A common request I receive for Roomr is to add an ability to import room information without needing to use Exchange Room Lists. Room Lists aren’t the greatest of Exchange’s features. They are, as the name suggests, simply lists of Rooms. Whilst you can have multiple lists, you can’t nest them or organise them into a hierarchy of any kind. Further more, there is no UI available to create or maintain them. It’s all accomplished via PowerShell. This makes them even harder to use.
Enter the roomrconfig file. This file allows you to specify a list of rooms and folders, in a nested fashion, that you can import into Roomr. A sample file looks like this:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<configuration version=”1.0.0″>
<rooms>
<folder name=”10, Any Street Building”>
<folder name=”First Floor”>
<room name=”Conference Room” email=”as-1-conference@company.com” />
</folder>
<folder name=”Second Floor”>
<room name=”Conference Room” email=”as-2-conference@company.com” />
</folder>
</folder>
</rooms>
</configuration>
As you can hopefully make out, there is a folder called “10, Any Street Building”, which is broken down into two floors, each with one room. It looks something like this on an iPhone.
This is a pretty simple case, but common for larger companies that are spread over multiple floors and potentially multiple buildings. This sort of nesting also makes it very easy to search based on context. The information can then be imported into Roomr, so it’s readily available from your iPhone at any time.
The config file can be deployed as an email attachment or accessed via a link. This version of Roomr, 2.9, is currently awaiting Apple to approve for Beta testing. If you’re interested in being part of the Beta program for Roomr, please get in touch!
As always, feedback is welcome!
Tomas McGuinness 