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setup guides· 7 min read

Room Booking in Google Workspace for Education: Set Up the Hall, Library and Staff Rooms Properly

Most schools on Google Workspace for Education already have a room booking system that has never been switched on properly. Here is the setup in the order that saves the most arguments: which rooms to add, how to describe them, who may book them, and which rooms need someone to say yes.

Most schools on Google Workspace for Education already have a room booking system. It just has not been switched on properly. The staff room is a resource, the hall lives in the office manager's personal calendar, the library study rooms are on a shared spreadsheet, and the music practice rooms are booked by whoever gets there first.

None of that needs new software. Google Calendar resources do most of what a school needs, if they are set up with the school in mind rather than an office. This guide walks through the setup in the order that saves the most arguments: which rooms to add, how to describe them, who may book them, and which rooms need a person to say yes.

Which rooms should be resources, and which should not

A resource is a calendar that belongs to a room rather than a person. Staff add it to an event like a guest, and it accepts or declines on its own. That works well for rooms booked by people. It works badly for rooms allocated by a timetable.

  • Make these resources: staff meeting rooms, the hall, the library and its study rooms, music practice rooms, the sports hall, the drama studio, interview rooms and any shared space staff currently argue over.
  • Think twice about classrooms. If lessons live in a timetabling system and not in Google Calendar, a classroom resource will show as free during a lesson, and someone will book it. Either your timetabling tool publishes lessons into the room's calendar, or the classroom stays off the booking list.
  • Do not make people into resources. A shared mailbox for the front office is not a room. Keep resources for physical spaces and equipment.

Step 1: buildings and features

Resources hang off buildings, so start there. In the Admin console go to Directory, then Buildings and resources. Add each site as a building, including a separate building for a sixth form block or a second campus if staff think of it as a different place.

Then add features. Google supports three feature types: Videoconferencing, Telephony and Other. Other is where the school-specific ones go: projector, piano, sprung floor, step-free access, blackout blinds. You can create up to 100. Features are what let a teacher search for "a room with a piano that seats 30" instead of asking in the staff room.

Step 2: describe each room the way staff talk about it

For each resource, set the building, floor, capacity and features. Three habits make the difference:

  • Use the name staff actually say. If everyone calls it "the Old Library", do not call it "B-1-14 Meeting Room". The room name is what people type into the search box.
  • Set capacity honestly. The number of people who can sit and see the board, not the fire limit. This stops a four-person meeting taking the room that seats 40.
  • Add the features nobody remembers. Step-free access matters most to the people least likely to ask.

Step 3: decide who can book each room

This is where schools differ most from offices. In an office, everyone can usually book everything. In a school, the hall is for staff, the music rooms are for the music department, and the library study rooms may be for students.

Booking rights follow the resource's sharing settings in Google Calendar. Both "See only free/busy (hide details)" and "See all event details" let a person book the room. The difference is what they can see: free/busy users see that the room is taken, but not who took it or why.

To limit a room to one group, an administrator opens the resource in Google Calendar, goes to Settings and sharing, and:

  1. Leaves "Make available for your organization" unchecked.
  2. Under "Share with specific people", adds the Google Group that should book it, for example the music department group.
  3. Sets "Auto-accept invitations" to "Auto-accept invitations that do not conflict". This also declines bookings from people outside the group, so you do not need to police it by hand.

A useful side effect for pastoral and counselling rooms: give staff free/busy access only. They can still book the room, but nobody browsing its calendar sees which student or family a meeting was with.

Step 4: rooms that need a person to say yes

Some rooms should not accept bookings automatically. The hall during parents' evening season, the sports hall when it is let to outside clubs, the boardroom used for governors. For these, Google supports a resource manager: a named person, who does not need to be an administrator, who approves each booking.

Setting it up needs a Super Admin. The resource is shared with the people who can book it, the resource manager is given "Make changes AND manage sharing", and "Auto-accept invitations" is set to "Automatically add all invitations to this calendar". The manager then gets a "New Event" email for each booking and answers Yes, Maybe or No. No removes the room from the event.

Use this sparingly. A resource manager is a queue, and a queue for a four-person room is a queue nobody needed.

Step 5: other schools in the same trust

Schools in a trust or district often share a building but not a Google domain. Admins can allow non-Google users, or whole external domains, to book a resource. In the Admin console, open the resource under Buildings and resources, choose "Booking permissions for non-Google users" and add the addresses or domains. External staff then add the room as a guest from their own calendar, and it confirms by email.

Step 6: tell people

The setup only works if staff use it. Send one short message: which rooms are bookable, who can book which, and that bookings happen in Google Calendar like any other meeting. Retire the spreadsheet on a named date, not gradually.

Where a screen by the door comes in

Once rooms are resources, the calendar knows which room is free. The person standing in the corridor does not. That is the last gap: the knock on the door to check whether the meeting has finished, or the class that walks into the hall during an assembly rehearsal.

A display by the door closes it, because it reads the same resource calendar you just set up. We put together what that looks like in a school, including which rooms are worth a screen first, on our page for schools.

Where Lobby fits

Lobby reads Google Workspace resources, including Education editions, with read-only access, and shows free or busy on an e-ink panel by the door, on a tablet or TV you already own, or on one board for every room. It never writes to your calendar. Booking from the screen works by scanning a QR code, which opens Google Calendar with the room already filled in, so the permissions you set in step 3 still apply.

Each room can hide meeting titles, organiser names or both, which suits counselling and interview rooms. Free forever up to 3 displays, then Unlimited at USD 30 per month billed yearly (USD 50 month to month) or Pro Unlimited at USD 60 per month billed yearly (USD 100 month to month). Never per room, never per student. E-ink panels cost USD 69 each, bought from the manufacturer and owned outright. Full pricing is published.

What it does not do: it does not read timetabling or MIS systems, it does not replace the resource setup above, and it cannot fix a room that was never made a resource. If the calendar is wrong, the screen is faithfully wrong.

TL;DR

  • Make staff rooms, the hall, the library and shared spaces into Google Calendar resources. Leave timetabled classrooms off unless lessons reach the room's calendar.
  • Add buildings first, then features (Videoconferencing, Telephony or Other), then resources with honest capacity and the names staff actually use.
  • Both free/busy and full-detail sharing let people book. Free/busy hides who booked, which suits pastoral rooms.
  • Restrict a room to a Google Group by unchecking organisation-wide sharing, sharing with the group, and auto-accepting only non-conflicting invitations.
  • Use a resource manager for the few rooms that need approval, such as the hall when it is let out.
  • Other schools in a trust can book through non-Google booking permissions.
  • A screen by the door shows people in the corridor what the calendar already knows.

Related reading

Sources

Google moves Admin console screens from time to time, so search the console for the setting names above if a menu has moved.

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