# 3D printer reservation and booking calendar **Entry Plans:** School, Enterprise Reserve 3D printers for a class, a team or a person in a shared booking calendar. Only their prints start then, and the print queue and AutoPrint work around it. **Categories:** organization *A booking calendar for your 3D printers* ## Reserve printers for a class, a team or yourself A teacher holds the printers for Tuesday's double lesson. The robotics team gets the big printer for the weekend. While a reservation runs, **only the prints of the people it is for can start** on those printers, and every other printer works exactly as it always has. ## No more notes taped to the printer When a class, a club and a dozen students share the same printers, someone always finds "their" printer busy. Reservations put who has which printer, and when, in one calendar that the printers themselves respect - so nobody has to guard a printer or ask around. SimplyPrint is a cloud-based 3D printer management platform for FDM printers from most major brands; printer reservations add a booking calendar to it. ## Reserve printers for a class in a few clicks Click or drag across empty time in the calendar, or press **Reserve printers**. Pick one printer, several, or a whole printer group, then who it is for: yourself, people, base roles, workgroups, school classes, a project (on Enterprise), or everyone. A reservation of a printer group follows the group, so a printer added to it later is held too. The dialog checks as you go. It tells you when the printers are free, and lists anything in the way before you save: another reservation, a maintenance window, someone's scheduled print, a printer that is offline. ## Reserving is optional: unreserved printers work as usual Reservations never take printers away from anyone by default. A printer nobody has reserved is open to everyone allowed to print, as it is today. Only during a reservation does a printer wait for the people it is for, and the **print queue**, **scheduled prints** and **AutoPrint** plan around it rather than into it. Students who cannot see reservations are never sent to a page they cannot open. The printer card, the start dialog and the control panel simply say who the printer is reserved for, and until when. ## Let students ask, and teachers approve Want students to reserve a printer for an exam piece, but not without a say? Switch on **Reservations need approval**. A student's reservation then waits as a request, holding nothing until someone approves it. Teachers decide the requests for their own classes and workgroups; a rejection can carry a reason, which the student gets with the answer. ### A Requests tab Every request waiting for you, with a count, decided in bulk. ### On the dashboard Approve or reject from the Approvals to-do card. ### In the account alerts Waiting requests sit beside queue and member approvals. ## Set up in a minute, the way your school works The first time you open Reservations, a short guide asks how you want to work, with the pros and cons of each: **teachers reserve for their classes** (what we recommend for schools), **students reserve too**, or **only administrators reserve**. It sets what each base role may do, and a couple of optional limits. *Let me see it first* shows the page before you decide. Schools can answer the same question in the school setup, alongside the rest of their account's setup. Everything can be changed later. ## Fair rules, kept by the system Set the rules once and the reserve dialog applies them, so nobody has to police the calendar: - **Limits** - the longest reservation, how many days ahead, upcoming reservations and printer-hours per person per week - **Time to clear the bed** - minutes kept free between reservations - **Opening hours** - reservations inside the account's working hours, and the open hours of the people they are for - **No-shows** - printers are freed for others when nothing starts on them - **Prints that run long** - warn or refuse a print that would run past its own reservation Base roles and workgroups can have limits of their own, for example shorter reservations for students. People who manage reservations are not held to the limits. ## Students' names stay private By default, everyone sees the class, workgroup or project a reservation is for, while other students' names are hidden: they show as *Someone*. People who reserve for others always see names. One setting shows everyone's names instead.** These permissions decide the rest, per base role: - View reservations** - open the calendar - **Reserve printers for themselves** - **Reserve printers for others** - people, base roles, workgroups, classes and projects - **Approve reservation requests** - **Manage all reservations** - and the settings - **Print on reserved printers** - with a warning first ## A technician can still print, after a warning Give staff the **Print on reserved printers** permission and they can still start a print on a reserved printer - from the printer card, the print queue or 1-Click Print in the panel. They are warned that the printer is reserved, and until when, and can print anyway. Everyone else is told the printer is reserved. ## Reservations in your own tools Reservations are in the SimplyPrint API: list and find them, check a slot, reserve, change, cancel, approve or reject, and claim. Integrations connected with OAuth2 ask for the **reservations.read** and **reservations.write** scopes, and the user's own permissions still apply. ## Frequently asked questions ### Do I have to reserve a printer to print? No. Reserving is optional. A printer nobody has reserved can be used by anyone allowed to print, exactly as before. A reservation only holds a printer for the people it is for, for its time. ### Can students reserve printers themselves? If you want them to. By default, teachers reserve for their classes and students do not see the Reservations page. Choose "Students reserve too" in the setup, or give their base role the permission, and switch on approval if a teacher should say yes first. ### What happens to the print queue and AutoPrint during a reservation? They work around it. A queued or scheduled print only starts on a reserved printer when it belongs to someone the reservation is for, and AutoPrint leaves a reserved printer for those prints. Only people with the Print on reserved printers permission can start a print over somebody else's reservation, after a warning. ### What if maintenance is due during a reservation? Maintenance comes first. You cannot reserve over a maintenance window that blocks printing, and when maintenance is planned over a reservation, the person planning it confirms the conflict and whoever made the reservation is told. ### What if nobody turns up? Set a number of minutes under "Free unused printers after". When nothing has started on a reservation's printers by then, they are freed for others. ### Which plans include printer reservations? The School and Enterprise plans. New accounts have reservations switched on, and a manager finishes a short setup on the Reservations page first. Existing accounts switch them on there, or under Settings. --- **Learn more:** [Help Article](https://help.simplyprint.io/en/article/printer-reservations-hold-printers-for-a-class-a-team-or-yourself-midu8h/)