facility calendar includes that, but any public calendar would list the actual event time. CCB also counts tables and chairs, so staff would know when requests exceed available resources.
- Greg
Kathy,
We are now live on eSPACE for facilities management. Our facilities coordinator loves it.
I would be happy to share her email address if you are interested in speaking to her about it.