From what I understand, you can only have one active reservation at a time per area. Has that changed? Because right now you have a few members taking abuot a third of the woodshop reservations for the coming week. Can you please clarify? I understand that people have active projects but everyone should have an even chance to book time for tomorrow and not just gave a few members reserve future spots until they run out of alotted hours.
I think you’re referring to the policy for wood CNCs and lasers: Access Policies - Asmbly Wiki
There are a few machines in the space with high demand which have limits on the length of bookings.
We only allow one reservation at a time for these machines
Except for those machines, members may book up to the 25 hour limit for the week in as many reservations as they choose.
Thanks for the link, I could not find it. I guess I will join them and book my time for the week. I just think that allowing that promotes the “reservation no show” that is being experienced in the woodshop.
Jose, I think you bring up a good point about the current capacity of the woodshop. Weekends have been 100% booked for the past several months. Some weekday evenings are like that too. This is not a new problem and I don’t see why it would change unless something changes on the operations side.
I’m curious what we are doing to increase capacity in the wood shop and/or decrease no shows.
I’m really regretting selling my table saw.
For what it’s worth, I was just posting the current policy above, not suggesting that it’s the best policy. I think it would be good to talk about other ways we could organize bookings. In 3DP, we had a problem with no-shows, so we added specific rules about that ( Access Policies - Asmbly Wiki point 7). I think that adding more printers did more to help than changing the policies, though.
We are approaching the end of the year already and this historically is our ramp up season. It will get busier in October, November, and December leading up to gift giving season. This is a great reminder to Remove Booking if Not Present.
Based on only skedda data, here is our trend of woodshop bookings over time.
Across the board, @AJStow and I are looking at some booking changes on Skedda that help discourage no-shows and reopen slots during a no-show. We will provide more details in the near future once we have a full understanding of a few options.
As for the woodshop capacity specifically, @Glory2God and @Gem have been squeezing work tables in as much as they can and currently working on an additional artisan bench. They are very aware that our skedda trends show we’ll be at full capacity during peak hours towards the end of this year and trying to be creative on how to best accommodate. Even with all of that, I have been advising members to book at least 1-2 days ahead of time particularly for time sensitive projects.
Part of that creativity may require a review of some of the booking rules written when there was no question of availability. Please continue to voice concerns over availability so we can work continuously improve.
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I don’t think Skedda offers the functionality, but it would be useful to have a “check-in” feature that deletes your booking after a set time-frame of not checking in for your booking. Alternatively, some sort of automation that compares Skedda bookings to Alta Open badge ins to the facility could offer insight into how often member’s aren’t showing up for bookings. Not a perfect system by any means, but it would offer insight.
Anecdotally, over the last several weeks the woodshop has been totally booked in the evenings/nights and there have been few people actually there during those times I’ve been around.
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7 tables now still only 6 slots. Good place to start
I agree with Stanton that it would be helpful if we could correlate Skedda reservations with Alta entrances. Additionally, I would be interested to see a usage report that takes into account Alta data to give a more accurate usage picture. Very frequently, I have observed all 6 benches booked on Skedda with 4 or fewer members actually in the shop.
Another question I have is regarding tool usage and how frequently people have to “wait in line” to use the power tool they need – also which tools and when. Maybe the Grit power boxes can help us track this.
The seventh table in this chart is referring to the Artisan table.
There is a way of potentially canceling bookings for folks that do not show up and check in. That is something Adam and I are looking into
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I think Eric is noting that we have added at least one general purpose table to the shop in the last few months, which could justify an additional Skedda slot. Gem’s question about tool conflicts is certainly important.
And going to Jose’s point: if the shop is going to get booked so much, perhaps there does need to be a limit on how many reservations you can have at one time, like the CNCs and lasers, albeit probably a less strict one. But look at Skedda right now: four people have already booked three or more big time slots for this coming week; a non-trivial fraction of the weekday times are already unavailable to anyone else.
Yep I believe there are 7 general woodshop tables with an additional 2 glue up tables. should definitely have at least 7 slots. There’s also the rogue table by the CNC router that only gets used about 10% of the time by cnc users. Could open up an 8th with a rearrangement there.
Also personally half my trips to the wood-shop are for about 10-15min where I don’t even need a table. so a pop in no table slot could be nice.
Skedda historically has not had open API’s so the integration stuff with Alta etc. is hard. I personally would forget to check in.
For me Planer is the #1 tool by far I’ve had to wait for (just an anecdote.)
We should certainly just put out a Survey with these issues on it to get broader membership feedback.
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Seconding Eric. The times I’ve had to wait, it’s the jointer and planer, however I’ve had to wait regardless of the shop being at full capacity (I.e. even if there’s only 2 other people booked, if they’re both needing the jointer and planer, that’s still a bottleneck).
there’s also been plenty of times the shop has been fully booked and there’s no wait. I rarely need a full table for my work and would be fine with slots expanding past the amount of tables (or maybe having the ability to book half table slots?)
I’m going to step in to say this is the second time I have seen it suggested to track Alta Open accesses of members and this is likely a pretty bad idea for privacy reasons.
It will also not work for those who routinely enter the building in small groups, nor does it monitor when people leave.
At this time, door badging/access is not sufficient to verify members onsite and it is not being considered to solve any issues particularly those being discussed in this post.
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For transparency: Asmbly already logs Alta Open access to the facility. And there is a “about a month” retention policy on the security cameras (video is deleted based on storage space, not time).
Whether the Alta data can/should be used for other purposes is a separate question.
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Sounds like there needs to be a policy on the anonymization and retention of the Skedda and Alta data. Which specific member did what and when shouldn’t be a question you are able to answer many years later.
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how does this issue/challenge relate to increased membership. I hate to suggest it because membership revenue is important but will we eventually have to cap numbers in order to keep access to the shop/tools manageable?
One thing that would improve the booking problem might be to have the workshop tables physically labeled 1-6, which would correlate to the skedda bookings. This may help when people come to the woodshop and it is completely full, they can then confirm which table is actually theirs to use.
Another way to possibly combat the no-shows is to put a QR code on each table that members need to scan to sign in when they arrive at the workshop. This is not a perfect system by any means, but it may help with confirming which people are actually in the woodshop at a given time compared to the skedda bookings.
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