I was asked by our new Library Director to find an alternative to our now out-of-date and somewhat cumbersome room/resource booking software. The software would need to allow staff to book various rooms, ICT resources, labs and mobile notebook trolleys throughout the school. A quick search came up with a number of positive reviews for MRBS as a school resource booking solution so I decided to try it out.
The prerequisites for MRBS are as follows:
- PHP 4/5
- MySQL or PostgreSQL
- A web server (such as Apache) that supports PHP
- PHP-LDAP Modules (optional for LDAP authentication)
Luckily enough I already had an Ubuntu Linux production server in place with these prerequisites installed so I was ready to go. The install process is as follows:
- Extract the contents of the MRBS.tar.gz file to your web servers storage folder (ie: Apache – htdocs, IIS -inetpub)
- Create a mrbs database in MySQL
CREATE DATABASE `mrbs` ;
- Create the database table structure using the supplied tables.my.sql script
(Optional: Add sample data to the database using the supplied sample-data.sql script)
- You must enter a timezone into the config.inc.php file before the system will function (ie: $timezone = “Sydney/Australia;)
At this point the system is ready to use. However, I recommend a few extra steps for ease of use in a school environment:
Enable period view and define school periods:
The default view for MRBS is time slots. Generally schools work to periods not time slots so a period view has been included in MRBS.
To enable the period view:
- Include the following line of code in your config.inc.php file:
$enable_periods = TRUE;
- Define the periods in the config.inc.php file. Example:
- $periods[] = “Before School”;
$periods[] = “Mentor”;
$periods[] = “Period 1″;
$periods[] = “Period 2″;
$periods[] = “Recess”;
And so on…
Activate LDAP authentication:
We endeavor to provide a single-sign-on environment for our staff and students which means that LDAP authentication is a must have for any system that we implement into our network. This process was by far the hardest part of the MRBS install and took my colleague and I sometime to complete mainly due to the PHP-LDAP modules.
To enable LDAP authentication:
- Install PHP-LDAP modules
I am not going to go into installing these modules in this post but am happy to lend a hand if you need help getting these working.
- Define LDAP authentication commands in the config.inc.php file. Example:
$auth['only_admin_can_book_repeat'] = TRUE;$auth["type"] = “ldap”;
$ldap_host = “yourdomain.com.au”;
$ldap_port = 389;
$ldap_v3 = true;
$ldap_tls = false;
$ldap_base_dn = “ou=Users,dc=yourdomain,dc=com,dc=au”;
$ldap_user_attrib = “sAMAccountName”;
$ldap_dn_search_dn = “cn=Admin,ou=Users,dc=yourdomain,dc=com,dc=au”;
$ldap_dn_search_attrib = “sAMAccountName”;
$ldap_dn_search_password = “Admin_Password”;
- Define admin users from LDAP in the config.inc.php file
$auth["admin"] = “Admin”;
Being open source the opportunities to endless for you to critique this system to your individual needs. We have edited various files within the system to do the following:
- Only allow admins to create repeat bookings
- Change field labels by editing the language file (lang.en)
- Apply the users username to the end of the displayed booking so staff can easily see who has made the booking
- Add an “Override Creator” field for admins only so that they can make a booking on a staff members behalf
- Edit the Help page to be more school specific help
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button to capture the card. However, a great feature included in this app is the Anti-Shake Mode capture. Line up the card within the guidelines, press the 
button and the app will wait until the camera is steady enough to take an accurate snapshot of the card.
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