Work has continued on the event management and room reservation functionality of STABLE. Devonne Washington has held numerous meetings with the individuals across campus who are involved in either room approvals and/or event coordination. The focus has been to confirm the event spaces and various rules and attributes of each space. With nearly 100 people involved in this process across campus, this has been quite a large effort!
One of the major pain points for outdoor events is the management of the outdoor request approval process. The current process is facilitated in DocuSign. Event requests are submitted months in advance to reserve the space. However, often these requests do not have all the details of the event, which is critical for approval. Requestors do not have visibility into the status of their event request as the form circulates to multiple areas for review. In order to enhance this process, the reservation of an outdoor space can occur separately from the actual event request process. A space can be reserved but will not be confirmed until the event request has been approved. We’ve also greatly simplified the approval process—narrowing it down to only 3-4 approvals. Requestors will be able to view the status of their request as it moves through the different approvals. Finally, we have revamped the questionnaire to include additional details that are important for campus safety.
Work is also underway for an enhanced event website. There are many different rules and processes that must be followed for compliance, risk and safety issues. However, these are currently distributed across the SMU website in various locations. In order to help guide requestors through the event process, it is critical we have a single portal that helps guide them through the process. This is a highly collaborative effort to gather the location information, pictures, rules, forms and more.
For indoor locations, we are building out the room request process to provide additional information about each space as well as images that give you various viewpoints of the room. Each space will have all of the technology components listed. These components will also serve as a filter to assist you in locating a space that meets your needs. Room reservations will be quick and easy and can be managed within the STABLE portal. Indoor events, similar to the outdoor event process, will have a secondary form to be completed that will capture the required details to ensure better coordination and safety of your event.
For both the indoor and outdoor event process, requestors can select the various services required for the event. this will generate a work order for each service provider but all work orders will be linked to the primary event request. This means better coordination across multiple service providers regarding each event. If your event is canceled or rescheduled, the various suborders will be updated- all in one location.
We will be completing the configuration of STABLE by the beginning of November. At that time, we will conduct some initial reviews from our stakeholders and make any additional adjustments. Training sessions will be scheduled and offered in December and early January. We will go live with the new processes on January 10. We appreciate all of the collaboration and patience as we launch this new event and room management platform.