Utilizing Resource Mappings vs. Location Mappings
Depending on your district process and how Google Calendar is configured, they may not utilize the “resources” feature of Google Calendar for reserving district facilities.
If this is the case, they will need to use the Location Mappings tab to map location values contained in any synced events to Locations and Rooms in iiQ.
Here is an external help document on how to create resources in Google Calendar.
Left Image - This event would utilize “Resource Mappings” as Google Calendar resources are used to indicate the location of the event.
Right Image - This event would utilize “Location Mappings” as it utilizes a text string in the “Location” field of the Google Calendar event to indicate the location of the event.
Districts utilizing the resources feature in Google Calendar to manage the availability of facilities would likely prefer to map these to Locations/Rooms in iiQ, as:
Resources are more commonly used for internal reservations of facilities by end users throughout the district
Not all staff would be using iiQ to book meetings; Google Calendar is already widely adopted by district staff
Resources are easier to add than free-form locations and are cleaner to map in iiQ
They would need to maintain parity of resource availability in Google Calendar and iiQ if they have enabled write-back functionality for the Google Calendar integration.
While there are benefits of using resource mappings instead of location mappings, most districts will need to use both options to account for events that do not use a Google Calendar resource. In the scenario that an event contains both a resource and a free-form text value, the resource mapping will be utilized instead of the location mapping if they do not match.
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Hannah Bailey - Director, Customer Engagement