If you look under bookings, you’ll find a new tab called Resource usage. This is a very simple test of a new reporting feature we’re working on: select a resource and it’ll show you the number of times it has been used each day, week, or month.

We’ve released this new screen early because we want your feedback on its usefulness. What kind of reports would you like to see in Kahu? How would you like the data to be presented (pie charts, bar graphs, tables of data…)?

Post a comment on our blog or send us a message to let us know what you think!

This weekend we will be moving Kahu to our new suite of high performance virtual machines. Kahu will be offline on Sunday 12th December from 12pm to 6pm while we tinker with things and get them running. Normal service will resume by the evening, ready for anyone wanting to check their Monday timetable from home.

• Lists of bookings and tickets

  We’ve added two new pages for administrators, a global list of bookings and a global list of tickets, to help you search through your data and make bulk changes.

• Update multiple records at once

  We’ve added extra tools to help administrators perform routine operations on large numbers of records.

  We’ve added check boxes next to each row on the lists of of bookings, tickets, people and resources. We’ve also added a With selected… combo box to the top of the reports, allowing you to perform routine actions on all selected items.

• New online manual

  We’ve started creating help pages for Kahu! Click the “Help” link in the top right of any page to open the manual in a new window.

  We’re still working on the content. Our initial focus has been on documenting the new administrative tools, although we will expand the help to include all areas of Kahu.

• Upload resources, people and bookings to Kahu

  We’ve started to roll out tools to make it easier for administrators to get data into Kahu. The new Upload people, Upload resources, and Upload bookings pages let you upload CSV files of data extracted from other sources such as your MIS. It’s quick and easy, and there are instructions and template files to get you going.

  See the help pages for more information.

• Kahu development blog

  These news posts are now part of a new Kahu development blog, so you don’t have to be logged into Kahu to see the new features we’re adding.

• Miscellaneous improvements

  We’ve made a number of changes to improve the look and feel of the site, including a redesigned pager and search field on all reports. We’ve also changed the behaviour of the Raise ticket and Edit ticket dialogs to streamline the process of adding and editing comments.

As ever, you can expect to see more updates in the coming weeks. Watch this space!

• Automatic closure of tickets

  We had a lot of requests for this feature from support teams. Tickets in the resolved state are now automatically closed after a week. An email is sent to the person who raised the ticket, just in case there is still a problem.

• Better navigation on booking pages

  Each of the booking pages gets five new navigation buttons to make it easier to move around. In left-to-right order these are previous week, previous day, next day, next week, and jump to today. The selected day is also highlighted in week views, making it easier to see where you’re looking.

• Delete and deactivate people

  Last week we added the ability to delete teams and resources; this week we’re adding the ability to delete people. To avoid confusion, we’ve made it so you can’t delete a person if they own any bookings, have raised any tickets, or have authored any ticket comments. Instead, we’ve added the option to deactivate a person’s account.

  Inactive people cannot log in, and they don’t show up on the People page unless you are an administrator. However, they still appear on bookings, tickets and the like.

What are we currently working on? Well, it’s a biggie. We’re updating our in-house tools for doing mass-imports bookings, resources and people. This should make it far easier for schools to do bulk imports of data from Management Information Systems such as SIMS and Facility.

The tools should be available in the next week or so. In the meantime, as ever, please get in touch if you need help with your data.

Today we launched an update with a number of new features:

• Fortnightly repeating events

  We had a lot of interest at BETT from schools with fortnightly repeating timetables. So much interest, in fact, that we added this feature on the train on the way back to the office. Timetable managers and booking coordinators now have access to this repeat type when creating/editing a booking series.

• Delete resources and teams

  Administrators can now see little trash can icons next to each item on the resource and team lists. Clicking on the icon takes you to a confirmation page where the consequences of deleting the item are laid out in plain English.

• Speed improvements on all booking pages

  We’ve been working hard on our database queries, optimising things here and there to make bookings pages between 20 and 30% faster. There’s more to come in this department too.

• This news feed on the dashboard!

  News on features and bug fixes, delivered straight to your door!

We’re already working on our next update, which we plan to release in the next couple of weeks. Watch this space for more information!