Features of RoomTracker
- Legal-Specific
Designed exclusively for the legal marketplace. New enhancements, features and sister products are 100% legal focused based on direct feedback from leading firms.
- Top Firms select RoomTracker
From AmLaw 5 to 192 (including two top 10 firms), RoomTracker has been purchased by over TWENTY AmLaw 200 firms (fall 2003). Over 60,000 rooms booked to date among our highest utilization firms.
- Excellent ROI
Easier to use with lower training and administration costs across the firm. Leverages existing Intranet infrastructure and cuts the staff required to manage all aspects of conferences, from booking the rooms to providing food, equipment and video services.
- Customize Views (MyRooms)
Customize views across offices, locations, and time zones to see and select rooms, removes visual clutter. Each individual may create unlimited sets of rooms and Office Administrators control office level lists.
- Role-Based
Users have appropriate rights. Attorneys and secretaries view calendars and make tenative reservations. Schedulers and administrators approve reservations and manage the system. Office centric and/or firm-wide admin options based on the organization of your firm.
- Familiar Microsoft Look & Feel
Baarns is very adept at Microsoft look and feel with 14 years experience centered around Office development. RoomTracker features familiar menu bar and toolbar concepts pioneered by MS Office. Reduced training and help desk costs.
- Room Request Wizard Makes It Easy
Users are walked through making a reservation, making it easy for novice or experienced users. RoomTracker validates input and provides helpful feedback as the reservation is created.
- Client Matter Lookup and Validation
Instantly finds matter numbers assigned to clients and validates both the client and matter numbers.
- 3-D MultiDay View
Unique 3-D view of multiple days shows rooms, days and hours. Powerful visual aid to see blocks of rooms and times available over many days on all or saved room lists. Especially useful for Video-conferencing over multiple locations.
- Individual Customization
User profiles remembering starting page, calendar views (12 or 24 hour time), default “MyRooms” list, time formats and more
- Intranet Based
Clean modern design built from the ground up for Intranet use with high performance network database and leading industry standard browser. SQL Server is the core database.
- Future Features
Baarns continues to gather feedback from multiple law firms. New features are designed to assist legal professionals and will be added on a regular basis.
- Space Utilization
Design layout maximized for utilization, visual clutter minimized throughout the product.
- Multi-Room
View availability and schedule multiple rooms with ease, within one office or across the firm.
- Individual Food, Equipment, Attendees for Multi-Room Reservations
Very flexible: Each room has independent food/equipment/attendee lists. For example: Projector in main room, drinks in both rooms or any combination you need
- Multi-Location
Add lists of rooms in multiple locations to visually see available rooms at a glance
- 24 Hour View
Calendars include both normal business day and 24 hour view set by individual user
- Search
Search for open rooms across one office or across the firm.
- Reports
Reports rendered in browser with user-selectable date ranges, utilizing efficient SQL stored procedures. Each report has multiple visual sort options.
- Enterprise and Office customization
Extensive control over equipment, food & more at both the office and firm wide level
- Confirmation
Extremely flexible with Self confirm, Quick confirm, Basic confirm, and deny/delete options.
- Schedulers control
Central Control or Auto-confirmation – settable for each room.
- Room Details
Unique cycle-through visible rooms with picture and floor plan displayed
- Admin control over resources
Role-based admin adds rooms, equipment & food. Well thought out steps to re-assign equipment before deleting for future meetings that have requested that item
- Resource Selection
Unlimited – using database driven scrollable checkbox lists. Built for maximum flexibility to accommodate future changes
- Prep & Cleanup
Customize prep and cleanup times per room, different times for prep or cleanup, different times per room in multi-room meetings
- Help
On-line help is page-sensitive
- Video Conferencing
Video Conferencing features, including video equipment inventory (per office), lead-time enforcement, built-in and custom lists of video enabled rooms.
- Advanced Notice Features
Each food and equipment item has independent Advanced Notice and setup time requirements. The system understands business hours and a user can’t book at meeting late at night expecting food or equipment outside of business hours unless they talk to someone.
- Recurring/Copy Reservations
Copy standard reservations to a new date, time and/or room with a few mouse clicks including food, equipment and all the details. Recurring reservations mimics Microsoft Outlook functionality and look and feel.
- Outlook Integration
Sends confirmations, changes and cancellation notices via e-mail to attendees. Users double-click to add meetings to their Outlook calendars automatically.
- Visiting Attorneys
Handles visiting attorney & case rooms
- Equipment Inventory Management
RoomTracker prevents users from booking 3 video conferences, projectors and/or easels when only 2 units are available.
- Video Status report
Provides a comprehensive list of upcoming video conferences for facilities personal.
- Advanced Notice for Food and Equipment
Users can’t book lunch/equipment without advanced notice of XX hours. Administrators define advanced notice per item.
- In-Room Setup Time Per Item for Food and Equipment
Each piece of equipment and food allows the admin to assign in-room setup time. The system automatically “pads” the reservation based on the food/equipment selected for the reservation.
- Office Staff Business Hours
RoomTracker prevents a 10 PM reservation of food or equipment for 6 AM the next morning if staff is not available. Works with Advanced Notice functionality to prevent service requests outside of staff hours without proper notice (admin definable).
- Default Setup/Cleanup Times for reservations
Office administrators can default all new reservations with a specified setup/cleanup time (or none).
- Search Criteria displayed with results
Search results include the original criteria, shows details on the Daily results page, and links back to Search with original criteria intact allowing a user to refine an existing search.
- Administration Tools
Turn on/off many options per office, set defaults per office, manage RoomTracker roles, Office Time Zones, etc. Administrator via an admin page can now change roles.
- System Statistics
Page for administrators to view level of activities in the system, including reservations by month, rooms and users making reservations.
- Re-implemented Video Conference
Includes enhanced functions to include broadband enabled rooms, video equipment inventory/availability, advanced notice and setup times.
- Upgraded Menu System & Dynamic Toolbar
Upgraded Menu & Toolbar reduce learning curve. Visually identical to Internet Explorer, Word and Outlook.
- Improved Conflict Handling
Prevents double booking of rooms or equipment – users are provided additional detailed information and can make better decisions quickly.
- Improved Reporting
Additional reports including content and sorting based on feedback from version 1 users.
- Meeting Room Setup Time
Automatically adjusts based on Food/Equipment requests.
- Food & Facilities Report updated for up-to-the-minute changes
E-mail/pager alerts for last minute additions to Food or Equipment Today report to show heading in red for those reservations edited today - show time of last edit on the expanded text.
- Alert Center
Sets time-based triggers to send e-mail notification of “last minute” changes to a reservation. If a meeting changes within n hours of a meeting’s start time, RoomTracker automatically sends messages to designated staff. These messages include e-mail and pager addresses, with content formatted accordingly.
- Admin Guide
Tips and best practices for administrators. This guide distills wisdom learned from firms with thousands of reservations in their systems.
- System Set up
At login time a self-test is performed to assure that offices are set up correctly. Administrators are informed of offices that need attention and a “run anytime” report is added to the Admin menu selections.
- Multiple Databases on Single Server
Standarized connection files. Alternate versions ship with the product allowing you to easily create pilot and production databases on single or multiple physical boxes. This allows a single IIS server with multiple RoomTracker sites and multiple databases.
- Fast Client Matter Lookup
Users may type client and matter numbers directly into the request. Typed in matter numbers are fully validated. RoomTracker defaults to your last saved Client/Matter combination, further cutting the time/effort required to make a new reservation.
- Categories for Food & Equipment
Food and Equipment supports firm-defined categories making ordering much easier for users. Each firm defines their own categories to organize food into Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks and/or Beverages or any other group.
- E-mail Distribution Lists
Instead of selecting 15 individuals to attend the meeting, users may select a distribution group (AKA aliases) that is already established in the firm mail system, sending Outlook requests to the group with one selection.
- Custom Filters on Delivery Reports
Food and Equipment management and deliveries are simple, clean and easy. Each office may assign a delivery group to their food and/or equipment items. Service providers filter the delivery reports by these groups, cutting the time and effort required to service the attorneys. All filter groups are custom defined at the office level, providing maximum flexibility for the firm.
- Multiple Printing Options on Reports
Many reports support printing a single meeting/room. If a meeting is updated in the middle of the day, simply print that meeting rather than the complete day. Print a single room, a set of rooms or all rooms in one quick pass. Additionally, print one room per page OR continuously.
Future Features
As you can see from the above features, Baarns Consulting is committed to increasing the feature set of RoomTracker. Feedback from existing legal clients provides input for future features. RoomTracker doesn’t do golf courses, hotels, schools or other generic scheduling. New features and enhancements will continue to be legal specific.
