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Taking Up Your Booking

Shortly after each booking period, the booking system allocates each user (who has booked for that period) to a terminal in the lab. Where possible, users are allocated to terminals that they are already using, or that are currently unused. If there are insufficient unused terminals, terminals which have been in use for a long time by users who were not booked are the first candidates for eviction.

This means that people who book are less likely to be evicted when their booking ends than people who don't book. Of course if the lab is fully booked, then anyone who is not booked will be evicted.

The allocations that the booking system makes are displayed on the Information Terminals (or infoterms) which are distributed around the laboratories.

For more information on infoterms, please see section Information Terminals (section 1.2.8, page ).

The infoterms list all allocations which have not been taken up, all unused terminals, and all broken terminals. The listing is grouped by laboratory (most infoterms report on several laboratories). Within each group the allocations are listed first, followed by available terminals and finally broken terminals. The allocations show the user's login name, and the name of the terminal that they have been allocated.

In some cases, the name of the terminal will be replaced by the word CLAIM which means that the user should log in to a booking terminal, and use the claim command to claim their bookings. This is described in more detail under Being Late For a Booking (section 1.5.5, page ).

The allocations for each period are displayed approximately 10 minutes before the period starts, so if you have a booking for 10:30am in the tuba laboratory, the terminal that you have been allocated will be displayed on the tuba infoterm from 10:20am until you log on.

When you are allocated a terminal, the person who is logged on to it will be forced to log off by the start of the period, and the terminal will be reserved for you until 7 minutes into the period. During this time, no one else will be able to log in but you.

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Next: Being Late For a Up: The Booking System Previous: URL Control_Panel   Contents