Room Reservation Setup - Ad Astra

Accessing Room Reservation Configuration

Once you are ready to begin configuring your Ad Astra integration, contact Anthology Support to have this option enabled. This needs to be configured before continuing.

After it has been configured, you can then access the configuration screen:

1. Log into Engage.
2. From the Switch Views button, select the Admin view.
3. In the Admin view, from the Configure menu, choose Room Reservations. The Room Reservations screen will appear.

Adding Connection Settings

The Room Reservations screen allows you to add the items necessary for the configuration to be successful. Each is presented in a specific order, and each must be completed successfully before moving onto the next section. Note that we have provided some examples of what each field might be set to, but you should confirm these details with your vendor.

Once you have entered the pertinent information, click Save for that section. Engage will then execute a series of tests, depending on each section, to verify that the data supplied is accurate. If the tests are successful, you will receive a Success message for each. If it is not, you will see a Failed message, and will be able to see details on the test and which error was returned.

You may change these settings at any time.

1. Basic Authentication Connection Settings

This section requires you to supply the information needed to connect to your Ad Astra instance. These details can be provided by your Room Reservation provider. The following items are required:

• API Root URL : the Base URL where your API can be accessed
• API Username : the credential that we will use to connect to the API. All reservation requests that originate from Engage will appear as if they were created by this user.
• API Password : the private credential assigned to the above Username

2. Events Functionality Settings

These details are used to decide how Engage will update reservation requests within your Room Reservation instance. Which options to use is largely a matter of deciding how you would like those reservations to appear.

• Default state code for created reservations: the state code that you want Engage to assign to any new reservation requests in Ad Astra. These options may be 'S'cheduled, 'P'ending, or 'C'anceled.
• Default state code for cancelled reservations: the state code that you want Engage to assign to any cancelled reservation requests in Ad Astra. These options may also be 'S'cheduled, 'P'ending, or 'C'anceled.
• Owner ID: the ID of the event Workflow Intent Owner who creates the reservation
• Customer Contact ID: the Customer Contact ID who creates the event
• Event Meeting Type ID: the type to be used for all created events
• Event Contact Type Code ID: the Type Code for the created event
• Testing options : the next set of options are used by Engage to verify the connection. When you save this section, Engage will try to create a new test Event one week in the future, then cancel it. If that’s successful, we’ll know our configuration is working. If not, we’ll get feedback on the issue in order to address it. These need to be obtained from your instance but can be of any suitable value.
  • Testing Organization ID
  • Testing Event Type ID
  • Testing Room ID
  • Testing Facility Layout ID

3. Engage Event Information

When an Event is created in Engage, we create and store pertinent information about that Event. We will then send that information to your Ad Astra instance so that administrators in that application can view those details without having to return to Engage. This section requires you to configure the fields that will accept those details.

You can either create new fields or you can use existing ones but remember that we will be writing Engage data into them.

• engage-event--created-by-engage-user--udf-id: Engage user who requested the location
• engage-event--created-on-behalf-of-engage-organization--udf-id: Engage Organization hosting the event
• engage-event--name--udf-id: Engage Name for the Event
• engage-event--description--udf-id: Description of the Engage Event
• engage-event--status--udf-id: current Status of the Engage Event
• engage-event--link--udf-id: URL to the Engage Event Page
• engage-event--extra-information--udf-id: any other information provided for the Event
• engage-event--custom-questions--udf-id: Engage event Custom Questions and Responses

Dashboard

Once your options are fully configured and confirmed, the new Dashboard will appear. This will show you what data Engage has received from your Room Reservation provider. This is also where you can enable or disable the Room Reservation feature and set per Organization overrides.

To add a new Override:

1. Click Create Override.
2. Select an Organization.
3. Choose whether that Organization will always be able to use Room Reservation or never be able to use Room Reservation.
4. Click Save to record your changes.

This is a great way to test out the reservation process without enabling it for the whole institution. You can leave the Room Reservation option disabled but create an Override for a specific test organization allowing that organization to always be able to use Room Reservations. You can then have a member of that Organization try to create Event Submissions to review that process.

Organization Mapping

This option allows you to match the Engage Organization List to the Ad Astra Organization List. In some cases, the name of each may be slightly different, or you may group the Organizations differently in these applications, so this allows you to create such relationships.

For each Engage Organization, you would simply click the Edit button, then choose the Ad Astra Organization that matches that Engage Organization. Any reservation coming from that Organization in Engage would then be sent to the matching Ad Astra Organization.

Event Type Mapping

Similar to Organization Mapping, this allows you to decide what Type Engage events should be assigned to in Ad Astra. Since the Engage application doesn’t have a native option for “event type”, we can currently only map these to one Ad Astra Event Type. You can choose that option here.

Community Contacts

If you would prefer your users to reach out to your Engage administration team in case of any issues, this is where you would populate the contract information for those administrators. Otherwise, users will be instructed to contact Anthology Support instead.