Introduction
Hierarchical Meeting Rooms are useful if you'd like to define a Parent-Child connection between multiple meeting rooms. Parent-Child connections let you create a complex network of meeting rooms related to each other. For example:
If one parent meeting room gets booked, all of its child meeting rooms will also be booked.
If a meeting room with multiple parent resources is booked, all the parent resources will be booked.
Video Tutorial
⚠ OfficeRnD is under intense development and gets updated constantly. Therefore, you may spot some differences in the UI between the videos and the platform. Generally, the instructions remain the same. Please refer to our help articles for the most up-to-date information.
How to enable the feature
1. Go to Settings/Platform Modules/Resource Types and click on Meeting Room (or whatever your default meeting room resource is called).
2. In the newly opened window, enable the option called Allow parent/child relationship.
Note: You cannot edit the availability of resources with a parent/child relationship. Please make sure you set the correct dates before linking the resources.
Note: You will not be able to remove the parent/child relationship until all future bookings for the parent are removed. Please make sure the setup is correct before commiting to making bookings for the parent.
Multiple Child Resources Under One Parent Resource
You can set the same parent meeting room for multiple meeting rooms. This will ensure that when someone books the parent meeting room, its 'child' meeting rooms will be booked simultaneously.
One Child Resource With Multiple Parents
One child resource can have multiple parent resources. In such cases, the following rules apply:
If you book a child resource that has multiple parent resources, ALL of the CHILD resource's PARENT resources will be booked as well.
If you book one of the child resource's parent resources, ALL of the PARENT resource's CHILD resources will be booked as well.
Use Cases
Let's include example use cases to help demistify the concept:
Case One
1. There are three meeting rooms - Room A, Room B, and Room C.
2. Room A and Room B are set as PARENT resources for Room C.
The outcome:
Booking Room A will also book Room B and Room C.
Booking Room B will also book Room A and Room C.
Booking Room C will also book Room A and Room B.
With 4 rooms
1. There are four meeting rooms - Room A, Room B, Room C, and Room D.
2. Room A and Room B are set as PARENT resources for Room C.
3. Room A is set as a PARENT resource for Room D.
The outcome:
Booking Room A will also book Room C, Room B and Room D.
Booking Room B will also book Room C and Room A but Room D is free.
Booking Room C will also book Room A and Room B but Room D is free.
Booking Room D will also book Room A but Room B and Room C are free.
Past Bookings
Once the connection has been established, you'll be able to create bookings in the past for the parent and the related meeting room. However, if you create a booking in the past for a meeting room and then another for the same slot in its parent, you'll be able to occupy the same booking slot twice.
This only applies for bookings either in the past or 1 or more years in the future. Duplicate bookings cannot be created for the current year.