How to use booking tokens
All students enrolled in a CSE course will receive some tokens with which to make bookings. Usually the allocation is 2 tokens per course, but more can be allocated by SystemSupport at the Lecturer in Charge's request.Tokens are divided roughly into 2 categories: those that are tied to students, subdivided by student type and year, and those that are tied to laboratories. Tokens are always given descriptive names such as yr1token, pg2token, phystoken and thesistoken. The reason tokens are categorised is to make it easy to bind certain laboratories to them, so for instance ENGG1811 students receive phystoken for the Physics labs and can book them, whereas other students can't (and at time of writing can't login there either). Similarly 4th year students receive thesistoken to book in the thesis lab.
In previous years tokens were bound to precincts or times; for instance only students with yr1token could book in the eeundercroft precinct (and they had to use the yr1token to do so) and only students with a pgtoken could book certain labs after 6pm. This is not practiced at time of writing: any linux lab can be booked with any of the general undergraduate (e.g. yr1token) or postgraduate (e.g. pg34token) tokens.
You can see what type of and how many tokens you've received by:
- typing book and then tokens
- /usr/local/etc/bkuser -t $USER
- starting tkbook and then clicking on the tokens button in the top left corner.
- using the Lab Bookings page of the Account Control Panel
If you try to make a booking with an inappropriate token the booking system will reject the booking.
Students receive a maximum of 6 general tokens and 4 special tokens, with each token booking a single slot i.e. 30 minutes. The token is returned to you at the end of the slot at which point you can use it to make another booking, or extend the current one. Your tokens will also be returned to you if the booking cannot be honored (for instance there are not enough Up workstations for one to be allocated to you) and if the lab is FREE at time of allocation.