Coming soon: R25
You've been selected by the president to head an important committee, and you need a meeting space.
You need someplace comfortable but not too posh, because you don't want people to fall asleep. There will be a short power point presentation so you will need a screen and a place to power up your laptop. Internet access would be nice, too.
The meeting will be at 3 p.m., so you'll need lots of caffeine. And some of ARAMARK's famous macadamia nut cookies would really endear you to your 10 committee members.
But where to meet?
The scavenger hunt begins. You call catering, make phone calls, talk to voice mail, send e-mails and inspect a few spaces. You finally decide to schedule the Riley Hall conference room. You do more research and learn that Mickey Fray schedules that room. But she says someone else has already booked it.
Back to square one.
Come fall, however, this horse and buggy approach to scheduling will be relegated to the past when Furman implements Resource 25.
This spring about 80 Furman employees are being trained as “reservationists” on R25, an events scheduling software program developed by CollegeNet, a company based in Portland, Ore. More than 800 colleges and universities worldwide use R25 for their scheduling needs.
Here's how it will work:
Those interested in scheduling any event, be it a class, committee meeting or student activity, will visit a facility scheduling Web site and complete a short on-line informational form. R25 will process the request and immediately provide a menu of available facilities that fit the needed criteria.
After selecting a meeting place the requestor will click a “send” icon and the request will be forwarded to a reservationist who approves or denies the request. Upon confirmation, other departments will be notified of your needs (ARAMARK for food and Computing and Information Services for audio-visual equipment, for example).
Simple and quick. And no telephone tag.
“I really think that by this time next year we'll all be wondering how we ever got along without this system,” says J. Scott Derrick, director of the University Center & Student Activities, who is coordinating the training and data preparation.
Derrick, Brad Barron (Academic Records), Randy Dill and Clayton Burton (both of Computing and Information Services) began researching scheduling software about a year ago. After R25 was selected, Barron and Derrick formed a committee composed of 15 faculty, administrative directors and support staff to develop guidelines for its use and to troubleshoot potential problems. During the fall, the group inventoried every space at Furman that wasn't an office or a residence. The data collected (a multitude of information ranging from the number of windows in a room to lighting zones and AV capabilities) were entered in the R25 database early this spring.
In addition to meeting spaces, R25 will be used to schedule almost everything else on campus, from events at the new Younts Conference Center to the use of laboratories in the science building.
“We expect R25 will dramatically reduce the number of frustrating moments people experience when it comes to scheduling. It will take less time and we will be able to make better use of our facilities,” says Barron.
Barron and Derrick say that training in the use of R25 should be completed by the end of May. The system will go live in July, giving faculty and staff time to become familiar with the new scheduling procedures before the new academic year begins.
Inside Furman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
