ARTICLE: Dorm Manager Module and Flexi-Boarding

ARTICLE: Dorm Manager Module with Flexi-Boarding


The Dorm Manager module allows you to build a digital representation of your physical accommodation resources which can then assist you to manage room and bed allocation for full time and casual boarders.

The Flexi-Boarding component provides for a room booking and allocation system that allows parents to engage directly within REACH to request short-term bed placements and for staff to manage these resources.

Accommodation Manager

In order for REACH to know what beds you have available throughout your boarding facility, it first needs to be set up so that your digital profile in REACH replicates your physical boarding resources at your facility or facilities.

Create Boarding Resources

The first step is to recreate the physical boarding resources that you have available at the school.
Go to System Configuration > Accommodation Manager





Add New Buildings 

The example image displays the two dorm buildings that have been setup already.
Each dorm is provided buttons to manage these buildings.
View - to quickly view the building data or to add floors
Edit - the update the details of the building, or to delete the building 



Click on 'Add a new building'.  The pop-up provides three quick fields to setup a building, add the required details and click Save.







Add New Floors

Any building, once created can then have new floors added, simply click the 'View' button.
The image shows the room and bed details for level one. Click the View button to manage these details.


To 'Add new Floor', simply click the box.
The pop-up provides two quick fields to setup a new floor. It is helpful to label each floor with the level details.
The Ordinal dictates the placement in order.
In this example, creating a new level for the Watson building, label it as 'Watson Level 2' and the ordinal as 2. Click Save.
The new floor appears, continue to add additional floors are required.

The new floor has been added in order.

Add New Rooms

Click 'View' on the new floor you have created, and click on 'Add new room'.
The pop-up provides two quick fields to setup a new floor. It is helpful to label each floor with the level details.
Give the room a label and click 'Save'.

          

Add other rooms as required in the same way until all your rooms are in place.
Two rooms have been added here - ONE & TWO




Add New Beds

Click 'View' on a room and click on 'Add new bed'.
Enter the label for the bed and select the bed type (size) from the dropdown list and click 'Save'.
In this example the beds will be free.









Dorm building Watson, Level 1, now has 4 bedrooms, with beds added to each room.



Accommodation General

Once you have your accommodation resources setup and ready to receive students, Reach needs to define how it interact with those students that are checking in and out of accommodation.

Check-in

Day students will need to check-in to boarding on the appropriate day in order for Reach to then recognise them as a boarder and not a day student, similarly when they check-out of boarding and become a day student again. Parameters are required to be set to create an expectation within the system.
Go to System Configuration > Accommodation Manager

First, the time of day needs to be set, when students can check-in to boarding and check-out of boarding.


From here you can set a time restriction on when a day student can check-in and check-out.
If you do not want to restrict when this can happen then leave the 'Enable Restriction' button unchecked, this will then allow day students to sign into and out of boarding at any time on the booked day.
Checkpoint Window Buffer - this operates similar to the airport screen, allowing bookings to stay on screen for a period of time.

Residential Roles

Reach treats students differently dependant upon their role; restrictions, access and representation on common actions such as roll calls and meal counts are all dependent upon the student role within Reach. Students will typically fall into one of two broad categories:
  1. Full-time Boarders
  2. Non full-time boarders (day, flexi, etc.)
The roles that the school wants to define students by can be set up via the Residential and Non-Residential Role boxes provided here in the system configurator. As previously mentioned, a student can become a 'Boarder' when they check-in and then change to 'Day Student' when they check-out.

Click 'Save Changes' when completed.

Managing Accommodation Resources

Once you have configured the buildings, floors, rooms and beds, they should be laid out in Accommodation Manager similar to the image below:


Placing Restrictions

Now that the resources have been laid out, it is time to place some restrictions on who can be booked into a particular bed.
Click on the bed you want to place a restriction on (either by clicking the bed or the tick box in the first column, you can select multiple beds) and then click on 'Edit Restrictions'.

This then brings up the dialogue box with the options for placing a restriction, by House, Year, Custom Group or Gender or a combination. Once the restrictions are in place the system will then only allow a bed allocation to a student if they fit the restrictions. A remote booking will automatically be placed into the next available bed that matches the restrictions where a manual allocation will only show those students that are eligible for that bed.



Bed Allocations

There are two ways of a student being allocated a bed, manual allocation where staff can book a student into a bed and remote booking where a parent or guardian can remotely request a booking and the system automatically allocates them the next available bed.

Manual Allocation

First task is to set up your full-time boarders and allocate them into their beds so that the system will not allocate flexi boarders into them. Select the bed that you want to allocate your full-time boarder into a click on 'Allocations' in the right-hand column.


You can then see what existing bookings are in place (if any) and select the boarder you want to allocate along with the dates that they shall be occupying the bed and then click on 'Save'. On the Accommodation Manager screen you should now see the boarder you have place in the bed appear under the 'Current Allocation' column. If the student is not occupying the bed until a time in the future it will show that the bed is vacant until that date or if the bed is currently occupied it will show the name of the student and the date they are occupying it to.



Remote Booking

A remote booking can be raised by a parent via their desktop or mobile app login.

The desktop booking form is accessed through the 'Accommodation' item in the Main Menu on the right of the screen.
When the new dialogue box opens, click on 'New Booking'.
Click on 'Add Allocation' and enter Start/End dates for the booking and click on 'Add'. Multiple requests can be made of the same item, just click on 'Add Allocation' each time and enter the dates. Click on 'Save' to complete the request.




The request is then sent for final approval by the relevant member of staff within the 'Accommodation Manager'. 
The staff member can 'Confirm' the booking or decline it by clicking 'Reject'.
Once confirmed the booking will then appear in the allocation as confirmed.






Checking-In and Checking-out

When it comes to the day where the student has an approved stay in boarding they can check-in to boarding.
Note: If any restrictions on check-in times have been set in the accommodation configuration then the student will not be able to check-in until the set time.

Check-in is performed via the 'Kiosk View', details of the students with available check-in will viewable on the  'Accommodation' widget .
Once they have checked-in, the allocations listing will display the time stamp of the check-in.


Once successfully checked-in, the student will change role to as per your system configuration settings, typically a boarder and therefore appear on roll-calls, SiSo screens, etc. as per a normal boarder.

Similarly, when the student check-out of boarding, go to 'Kiosk View', find the student, and using the 'Accommodation' widget, click on 'Check-out'.
In both cases if the check-in or check-out is outside of the permitted time, then an alert will appear in the Accommodation widget.

Once checked out, the student will change role and no longer appear in roll-calls, SiSo screens etc.




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