Some years ago, we developed a solution to book the conference rooms at our Stockholm office. Actually, we did not develop the booking system at all, we just used the plain Outlook/Exchange features already present. What we did, however, was to develop a solution that exposed the conference room status as a web page.
The beauty of the solution was that nothing extra was needed on the Exchange Server side, we could use the Outlook Web Access (OWA). Also, this allowed us to expose any calendar (=mailbox) on any Exchange server, as long as we could reach the OWA!
Naturally, we developed this as an EPiServer module. We later upgraded the dull HTML interface with a very nice Flash based one (credits to Risto Mitts).
Some days ago, I was sitting on an airplane playing some videos on my new Ipod Touch and started thinking about that the Touch really is... A MP3 player, sure. But I suddenly realized that I was actually holding a very small PC, with an excellent browser, hi-res screen and WLAN in the palm of my hand. That started me thinking about what we could use it for, and I realized this was the answer to the only backside of the conference room system: The screen!
Up until now, we have been forced to use a PC with a flat screen to show the booking status. This might look like a small requirement, but trying to hide a PC above the roof etc is really a pain.
Why not use an Ipod Touch as the screen???? All that is needed is a power cable and a WLAN connection!
Sadly I have now realized that even though the Touch has an excellent Safari browser, it does not support Adobe Flash. And since our current solution (see http://r.ep.se/115/EPiServer-ConfRoom/ for an example of our own conference rooms) is flash based, we either need to revert back to plain HTML or build an application. Naturally, the SDK is not available until sometime next year.. :-(
Current project status is "in progress". The goal is to make something that looks like this:
Besides just exposing the booking status of the room, it will be possible to book it right away if it is not booked by someone.
Hopefully, we will have something on our walls soon, I think it will be one cool EPiServer implementation!
If someone finds a wall mount for the iPod that prevents someone from taking it, please let me know.
Rgds,
Mikael Runhem
EPiServer Internal info: We have purchased a company iPod for development projects. If you have something you like to develop, speak with Ruwen about borrowing the Ipod.