With Eventdrive, you can let your attendees book a time slot on your resources (meeting rooms, spaces, catering, transport or tours) and add equipment or services to their booking.
In this article, we'll walk you through how to set up and run your Booking Assets module.
- What is the resource booking module for?
- Requirement: how to activate the module?
- How to set up your resource booking module?
- How to open bookings to your attendees?
- What emails are sent automatically?
- How do your attendees book a resource?
What is the resource booking module for?
- Book visit slots on a booth
- Make appointment requests
- Book a spot in a catering area
- Send lunch requests
- Request equipment (monitor, projector, champagne...)
- Request services (lunches, training, autographs...)
- Book a transport slot
Requirement: how to activate the module?
The resource booking module depends on your organization's subscription. If the module doesn't appear in your event menu, contact your Account Manager (CSM) to add it to your plan.
⚠️ Until the module is activated for your organization, every "Booking Assets"
screen stays out of reach. This is the first thing to check if you can't see
the feature.
How to set up your resource booking module?
From your event's administration center, go to the Plan Your Event > Booking Assets menu. You will find 3 sub-menus:
Services
From this menu, you can create a list of equipment and services available during your event.
You can specify information such as:
- Name
- Category (equipment or service)
- Service or equipment cost
- The unit for the cost (free text: person, hour, day, device...)
- Number available in stock
- Provider name
⚠️ Good to know: a service's stock is shared across all resources that use it.
The remaining amount shown for a resource therefore accounts for what has
already been booked elsewhere: a shortage may come from bookings made on
another resource using the same service.
Resources
From the Resources menu, you can add your different rooms to the booking calendar.
You can add the following information:
- Resource name
- Slot duration (minimum length of a booking)
- First bookable slot: the time from which your attendees can book. Slots before this time appear greyed out and can't be booked
- Resource purpose: matches the type of booking possible and acts as a filter in the calendar
- Maximum capacity
- Resource location
- Services and equipment associated with this resource
Adding services will allow your attendees to add this equipment along with various services when booking - Quantity available
- The "Allow multiple bookings" option: the resource then accepts several bookings on the same slot, so several attendees can book the same slot in parallel. This is especially useful for a catering resource, for example to book a spot for lunch
- Group restriction options
- A mandatory companion, if you require at least one person to accompany the attendee
- The possibility to link a form to require attendees to sign up via a form before being able to accept a resource invitation
Combining resources (paired resources)
To create a paired resource, you need to create a new dedicated resource, to which you associate the simple resources you want to combine (for example movable partitions joining several rooms). The paired resource's capacity is then calculated automatically by adding up the combined resources' capacities.
⚠️ Booking a paired resource also blocks its original resources on the same
slot (and vice versa). A resource already used in a combination, or with
confirmed bookings, can't be deleted on its own.
Open/close a resource
By clicking on this sub-menu, you are redirected to an administrator version of the resource booking tool, allowing you to open and close specific slots.
Closing a resource makes bookings impossible on given slots. This is particularly useful when you need setup time, or when resources are not yet available or no longer available.
Example: early morning or late evening, or when setting up a restaurant that will only be open between noon and 3 PM.
Filters
At the top of this page, you will find various filters to help you find your resources more easily.
Remember to reset these filters to display
all of your resources.Opening and closing resources
You can select them by clicking on the different slots; you can then choose to open or close them to control the availability offered to your attendees.
Your attendees can only book open slots.
The buttons to open and close slots are available at the bottom of the page.
In red, you will find your closed slots, and in white, the open slots:
The "Period management" button allows you to open and close all your slots from a dedicated menu.
⚠️ You can't close a period if some of its slots already have bookings.
Manage booking applications
From this menu, you can see all booking requests. You can search, approve or decline them, and manage each booking:
- Approve or decline a request: on approval, the booking is confirmed and the inviter is notified by email
- Resend invitations: the "Resend Invitations" button re-sends, in one go, to every guest who hasn't replied yet; the "Resend Invitation" option (in a row's gear menu) only re-sends for that booking
- Edit the name of a booking directly from the list, using the pencil icon
- Export requests as CSV or XLSX (resource, status, services, date/time, inviter contact details, notes...)
If a request is pending validation or declined, guests do not receive any email.
Once the request is validated, guests will receive a confirmation request for the reserved slot.
⚠️ Important, automatic cascade refusal: when you approve a request, the other
pending requests on the same slot that no longer fit within the remaining
capacity (or whose shared service is exhausted) are automatically declined.
A warning lists these requests before you confirm. On the attendee side, a
request may therefore become "Declined" without any direct action on their
own, simply because another one was approved first.
Reception Staff Access
The Reception Staff Access menu will provide you with QR codes and access links for your reception staff. No user account is required: with the link, they reach a dedicated booking calendar to:
⚠️ Requirement: the organizer who created the event (main event manager) must
be part of the attendee list. Otherwise, Reception Staff Access returns a
403 error.
- Search for a booking (by name, company, number...)
- Create, edit or cancel a booking on site
- Check attendees in from a booking's detail window (one toggle per person, or one toggle for everyone)
- Switch to an optimized grid view that shows, at a glance, the availability of every resource across all of the day's slots: ideal for welcoming walk-in visitors
You can check in your attendees directly from this reception staff interface. Note: check-ins are recorded on the checkpoint automatically created for the resource.
🖼️ Screenshot to add: attendee check-in toggles (no screenshot available yet).
⚠️ Heads-up: anyone holding the link or QR code can view and manage the
related bookings, with no further authentication. Share these accesses
only with your reception staff.
⚠️ Good to know: bookings made by reception staff are confirmed immediately,
with no organizer validation. Your attendees' bookings via their personal
link follow the process described in "Manage booking applications".
How to open bookings to your attendees?
For your attendees to start booking slots, you must send them a personal link to the resource booking module.
Learn more about How do I add special links to my email?
What emails are sent automatically?
The module automatically sends several emails (in English or French depending on the recipient's language):
- A new booking request notifies the managers; the inviter receives an acknowledgment that "your request will be reviewed shortly"
- The approval or refusal of a request is sent to the inviter (a calendar invitation .ics is attached on approval)
- Each guest receives an invitation to join the booking, with buttons to confirm or decline; they are also notified if they are removed from the booking
A merge tag %attendeebookings% lets you insert, in your campaign emails, an attendee's summary of their upcoming confirmed slots (date, time, booking name, resource and location).
⚠️ If your organization has disabled automatic emails, guest invitations are
not sent.
How do your attendees book a resource?
This article explained how to set up and run the module from the administration center. To see what booking looks like from your attendees' point of view, see the article How to Book a Slot in the Room Booking Module?
Good to know
Not to be confused with Rooming, which lets your attendees choose who to share a hotel room with: here, it's about booking your event's resources.
Our support team remains available by email at support@eventdrive.com.