Overview of booking approvals
In this article we consider how Booking Approvals work within the GoBright portal and how this works differently with rooms integrated into packages such as Office.
There are two main considerations:
- Approval handled/processed in the GoBright Portal
- Approval handled via Office365 Resource Delegates (Integrated room with Office365 needed)
Depending on the solution deployed, Booking Approvals will be applied differently and the controlling software will be determined.
! These 2 configurations shouldn't be combined because there might conflicts!
Approval requests processed in the GoBright Platform:
Firstly, go to Settings > Meet > Profiles, open the profile of the specific room and set the Approvals to 'Booking needs approval'
User role
In the user role, you also need to give permission to the users to be able to approve the room booking requests. This can be done in Settings > Users > Roles, by selecting the specific role and allowing one of the following permissions for all locations or for specific locations and rooms:
Users: Booking a room that needs approval
When a user makes a room booking in the portal, before saving the meeting they will see a message at the top of the pop up saying the room needs approval (yellow pause message).
The user can also see the same information in Bookings > My bookings in the Go Bright portal:
Approvals while using the GoBright Outlook Plugin:
This feature works in the same way if you are logged in through the GoBright plugin:
Approvers: Process booking approval requests
The users with Approver permission in their role will be able to check the pending requests for approval under the Bookings > Approvals menu where the approver will be able to approve or reject the bookings.
! Currently, the portal doesn't send emails to the approver about pending approvals. This will be available from approx. the end of Q3 2024.
Booking approved:
When the booking is approved, the requester will receive an email with the following information:
Booking declined:
In case the booking request is rejected, the approver can also provide a reason for the rejection of the booking.
Once rejected the booking will be removed from the requester's 'My meetings' area of the Dashboard and the requester will receive an email with the following content:
Acceptance email sent to the user after creating a room booking which is not approved yet:
When the user makes a booking in GoBright, the room is booked & accepted in Outlook, and the room booking is marked as Needs approval in GoBright. The user then receives an acceptance email from the Outlook room calendar.
Receiving that email doesn't mean that the approver accepted the booking in the Approvals section of the GoBright portal.
The content of this acceptance email can be modified in Outlook for the rooms with enabled approval request, for example with the following text:
"Your requested meeting slot is accepted by Outlook, but this also needs to be revised by the approver in your company. They will evaluate your request and inform you by email with the decision whether the request is accepted or declined."
Outlook parameter for this is "AddAdditionalResponse"
Check the Calendar Processing article of Microsoft
In case the approver is not processing the approval request on time:
When the booking is created, the time slot of the requested meeting is noted in the GoBright portal and the Outlook calendar. Also, the meeting must be displayed on the Room Display to prevent double bookings. In case the booking request is not approved yet, but the meeting is about to start, on the room display next to the subject of the meeting the notification Needs approval will be visible. The user who requested the room is able to check-in without the approval, if the request was not approved before the meeting started.
Therefore, the user with approver role must check the list of pending approvals constantly to prevent usage of the room without the booking request being approved.
*This feature is not available at the moment, but email notifications for pending requests should be sent after the end of Q3 2024.
Approval handled via Office365 Resource Delegates (Integrated room with Office365 needed)
Resource delegates in Exchange Online are responsible for accepting or declining meeting requests that are sent to the room mailbox. If you assign more than one resource delegate, only one of them has to act on a specific meeting request. When resource delegate approves a meeting, that meeting will become visible in the organizer calendar and the GoBright portal. Steps to be taken to setup this option:
- Go to Exchange Online and log in with your admin account.
- Click on Resources on the left panel.
- Select a room that you want to be configured for approval.
- Select Booking tab.
- Choose Manage delegate settings.
- Click on "Select delegates who can accept or decline booking requests".
- Search for the person who will approve (you can select more than one person).
- Save these settings.
- For more information on how this can be done via PowerShell, check the article below
Check the Calendar Processing article of Microsoft