Contributors mailing list archives
contributors@odoo-community.org
Browse archives
booking of resources
byhello, dear contributors!
one of our clients needs a solution for managing bookings of rooms in a building (for events like conferences, parties, etc.). they have several rooms that can be booked, and each booking can have options involving objects or people, like a video projector, waiters, tables, chairs, plates and cutlery,…
some objects are identified individually (like video projectors), while others can be considered as always available in infinite quantity (like tables, chairs, plates and cutlery) and only the amount matters.
bookings would be created manually (on the back-end side) by our client after communicating with their customers (by e-mail, telephone,…). for each booking, a sale order should be made, and the price should depend on the room, the duration and the chosen options. the bookings (and thus availability) of each room, person, and individually identified object (like a video projector) should be visible in a calendar, and booking conflicts must be avoided.
do you have any advice on how to implement this without reinventing the wheel?
we looked into the resource_booking
module, which seems mostly great overall, but quickly faced a
constraint: a resource.booking can only book one resource.booking.combination.
a combination is a fixed list of resources, and combinations must
be created manually. i’m not sure how it’s supposed to be used.
if only one resource.booking is created for a
customer booking, this means that the booking and all its options
must be represented by one combination. for example, if there are
4 rooms, 3 video projectors and 5 people that can be combined
freely, 96 combinations (including the “no video projector” and
“no waiter” choice) must be created (and each of them must be
added to at least one resource.booking.type to be
selectable). moreover, the client would need to search through all
of these to find the desired one. and what if there could be
multiple waiters? this feels awkward. also, availability is only
visible per combination, not per resource, so it is not very
useful. however, it seems that availability conflicts are checked
per resource, but in case of conflict, no information is given
about which resource is not available.
another option is to create one combination per resource, and
create multiple resource.bookings (with the same
date and the same partner) for one customer booking. this is more
flexible, but there are no direct links between all of these
bookings. what if the customer wants to change the date or cancel
the booking?
for billing, sale_resource_booking
allows to link a product to a resource.booking.combination,
so one product is needed for each combination. it also allows to
generate a sale order from a resource booking type (so combination
and dates must be selected afterwards), but i didn’t find a way to
do it from a booking, which would be more useful.
i understand why using combinations can be useful (as a compound for common use cases), and this is maybe a good technical decision (because it can avoid duplication), but i think that as they are, it seems that, in many cases, they get in the way instead of helping. am i maybe missing something obvious?
here are some possibilities i’m currently considering:
- use one
resource.bookingper booking, but hide the combinations from the user (using a wizard, for example). the user would select all desired resources, and a matching combination would be used if one exists, or one would be created on the fly. - use multiple
resource.bookings per booking (one for each resource), create one combination per resource, and find a way to linkresource.bookings together. - extend
resource.bookingby allowing multiple combinations to be booked per booking (instead of only one), and create one combination per resource. - extend
resource.bookingby allowing multiple resources to be booked directly per booking (instead of a combination), and don’t use combinations.
for objects considered as always available, use a product, and
extend resource.booking by allowing multiple
products (with a quantity) to be linked to a booking, or simply
add them directly to the generated sale order.
i’m pretty sure that this resource booking use case is quite common, and having a generic solution that works for most cases would be useful. do you have any ideas about all this?
cheers,
hugues de keyzer
coop it easy
