Taking equipment out and bringing it back

Checking out

Open the item and fill in the form under Available:

Where will it be used?

The room the equipment is going to. This is the only required field. Your usual room is pre-selected if you have set one under Mine, and + somewhere else… adds a room that is not in the list yet.

Expected back on

Optional, and worth filling in. It is what makes an item show as overdue later, and what tells a colleague whether waiting is realistic.

Add a note

Optional. Anything the next person should know: taken to a measurement site, packed with a particular cable, and so on.

Press Check out. The item is yours from that moment, and the catalogue shows it as in use.

An item can only be out once. If somebody beat you to it by a few seconds, the form says so rather than recording a second checkout.

Changing the date

A date you gave in the morning is often wrong by Friday, and a date nobody intends to keep is worse than none: an item three weeks past it looks exactly like one that has gone missing.

So the date can be changed while the equipment is still out, from either of the two places it is shown. On Mine, the small due … marker beside each row is a link. On the item’s own page, Edit sits beside Expected back. Both open the same short form.

Leaving the field empty is a real answer and clears the date, for when you genuinely no longer know. A day in the past is refused — that is what Check back in is for.

Besides you, three other people can change it: whoever took the equipment out in your name, your mentor, and any manager. Every change is written into the item’s history with both dates, so the record says what it used to say.

Checking in

Press Check back in, on the item’s page or in the list under Mine. Nothing else is needed; the equipment is expected back in its usual keeping place, which the item’s page names.

If somebody else has an item out and has forgotten it, or has left, a manager can return it for them with Check in on their behalf. The history records who actually did it.

Booking ahead

It is the same form. Book it for a later day on the checkout form opens a start date; pick a later day and the submission becomes a booking rather than a checkout. The equipment stays on the shelf, the days are claimed, and the return date you gave becomes the day the booking ends. Leave it alone, as almost everybody will, and the checkout happens now exactly as it always has.

When somebody else has the equipment out, or it belongs to a lab that has not said yes yet, there is no checkout form to open. Book it for later under the calendar does the same job in those cases.

A booking does not hold the equipment and does not stop anyone else taking it: bookings are visible to whoever is about to borrow it, so the two of you can sort it out between you.

The item’s page carries a Booking calendar, folded away until you open it, showing the month at a glance with the list of dates underneath. Days you have booked are filled in; days somebody else has booked are shaded; days the equipment is actually out on loan are hatched, including a loan due back later this month. Nobody is named unless you are a manager. The arrows either side of the month name page back and forward, and paging back shows loans that have already been returned.

It starts closed on every visit: the page belongs to somebody who has just scanned a label and wants the button.

Tap one of your own days to change that booking. The page it opens changes the dates or what the booking is for, and Give up this booking drops it and hands the days back. A booking that is already running can still have its end date pushed out; its start is in the past and stays where it is. Once a booking has been collected it has become a checkout, so it is the checkout that is returned rather than the booking that is edited.

A manager can change or drop anybody’s booking, which is how a week stops being blocked by somebody who is away.

Your own bookings also appear under Mine, where Collect it turns one into a real checkout when the day comes, and Cancel withdraws one you no longer need.

Borrowing another lab’s equipment

Equipment owned by another lab cannot be checked out directly. The button reads Ask <lab> to borrow it and opens a short form where you can say what you need it for, which makes a yes more likely.

What happens next depends on that lab’s policy:

Ask us first

The request waits for one of their admins to answer. You get a notice under Mine either way.

Just tell us afterwards

Permission is granted on the spot and the owning lab is told. You can check the item out immediately.

An answer covers one loan. Bringing the equipment back and wanting it again next week means asking again, deliberately: a permanent yes would be a key to the cupboard rather than an answer about a piece of equipment.

Taking equipment out for a student

Mentors get one extra field on the checkout form, Who is taking it?, which defaults to Myself. Choosing a student records the checkout as theirs.

This matters in two directions. The student is notified and the item appears under their name, as their responsibility. The mentor’s permissions are what gets it out of the cupboard, so a mentor can ask another lab for equipment and hand it to a student who could not have asked for it themselves. The item’s page names both people: the holder, and who took it out.

Admins can do the same for anybody. Managers can do it only for their own students, because taking equipment out is not the same act as looking after the catalogue.

Reminders

Anyone holding equipment gets one email a week listing it, on Monday. It is never sent to somebody who is holding nothing, so most weeks most people get nothing at all. It can be switched off under Mine, in Preferences; it is the only mail the app sends without being asked.