1. Go to instruct-eric.org and login.

2. Go to the instrument booking calendar. For help locating the booking calendar please see the guide Navigating to the instrument booking calendar.

A table should appear displaying all of the machines/methods for which you have the permission to view availability, request booking slots, or book slots for yourself and others. If the calendar is empty please contact the facility hosting the machine/method you wish to book and ask them to change your user permissions for the machine. If you are a machine/method administrator and wish to change user booking permissions see the guides Configuring machine bookings and Managing user training status.

Filter the booking calendar for a particular instrument by clicking in the box labelled "Filter Machines/Methods" and typing/selecting the desired instrument(s) from the list. Click the "Filter" button to confirm the selection and filter the list, and click the "Reset" button to remove the selected filter. After resetting, click the "Filter" button again to restore the full list of bookable instruments.

The view can be switched between:

• "resources" view (default) - to see all available instruments as rows in a table, and time slots (hourly) as columns in the table. Scrollbar at the bottom of the table allows navigation through time slots for the current week. To change the week click the arrows to the top left of the table.
• "day" view - to see all bookings for a particular day. Bookings are shown in a table with rows for each (hourly) timeslot, and columns for each (filtered) bookable instrument. To navigate to other dates, click the arrows to the top left of the table.
• "week" view - to see all bookings for a particular week. This will show bookings for all (filtered) instruments. To navigate to other weeks, click the arrows to the top left of the table.
• "month" view - to see all bookings for a particular month. This will show bookings for all (filtered) instruments To navigate to other months, click the arrows to the top left of the table.

3. If you have permission to book (or request to book) yourself (or others) for a machine/method, it will appear in the "resources" view table with a green calendar button to the left of the machine/method name. Click this to open the booking page.

4. Fill in the booking request form.

   • Include a title for your booking which will appear on the booking calendar for all users.
   • Select the time of your booking (if applicable) by clicking in the box and selecting a date and time using the calendar or manually enter a time and date in the format DD-MM-YY hh:mm (note the timezone given for bookings is currently fixed to be Europe/London).

   

   • Enter the duration of your booking (if applicable) in the format DD-MM-YYYY hh:mm.
   • Select the user you are booking the machine/method for (if applicable) e.g. yourself if it is you who will be using the machine/method, or a colleague if it is them who will be using the machine/method.
   • Fill in any other form fields required by the booking request form.

5. Click "Submit Request" to book the machine/method at the selected time (subject to machine/method booking configuration and machine/method availability).

If your booking has been successful:

A message will appear saying "Your booking request has been placed successfully", and the booking you have made will appear in the booking calendar at the specified time. For information on how to make changes to the booking placed, see the guide Editing a booking; and for information on how to delete the booking placed, see the guide Cancelling a booking.

If your booking has been unsuccessful:

An error will occur explaining why the booking has not been made. Possible reasons for unsuccessful bookings are:

• The machine is already booked for the time you have requested and only allows one user at a time.
• You have exceeded a facility-set quota for the maximum number/length of bookings in a time period.
• The machine has an outage during the time you have requested.
• The booking is outside of working hours and your permissions are set to only allow bookings within working hours.