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Welcome to the deep dive. This is where we take that pile of research

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you've got all the articles notes github read me's and

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Really turn it into something useful something you can act on exactly today

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We're focusing on something pretty critical for well almost any organization. Yeah

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Resource scheduling. Mm-hmm. Our mission is to pull out the core of what Lieber

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booking is all about

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What is it? How does it work? And maybe most importantly for anyone just starting

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out

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How can you get your hands on it without installing a single thing? That's the key

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part

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We're about to jump right in but first I have to give a huge

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Thank you to the supporter of this deep dive safe server

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Absolutely, if you're looking at deploying software like Lieber booking, you know a

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self-hosted solution or really any big digital transformation

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You need a partner you can trust you really do safe server handles the hosting for

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this exact type of software and can help you

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With that whole digital journey. You can find out more at www.saveserver.de

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A great resource. Okay, let's unpack this we're talking about Lieber booking an

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open source resource scheduling solution, right?

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And when we say resource scheduling that can mean, you know

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Almost anything meeting rooms lab equipment company cars even people's time slots

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It's all about managing things that need to be reserved. That's the perfect

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elevator pitch really at its heart

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Lieber booking gives you a flexible

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Very mobile friendly and I think most importantly an extensible way to manage all

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those reservations

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The goal is control

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Customization so it's not just a fancy shared calendar not at all and we know it's

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active

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I mean if you look at their github repo the develop branch is where all the latest

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code all the new features are constantly being added

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That brings up the big question then for a learner or maybe a CIO who's a bit risk-averse

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Why pick Lieber booking over, you know, one of the big commercial options out there.

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What makes it unique?

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It really all comes down to its DNA. It's defined by its open source license the GPL

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3.0 license that's sore

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Okay, so GPL 3.0. That sounds technical for someone new to this

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What does that actually mean for them in terms of like security and control? Oh, it

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means everything it's about freedom

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It's about transparency. Well, imagine you build your whole company's workflow

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around some commercial tool

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Then that company decides to triple its price ouch or worse. They go out of

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business

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You're completely locked in the GPL 3.0 license prevents that it guarantees that

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even if the Libre booking project stopped tomorrow

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You have the code you have the right to modify it fix it and keep running it

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forever

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So no one can hold your system hostage. No vendor can't that's the promise and that

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idea seems to really connect with people

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The sources show what?

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395 stars and 306 forks on github. That's that's not just casual interest

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No, that's serious engagement people are actively using it and building on it and

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to really get its identity

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You have to look at its history, right? It's a fork of book scheduler

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It is yeah a fork just means they took the original code at a specific point in

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this case

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The last open source version of book scheduler from back in 2020 and started a

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whole new independent project from there

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So they didn't start from scratch. They had a solid foundation, but they're not

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tied to the old project anymore

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Exactly. The sources are super clear on this since that fork Libra booking has

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evolved significantly and completely diverged

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It's its own thing now

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Modern actively maintained they took a proven system and just committed to making

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it better. Okay

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So knowing it's this active independent platform, let's get practical when an

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organization finally moves past say a shared spreadsheet

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What are the features here that give them that real aha moment the aha moment comes

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from?

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Handling real-world complexity. It's not just checking if a room is free. Okay,

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think about multi resource booking

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You need to book a conference, right?

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You don't just need the room you need the projector the laptop cart

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Maybe even time for catering to set up Libra booking lets you grab all of that in

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one single booking a single transaction

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And what about when a resource like the big conference room is always booked solid.

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What happens then?

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That's where wait lists come in the system just automatically manages a queue for

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those high-demand resources

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Someone cancels the next person in line gets an instant notification

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So no more manually checking the calendar every five minutes. The system does the

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choreography for you

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I also saw tools that go beyond just booking

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Things around fairness even budgeting. Yes. This is where the admin controls are so

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powerful. You've got two huge features

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Role-based access control and then quotas and credits. Okay role-based access. So

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Only certain people can book certain things if your size

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Maybe only department heads can book the expensive video gear or only certified

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staff can reserve the heavy machinery in the lab

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I see and what about the quotas and credits? How does that solve a problem? It

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solves the problem of

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You know one person or one team hogging a resource

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Imagine your finance team has a smaller travel budget than sales

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Mm-hmm, you can give the finance team say 10 credits a month for booking company

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cars, but sales gets 30

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Once you use your credits, you're done until the quota resets. It enforces your

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internal rules automatically. Wow, that is a huge benefit

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Now let's talk user experience. Sometimes open source tools can feel a

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Bit clunky sure but that's not the case here. Not at all

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It's built on a responsive bootstrap 5 interface meaning it works on my phone

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It works perfectly on your phone a tablet your desktop

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It just adapts and for branding admins can even set up custom themes and color

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schemes dim gray dark red

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Whatever just by editing a simple config file. So it's flexible on the inside and

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the outside and speaking of flexibility

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What about integrations with other office tools? It's built for that. It has a plug-in

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ready architecture

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So it's super extensible. But for the average user the biggest win is probably

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calendar sync

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It supports outlook and Thunderbird integration through dot-i excess files

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So you book something in Libre booking and it just shows up in your normal work

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calendar

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That is absolutely crucial for people to actually use it. It reduces so much

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confusion

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Yeah

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And for the admins who need to justify all this the reporting tools are really

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powerful granular reporting the source said right

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It uses data tables, which lets you do these advanced listings where you can sort

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filter and analyze everything

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You can see which resources are used most by who it turns booking data into actual

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business intelligence

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Okay, let's shift to maybe the most important part for our listener the learner all

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these features sound great

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But the idea of setting up a server can be a bit much

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It can be totally overwhelming

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But this is where the documentation provides a fantastic on-ramp the live demo the

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live demo

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Absolutely, if you are even slightly curious, you just have to start there

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It's a full version of the software running online right now. No install. No server

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No worries about breaking anything and the sources give the exact logins, which is

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brilliant

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You can see the admin side of things setting up resources

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Quotas with username admin password to mode men and then if you want to see what a

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regular user sees

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You know booking things checking wait lists you log in with username user and

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password to mouser

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It's such a great shortcut. You can see everything it can do in just a few minutes

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But there is one really really crucial detail about that demo. We have to point out

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Yes, that public demo instance resets every 20 minutes every 20 minutes and that's

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a feature not a bug

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It means every new person who logs in it gets a totally clean slate

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So your test bookings will disappear and that's supposed to happen good to know so

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don't use it to save any important notes

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Please don't so once someone has played with a demo and they decide okay

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This is it the sources lay out how to deploy it and it seems like one path is much

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easier for a beginner for sure

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You've got the traditional manual installation, you know set up a web server like

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Apache you get the right PHP version a database

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It's the classic way, but it takes some technical skill

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But then there's the modern route Docker deployment for anyone starting out. This

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is almost always the way to go

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Why is that Docker just packages everything up the software all its dependencies

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the configuration into?

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One neat little container you run one command get clone and you can get a working

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instance up

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So much faster it removes that huge first hurdle now

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Here's where it gets really interesting for people who want to customize it. Yeah,

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if we pop the hood

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What are we looking at? The code base is mostly PHP. That's the vast majority of it

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So if you're a PHP developer jumping in to add a feature or fix something is gonna

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feel pretty natural and the front end

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That's JavaScript and it uses smarty for the templates

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Which is just a way of separating the look of the site from the actual booking

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logic

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Which makes it easier for designers to work on it without breaking things a very

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smart move and for bigger

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Organizations the docs even cover things like API notes and configurations for

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single sign-on with oath to and Sam L

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So it can plug right into a company's existing user management system. Exactly. It's

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ready for the enterprise

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Which brings us to the community if I'm a user and I find a bug or I have an idea

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How easy is it to get involved? It's highly accessible. They have a dedicated

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discord channel for discussions

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Okay, and then all the standard github stuff a wiki the issues tracker discussions

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pages

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They make it easy to talk to them and it's important to say you don't have to be a

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coder to help, right?

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Not at all. They explicitly welcome non coders. You can report bugs test new

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features add details to existing issues

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All of that helps make the platform better. What about the long-term plan? What's

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the official word on the project roadmap right now?

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It's officially listed as work in progress roadmap to be defined

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Which is actually pretty typical for a healthy open source project

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It means they're keeping things flexible and listening to the community before

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locking in a five-year plan that flexibility is key

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And so is security. We saw a note about a recent update. Yeah a good one as of

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March 2023

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They updated their reCAPTCHA integration to v3. So keeping up with modern standards

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exactly

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But it's also a heads-up for admins if you're running an older version with reCAPTCHA

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You will need to generate new keys for your domain to keep it working. So what does

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this all mean when you put it all together?

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What's the final takeaway for an organization thinking about this? The takeaway is

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that Libre booking is a

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Really stable actively developed community driven alternative

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It gives you the big features you'd expect from commercial software the multi

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booking the quotas the reporting

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But with none of the vendor lock-in and it's accessible. It's super accessible

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A small team can start with that simple risk-free demo

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But it's also powerful enough to scale up for a big company that needs all the

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complex integrations and with 62 contributors

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You know, it's not just one or two people in a basement

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It's a real community effort this strong one which leads to a final thought for you

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to chew on given that scheduling often involves

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Really sensitive access control who gets the keys to what and when how does the

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flexibility of a GPL 3.0 license and

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This plug-in ready architecture. How does that fundamentally change how an

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organization should think about its long-term digital strategy?

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It's a big question. It puts all the control right back in their hands

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That's our deep dive on libra booking. Thank you so much for walking us through the

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sources today

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It was a pleasure and one final. Thank you to our supporter safe server for making

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this deep dive

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Possible if you want to explore more about reliable hosting and support for your

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digital transformation just visit

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www.safeserver.de

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We'll catch you next time for another deep dive