The following guide is adapted from ASIMUT Support’s article on what’s new in ASIMUT version 3.4.
Version 3.4 is already live in our environment.
Some article content has been removed from this guide.
For the full article content see the original release notes linked to below.
The guide has the following sections:
COMMON INTERFACE (AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS AND MOST STAFF)
- Common interface: User experience improvements
- Common interface: Bug fixes
ADVANCED INTERFACE (AVAILABLE TO POWER USERS AND ADMIN STAFF ONLY)
- Advanced interface: Booking rules
- Advanced interface: User experience improvements
- Advanced interface: Event request functionality
- Advanced interface: Bug fixes
RELEASE NOTES
- Original v3.4 release notes
Common interface
The common interface is available to students and most staff.
It’s also available to Power Users and Administrators.
User experience improvements
One click less does not sound like much - until you consider how many persons have to do the click, and how often. Booking locations in the Common Interface, for example, is a process a large part of your users goes through over and over again.
This makes the booking process an excellent case for user experience improvements, where small changes can have a great effect. The changes we present below all contribute to making the booking process smoother, faster, and more intuitive.
Pinch to zoom on location charts
The quickest way to finding a free slot in comparable locations is by using the location charts. This is an essential step in the booking process, and getting an overview quickly is vital. We are therefore happy to announce that this will become considerably easier on smartphones with this release.
Users can now pinch the screen to zoom in and out of the location chart.
This being an essential part for virtually anyone who books locations in the Common Interface, we wanted to be sure that we get it right from the start. As a consequence, we had two debuts during this process:
In-person UX testing with music academy students, making sure that the zooming and scrolling behavior is smooth enough to please those who need it the most.
"Onboarding" feature, which makes students and teachers aware of the new functionality.
The onboarding notification will fly up the screen on a touch device when the user opens a location chart.
The notification will reappear until the user clicks the button "Ok, do not show again"
Quick-start the booking process
For users who rather start their booking process by clicking the "+"-button, we also have good news. They can now activate the "+"-button with a keyboard shortcut.
Windows: “Alt + N”
MacOS: “Options + N” or “Ctrl + Alt + N”
This will trigger the same interaction as clicking the "+"-button: If the user can choose between different categories, the category menu opens; otherwise, the page for creating a new booking opens.
Booking length prediction
The system has become better at predicting how long a user will want to book a room, even differentiating whether for individual practice, group practice, one-on-one lessons etc. This means that instead of adjusting the end time most of the time, the user will be able to skip this step completely most of the time.
The algorithm predicts the booking length based on existing bookings by the user in the category used, and will look at bookings by other users if it does not find enough data this way. The algorithm will calculate the booking length every time, so the prediction always reflects the current booking behavior.
Preview on whether booking is possible
Whether a user is allowed to book a location or not depends on many factors. Which category they are allowed to book in can be one of them, especially if you make use of the new booking rule option (explained in the section "Restrict in which categories a location can be booked").
In the past, when they could choose between different booking categories, and they clicked on the one they were not allowed to use in this situation, it meant going back and starting anew. There are many clicks to be saved here.
Indicators show them already in the category menu whether they can proceed with a booking. It will give them a stop sign if they cannot use the category in the location at all, and it will give them a warning sign if they would need to adjust some parameters before saving.
Menu improvements
Students and teachers will see slight changes in their menus for clearer naming.
Quota
The top menu item will now communicate more clearly
how much the user may book
that the booking rules are linked in the menu item
At the same time, the logged-in user's name does not appear in the menu anymore.
Here a few examples of how other quotas will display:
weekly quota
daily quota
no quota set
My recommended locations
Another change in the name of clearer communication is the renaming of "Please book primarily here" to "My recommended locations", which appears when a user is encouraged to book certain locations as part of
the booking rules.
Bug fixes
Events starting close to midnight could not be saved
When a user wanted to book an event that would start close to midnight, they might have experienced that they could not save the booking. This will not be an issue anymore.
Advanced interface
The advanced interface is available to Power Users and Administrators only.
Booking rules
ASIMUT offers a wide range of options for setting up the framework in which you can allow your students and teachers to book locations on their own. This self-service reduces your workload and empowers your users. The new feature we present below can simultaneously reduce complexity and increase flexibility in setting up booking rules.
Restrict in which categories a location can be booked
Locations should be booked for the right purpose. The purpose of a booking is signaled by the booking's category. So under specific circumstances, you might want to implement a rule like "Bookings in location 605 must be bookings for groups, not individuals".
With the new booking rule option, you will be able to make this a hard rule, which is enforced when the user tries to book the location.
The selected categories will be displayed by their category color, their names come up when hovering. This ensures a better overview over a longer list of categories.
You will of course see all the selected categories as checked when opening the category selector again.
User experience improvements
New category selector
In some places, you can choose multiple categories. The new version of this dialog makes it easier to find and select the categories, as it allows you to filter for category name and let's you toggle your selection as you know from other pages.
You will see this dialog on the
"Upcoming events"-page (part of the Event Management module)
"Edit locations"-page with the new "Restrict to category" function.
With the "Restrict to category" feature, only those categories that Common Users can use for creating bookings are relevant. The dialog will therefore only contain categories that are set up for use in the Common Interface.
Top bar menu items adjust to available space
When you work in a narrow browser window or you zoom in, you will notice a better space management. With enough space, everything shows as you are used to:
When not all top bar menu items fit anymore, the buttons for selecting the different chart views and the double-arrows for jumping back and forth in time will be hidden:
They reappear when you hover over the "Help" menu item:
This new functionality also adapts to the language you are using, to make sure that buttons disappear only when there is not enough space with exactly your window width, zoom level and your chosen language.
The keyboard shortcuts work of course regardless of whether the buttons show.
Event request functionality
Please note: This functionality is available in its first version, a so-called release candidate, and is being tested by select schools. Any feedback from you while using it will be highly appreciated.
When students or teachers need to book a space, self-service room bookings are ideal for the vast majority of use cases. For the very few scenarios in which administrators need to assess whether a person may use a location by actively approving or rejecting, the event request functionality can help handling these cases in ASIMUT.
The approval process is more work intensive for administrators than the self-service process. We therefore recommend to always explore your options of managing a scenario with booking rules before considering the event request workflow.
Some examples where event requests could be relevant are: high demand spaces (e.g. performance/exhibition spaces); events that require more organization and planning (recitals, performances, recordings, exhibitions, etc.); or events where users must fulfil certain requirements.
For more information on how the feature works and how you can implement it, please see the article "Event requests".
Bug fixes
Deleted category not replaced in user settings
When you delete a category, you are asked which other category its events should be moved to. We use this information now to replace the default category of Advanced Users who happened to have the category you delete as their default category for bookings in the Advanced Interface.
The original release notes for v3.4 can be found here