What's new in Resource Central 4.2

The following will provide a short introduction to some of the new functionalities in Resource Central.

More information can be found in the different user guides for Resource Central.

Order form button in Outlook Add-in

The order form is now available In the Resource Finder Outlook Add-in for existing meetings. As soon as the resource request for the meeting has been accepted in Exchange, it will be possible to open Resource Finder and add orders.

Adding new resources to existing meetings and you will be able to add a new order instantly.

Adding advanced functionality to the order form

A number of significant enhancements have been made making the order form more advanced by being able to create dependencies between properties and different sections of the order form.

You will now be able to make e.g. a cost center code mandatory if catering is ordered or you can make the ‘Number of participants’ field mandatory when a seating arrangement is selected.

Control the length and format of the properties

When you create the properties, you can set the maximum length of the field and you can set the format type to e.g. ‘Number’ or ‘Date’ format. It is also possible to use ‘Regular Expressions’ if you select ‘Special’ format to have the field contain data in a special format like e.g.  ‘XG-12345678-12345’.

The format will be used when the property is applied to the order form, in order to validate the format of the user’s input.

Dependencies on properties in the order form

You can now also apply dependencies between properties and between a property and other sections of the order form

You can make the property mandatory when specific conditions are true, e.g.

• Property
  • A property has been selected, e.g. with a checkmark
  • A property has a specific value.
• Items
  • 1 or more deliveries has been ordered
  • The price of the ordered items is more than 0 (in the screen shot below)
• Visitor
  • When a visitor has been registered

The properties can be made invisible in the order form until they are required, when the set conditions are true.

Create relations between Lookup Tables

When making a selection in a drop-down list, you might want the next drop-down list to show options depending on your first choice, e.g. if you select a car brand in the first list, you only want to choose between the models from that brand in the next list. This is now possible to set up. 

E.g. If you select Finance as Department in the Department property in the order form:

the Group dropdown table will have the content from the ‘Finance Groups’ table:

The relation is set up in the Lookup Table Details where you can apply the ‘Child tables’.

New look and feel on Lookup Values

The table details have been changed in the way they look. It is now much easier to create and maintain the values in the tables as the content can be added and edited inside the table details.

Make catering available only when visitors are registered.

In some organisations you are only allowed to order catering when visitors are added as attendees of the meeting. You can now make catering depending on visitors, meaning the organizer can only order catering when external visitors are invited.

The condition is activated via a new parameter ‘OrderForm.ExternalVisitor.EnableCatering’.

Periodical views on orders and reservations in Resource Central and in My Meetings

It is now possible to view orders and reservations for more than 1 day in Orders and Reservation overview in Resource Central as well as meetings in My Meetings in Outlook.

Create appointments in the Service Provider’s calendar when a service is ordered

In Resource Central Hotfix 6 a new feature was added to the Roles. An Outlook appointment can be created directly in the Service Provider’s calendar with the details of the ordered services related to the Service Provider.

The appointment will have the exact same duration and text can be added to the body of the appointment by the service provider for own reference.

Setting Visitor fields as required

The fields in the visitor registration can now be set as required. This will per default affect the entire system, where visitors are added. In that way, you can better control, that your users will remember to add the important information about visitors.

It is possible to disregard the required fields in the visitor module in Resource Central to allow for more flexibility of the receptionists when adding visitors.

Help Button

In this version of Resource Central we have introduced a Help Button feature which allows you to setup easy access to your company’s booking guidelines or tailored descriptions for Service Providers’ handling of orders. Helping users easily finding user guides or other kinds of support tools like lists of FAQs or company specific booking policies.

The guides can either be added as PDF, that will be opened for the users when clicking on the help button. Or as a link e.g. to an internal Sharepoint side, where your company stores the guides and policies.

Below you can see, which system areas that are initially supporting this feature.

Highest resource availability for series

A new column in Resource Finder will help the users in finding the best resources for their meeting series based on highest availability.

Order overview – End time can be made visible

The end time of the meeting can now be made visible in a column in the Orders overview by a new parameter.

New RC logos

Resource Central has been updated with new logos in Resource Central and for Resource Finder and My Meetings