Swapping rooms between events

What a swap is for

Sometimes the rooms are all booked but in the wrong order: a large rehearsal is squeezed into a small studio while a two-person meeting has the main hall. Nothing is free, so an ordinary room change can't fix it. A swap exchanges the rooms events already hold, so both events keep a room and nothing is double-booked.

A swap can also bring a repeating event that ended up spread across different rooms back into one room. On each date, whatever holds that room takes the room your event is leaving.

Swapping needs the Swap rooms between events permission. Admins have it. For any other role an Admin has to turn it on in Roles.

Opening the Swap board

All swaps happen on the Swap board, which shows rooms down the side, dates across the top, and the events that hold them. You can open it two ways:

• From the calendar, press Swap board. It opens on the dates you were looking at. (The board is available on larger screens only.)
• From an event, open its Basics page and press Swap rooms…, under Swap rooms with another event. The board opens on that event's date with the event marked. For a repeating event, Swap rooms across the whole run… opens the board on every date the run has.

Use the filters to narrow the board by rooms, room tags, event types, event type tags and days of the week. The board shows only the rooms and events your own calendar shows you.

Staging changes

Drag an event onto another room:

• If that room is free at that time, the event moves there.
• If another event holds it, the two events swap rooms.

An event that uses more than one room appears in each of its rooms. Drag it from the room you want to change, and it keeps its other rooms. The event it swaps with also keeps any other rooms it holds, and gives up only the room that was taken.

From the keyboard, focus an event and press Enter to choose the room it goes to from a list.

Nothing is saved when you drop. Each change is added to Staged changes, so you can build up several moves and look them over together. If the event repeats, you'll be offered Choose which… to apply the same change to the other dates the board is showing, or Just this one.

Some drops can't be staged, and the board says why. For example, you can't move an event to a different date (a swap changes rooms, never times), and you can't leave a room holding two overlapping events.

Reviewing and applying

Press Review to see Review these changes. Every event that will move is listed with the room it leaves and the room it takes. Nothing has changed yet at this point.

The review also lists any booking rules the swap sets aside, for example:

• an event ending up in a room too small for the number of people expected,
• a room you couldn't normally book, or
• an event that would be left with no room at all. This one is shown most prominently. That event appears under Needs a room on Home so it isn't forgotten.

Each warning names the rule, what follows from it, and whose event it affects. You can add a note under Why (optional), for example "both groups agreed". Press Process these changes to apply everything at once. If a change can't be made, you'll be offered Process the rest and skip it instead.

If something on the calendar changes while you're reviewing, nothing is written. Review again to see the current picture.

What gets recorded

Every swap is recorded in the audit log, including swaps that set no rule aside. Where a rule was set aside, the record says which one, on which date, and your reason if you gave one.

The managers of the events that moved are notified. If their event was moved against a booking rule, the notification says it was done deliberately and includes your reason.

Swapping versus asking for a room

A swap acts against the booking rules. It isn't a request, and nobody approves it. If you just want a room for your own event, reserve it as usual, or ask for an override if someone higher-priority holds it.