Welcome to the deep dive. This is where we take that pile of research
you've got all the articles notes github read me's and
Really turn it into something useful something you can act on exactly today
We're focusing on something pretty critical for well almost any organization. Yeah
Resource scheduling. Mm-hmm. Our mission is to pull out the core of what Lieber
booking is all about
What is it? How does it work? And maybe most importantly for anyone just starting
out
How can you get your hands on it without installing a single thing? That's the key
part
We're about to jump right in but first I have to give a huge
Thank you to the supporter of this deep dive safe server
Absolutely, if you're looking at deploying software like Lieber booking, you know a
self-hosted solution or really any big digital transformation
You need a partner you can trust you really do safe server handles the hosting for
this exact type of software and can help you
With that whole digital journey. You can find out more at www.saveserver.de
A great resource. Okay, let's unpack this we're talking about Lieber booking an
open source resource scheduling solution, right?
And when we say resource scheduling that can mean, you know
Almost anything meeting rooms lab equipment company cars even people's time slots
It's all about managing things that need to be reserved. That's the perfect
elevator pitch really at its heart
Lieber booking gives you a flexible
Very mobile friendly and I think most importantly an extensible way to manage all
those reservations
The goal is control
Customization so it's not just a fancy shared calendar not at all and we know it's
active
I mean if you look at their github repo the develop branch is where all the latest
code all the new features are constantly being added
That brings up the big question then for a learner or maybe a CIO who's a bit risk-averse
Why pick Lieber booking over, you know, one of the big commercial options out there.
What makes it unique?
It really all comes down to its DNA. It's defined by its open source license the GPL
3.0 license that's sore
Okay, so GPL 3.0. That sounds technical for someone new to this
What does that actually mean for them in terms of like security and control? Oh, it
means everything it's about freedom
It's about transparency. Well, imagine you build your whole company's workflow
around some commercial tool
Then that company decides to triple its price ouch or worse. They go out of
business
You're completely locked in the GPL 3.0 license prevents that it guarantees that
even if the Libre booking project stopped tomorrow
You have the code you have the right to modify it fix it and keep running it
forever
So no one can hold your system hostage. No vendor can't that's the promise and that
idea seems to really connect with people
The sources show what?
395 stars and 306 forks on github. That's that's not just casual interest
No, that's serious engagement people are actively using it and building on it and
to really get its identity
You have to look at its history, right? It's a fork of book scheduler
It is yeah a fork just means they took the original code at a specific point in
this case
The last open source version of book scheduler from back in 2020 and started a
whole new independent project from there
So they didn't start from scratch. They had a solid foundation, but they're not
tied to the old project anymore
Exactly. The sources are super clear on this since that fork Libra booking has
evolved significantly and completely diverged
It's its own thing now
Modern actively maintained they took a proven system and just committed to making
it better. Okay
So knowing it's this active independent platform, let's get practical when an
organization finally moves past say a shared spreadsheet
What are the features here that give them that real aha moment the aha moment comes
from?
Handling real-world complexity. It's not just checking if a room is free. Okay,
think about multi resource booking
You need to book a conference, right?
You don't just need the room you need the projector the laptop cart
Maybe even time for catering to set up Libra booking lets you grab all of that in
one single booking a single transaction
And what about when a resource like the big conference room is always booked solid.
What happens then?
That's where wait lists come in the system just automatically manages a queue for
those high-demand resources
Someone cancels the next person in line gets an instant notification
So no more manually checking the calendar every five minutes. The system does the
choreography for you
I also saw tools that go beyond just booking
Things around fairness even budgeting. Yes. This is where the admin controls are so
powerful. You've got two huge features
Role-based access control and then quotas and credits. Okay role-based access. So
Only certain people can book certain things if your size
Maybe only department heads can book the expensive video gear or only certified
staff can reserve the heavy machinery in the lab
I see and what about the quotas and credits? How does that solve a problem? It
solves the problem of
You know one person or one team hogging a resource
Imagine your finance team has a smaller travel budget than sales
Mm-hmm, you can give the finance team say 10 credits a month for booking company
cars, but sales gets 30
Once you use your credits, you're done until the quota resets. It enforces your
internal rules automatically. Wow, that is a huge benefit
Now let's talk user experience. Sometimes open source tools can feel a
Bit clunky sure but that's not the case here. Not at all
It's built on a responsive bootstrap 5 interface meaning it works on my phone
It works perfectly on your phone a tablet your desktop
It just adapts and for branding admins can even set up custom themes and color
schemes dim gray dark red
Whatever just by editing a simple config file. So it's flexible on the inside and
the outside and speaking of flexibility
What about integrations with other office tools? It's built for that. It has a plug-in
ready architecture
So it's super extensible. But for the average user the biggest win is probably
calendar sync
It supports outlook and Thunderbird integration through dot-i excess files
So you book something in Libre booking and it just shows up in your normal work
calendar
That is absolutely crucial for people to actually use it. It reduces so much
confusion
Yeah
And for the admins who need to justify all this the reporting tools are really
powerful granular reporting the source said right
It uses data tables, which lets you do these advanced listings where you can sort
filter and analyze everything
You can see which resources are used most by who it turns booking data into actual
business intelligence
Okay, let's shift to maybe the most important part for our listener the learner all
these features sound great
But the idea of setting up a server can be a bit much
It can be totally overwhelming
But this is where the documentation provides a fantastic on-ramp the live demo the
live demo
Absolutely, if you are even slightly curious, you just have to start there
It's a full version of the software running online right now. No install. No server
No worries about breaking anything and the sources give the exact logins, which is
brilliant
You can see the admin side of things setting up resources
Quotas with username admin password to mode men and then if you want to see what a
regular user sees
You know booking things checking wait lists you log in with username user and
password to mouser
It's such a great shortcut. You can see everything it can do in just a few minutes
But there is one really really crucial detail about that demo. We have to point out
Yes, that public demo instance resets every 20 minutes every 20 minutes and that's
a feature not a bug
It means every new person who logs in it gets a totally clean slate
So your test bookings will disappear and that's supposed to happen good to know so
don't use it to save any important notes
Please don't so once someone has played with a demo and they decide okay
This is it the sources lay out how to deploy it and it seems like one path is much
easier for a beginner for sure
You've got the traditional manual installation, you know set up a web server like
Apache you get the right PHP version a database
It's the classic way, but it takes some technical skill
But then there's the modern route Docker deployment for anyone starting out. This
is almost always the way to go
Why is that Docker just packages everything up the software all its dependencies
the configuration into?
One neat little container you run one command get clone and you can get a working
instance up
So much faster it removes that huge first hurdle now
Here's where it gets really interesting for people who want to customize it. Yeah,
if we pop the hood
What are we looking at? The code base is mostly PHP. That's the vast majority of it
So if you're a PHP developer jumping in to add a feature or fix something is gonna
feel pretty natural and the front end
That's JavaScript and it uses smarty for the templates
Which is just a way of separating the look of the site from the actual booking
logic
Which makes it easier for designers to work on it without breaking things a very
smart move and for bigger
Organizations the docs even cover things like API notes and configurations for
single sign-on with oath to and Sam L
So it can plug right into a company's existing user management system. Exactly. It's
ready for the enterprise
Which brings us to the community if I'm a user and I find a bug or I have an idea
How easy is it to get involved? It's highly accessible. They have a dedicated
discord channel for discussions
Okay, and then all the standard github stuff a wiki the issues tracker discussions
pages
They make it easy to talk to them and it's important to say you don't have to be a
coder to help, right?
Not at all. They explicitly welcome non coders. You can report bugs test new
features add details to existing issues
All of that helps make the platform better. What about the long-term plan? What's
the official word on the project roadmap right now?
It's officially listed as work in progress roadmap to be defined
Which is actually pretty typical for a healthy open source project
It means they're keeping things flexible and listening to the community before
locking in a five-year plan that flexibility is key
And so is security. We saw a note about a recent update. Yeah a good one as of
March 2023
They updated their reCAPTCHA integration to v3. So keeping up with modern standards
exactly
But it's also a heads-up for admins if you're running an older version with reCAPTCHA
You will need to generate new keys for your domain to keep it working. So what does
this all mean when you put it all together?
What's the final takeaway for an organization thinking about this? The takeaway is
that Libre booking is a
Really stable actively developed community driven alternative
It gives you the big features you'd expect from commercial software the multi
booking the quotas the reporting
But with none of the vendor lock-in and it's accessible. It's super accessible
A small team can start with that simple risk-free demo
But it's also powerful enough to scale up for a big company that needs all the
complex integrations and with 62 contributors
You know, it's not just one or two people in a basement
It's a real community effort this strong one which leads to a final thought for you
to chew on given that scheduling often involves
Really sensitive access control who gets the keys to what and when how does the
flexibility of a GPL 3.0 license and
This plug-in ready architecture. How does that fundamentally change how an
organization should think about its long-term digital strategy?
It's a big question. It puts all the control right back in their hands
That's our deep dive on libra booking. Thank you so much for walking us through the
sources today
It was a pleasure and one final. Thank you to our supporter safe server for making
this deep dive
Possible if you want to explore more about reliable hosting and support for your
digital transformation just visit
www.safeserver.de
We'll catch you next time for another deep dive