Guide to Managing Rollcall Bookings

Modified on Tue, 19 Mar at 5:55 PM

Introduction

After the transport routes are set up in your system it is time to assign students to the routes for a pattern of travel over a period of time – usually an entire term or year, but occasionally for shorter periods of time. Assigning or allocating students to a bus is known as “Bus Bookings” and once made they can be viewed in the transport screen for each Route and in the Student Settings “Bus Bookings” tab for each student. Managing bookings is important to ensure that buses operate within capacity.

Bookings vs Bus Changes

“Booking” is the Rollcall term for assigning/allocating students to transport routes over longer time periods (multiple weeks, months, terms). They usually have a repetitive pattern of use, are often needed to guarantee a seat for students that use the transport regularly and help with provisioning transport and managing utilisation.

“Bus Change” is a one-off (daily) or infrequent change to bus use, including removing the student from a bus, adding them to a bus and changing them from one route/stop to another.

Who can make a booking?

Bookings can be made by any Rollcall School Admin user.

Refer to the below videos for step-by-step instructions on bookings:

Rollcall parents can also make bookings via the parent app under the following circumstances:

The Rollcall provider has allowed access to the booking function in the parent app and web portal AND
The Rollcall provider has opened a booking period for parents in their Rollcall system.

Refer to below video for setting up a booking period:

Creating a Parent Booking Window

Share the instructional videos below with parents:

What information is needed to enter a booking?

Student Name
Route
Stop name – we recommend using the campus if the community stop being used is unknown
Period of travel – From and To Dates
Pattern of travel – Days of week, another pattern if not the same each week

How can I review bookings already in the Rollcall system?

The “Student Transport Report” provides detail of all bookings for the period specified in the date filter. We recommend exporting to Excel, where you’re able to use data analysis tools to summarise and filter the booking information.

The Transport screen displays passenger manifests for each event. Use the filters at the tops of the screen to navigate to the Date, Event Group and Route that you want to view passenger bookings.

Each Student’s record (Bus bookings tab) displays a calendar of student bookings. There is a calendar for each Event group and coloured squares indicate a booked trip. If you hover your mouse pointer over a coloured square on the calendar, a popup will provide detail of the route and stop booked for each day.

How can I avoid duplicate bookings in the system?

The Rollcall system is designed to prevent multiple bookings for the same student in the same Event Group. Any new booking for a student will automatically replace any other booking which already exists for that student for the same event group and date.

How can I remove a student booking?

To remove a single bus event (bus change), use the trash can next to the student name in the transport screen.

To remove a pattern or period of bus bookings for a student into the future, you will effectively overwrite the existing bus booking with a “No Bus” booking instead:

Open the Student record
Select bus Bookings Tab
Select the event group
Choose “No Bus”
Choose “No Stop”
Select the period to remove the bus bookings from
Select Apply

Choose the pattern of bookings to REMOVE – i.e. the check marks indicate days in the period specified that will be cleared/deleted.
Click Apply

The student calendar will be cleared of the specified bus trips. Refer to the video below for a reminder on using the Bus Bookings tab in Student settings.

V2 individual student bookings

How can I remove all bookings from a route?

The quickest way to clear a route of ALL future bookings is as follows:

Deactivate the route by removing the checkmark from the "Active" box in the route settings.

You will receive a warning that future dates and bookings will be removed.
Confirm and then save.
NOTE: Deactivating does not affect the structure or other settings of the route or remove any route history.

Bring the route back from “Inactive” status.

NOTE: You can view Inactive routes by removing the "Active" checkmark filter at the top of the route list.
Re-activate by check marking the “active” checkbox in the Route settings
Add your bus dates for the route.
The Route is now ready for new bookings.

What are the factors to consider when deciding on our approach to managing bookings?

Based on our experience you will need to consider at least some of the following factors when deciding on how to manage your bookings.

Human resources – availability, skills, engagement
Other resources – training materials, policies, transport information
Parent service level expectations
Parent skills and knowledge – tech skills, language barrier, education level
Frequency – how often do you require parents to advise of the need for transport
System limitations – parents are unable to book if stop locations are restricted. I.e., for door-to-door services.

Does Rollcall have any recommendations for managing bus bookings?

Yes! Based on our experience over many years of seeing what has worked for our clients and what hasn’t, we can recommend the following approach.

Engage with parents early and communicate often about any changes to your transport booking process and transport routes.
Supply complete information on the available transport routes, stops and timetable and how to book using Rollcall App bookings for long-term, regular travel and Rollcall App bus changes for casual travel.
After consideration of the factors mentioned previously, try pushing the booking process out to parents. Parents and school can both benefit from allowing parents to have greater control and responsibility over their transport bookings. The Rollcall system also has features to help you with guiding and managing parent-initiated bookings. These include:

Setting booking periods (what dates can be booked) and controlling booking windows (when the system is open for parents to make bookings)
Reserve capacity – by reducing route capacity you are able to control how many seats are available for parents to book.
Visibility of bookings in the parent app and portal. Parents can see their booking requests as well as details of their upcoming booked trips in the app. In the web portal on a computer they will be able to view all bookings for the calendar year.
Student transport report and bus utilisation report for managing bookings and capacity.

Be thoughtful about setting up your booking periods and inviting bookings depending on your transport capacity. Where utilisation is high, open a short booking window prior to the period (Term, Semester or Year) available for bookings and selectively advise regular bus travellers of the booking window to allow first access. Where you want to increase utilisation, open a booking window for the entire period and promote to all parents.

NOTE: A booking window opens booking access on all routes for all parents.

If you decide not to allow parents to book for themselves, then we recommend using an e-form (like MS-Forms) to collect the booking information in a format that is easy to sort and enter into your system.

For questions and feedback, send an email to [email protected] and quote the document title