Permanently Sharing a Location

Most of the time, locations shouldn't have two things happening at once. But some locations are special and represent open spaces or abstractions where an unlimited number of events could take place at the same time. For example:

  • WEST FIELD, a grassy space where any number of student organizations can hold booths at once
  • OFF CAMPUS, for any event that happens in the wider world outside your institution
  • RESEARCH HOSPITAL, a separate facility for medical instruction that holds multiple classes at once
  • TBA, a placeholder "location" that doesn't exist but is assigned to events for workflow purposes

In these cases you don't care about double bookings, so you don't want conflict warnings to prevent you from assigning anything. To prevent 25Live and LYNX from giving you warnings, enable the location as permanently shared.

Sharing in LYNX

Adding a location to the "shares list" in LYNX will affect everything imported from your SIS as well as any exams created in LYNX. Updating this list will not retroactively affect any events already imported into 25Live, so you may need to manually import sections to see the effects.

  1. In LYNX, select More > Settings from the menu in the upper right.
  2. Select Location Settings.
  3. Scroll down to the section for Shared Locations.
  4. Begin typing the name of a location. The text box will autocomplete with suggestions from 25Live.
  5. Click Add New Value to share additional locations.
  6. Click the X next to any location's name to remove it from the list.
  7. Changes to the list are automatically saved as soon as you make them.

Image: Shared Locations in LYNX.

Sharing in 25Live

Marking a location as "always shared" in 25Live will affect all events where the location is assigned, past and future. Any time availability is checked for a location, a user will be told that there is no conflict. This applies even if the user does not normally have permission to share location assignments on individual events via the event form.

  1. In 25Live, navigate to a location's details page.
  2. In the upper right, toggle the Always Share option from Off to On.
  3. Changes are applied immediately.

Standard location controls with sharing optionImage: Always Share option in 25Live.

Partially Sharing a Location

Permanently sharing a location with either method above will allow an unlimited number of events to double (or triple!) book it. This may be more extreme than what you want to do.

If you want a more restricted form of location sharing, consider one of the following methods:

  • Set up event bindings, which allow a group of events to co-exist in the same location while still presenting a conflict to events that aren't part of the group.
  • Use LYNX's options for data binding to set up groups of bound events for classes originating in your student information system
  • Use subdivided locations to create a limited number of "subspaces" which can be 
    • For example, if your student union can support 25 separate presenters during a tabling event, you could create 25 separate locations as subdivisions of the student union space and title them "SU Table #1" etc. This allows you to set aside a unique location for each reservation while still using the student union's availability.