Advanced PHP for Web Professionals By Christopher Cosentino Chapter 9

Introduction
This Meeting Manager application was designed to be a simple way to coordinate meetings. You can specify actual meeting room locations, or use the built-in virtual room and conduct the meeting over a conference call or Web meeting service. You can specify the phone number and the Web address right in the meeting.

An administrator sets up the users and rooms via an administration interface. Once that has been done, users can log in and begin scheduling meetings.
Setting It Up
Setting up the Meeting Manager application is easy. Just install the files as specified in the table below and set up your database using the supplied SQL. Remember to change any parameters in the code for the database and paths to match your system.

The general layout of the installation is shown in Table 9-1:

Table 9-1. Directory Structure for the Shopping Cart FOLDER
CONTAINS

Top Level
• meeting.php

• meeting_inc.php

admin directory[a]
• admin.php

Meetings are created by using a step-by-step wizard. The wizard checks the availability of rooms and users, and only allows rooms that have not been scheduled for the current meeting time to be used. Users who are already scheduled for a meeting are listed as "busy," but can still be invited to the meeting.

Once the meeting time, room, and users have been selected, you can then provide an agenda and a conference call number and Web address.

When the meeting is finalized, an email notification is sent to all the participants.

When users log in, they can schedule a new meeting or view their current meetings. Clicking on a meeting name in the meeting list brings up complete details for that meeting.

If a user scheduled a meeting, that user can cancel that meeting. Once a meeting is cancelled, the room that was specified for the meeting is freed and all users receive notification of the cancelled meeting.

Additionally, the meeting is removed from users' schedules.

Simple Administration Interface
The Meeting Manager provides an ultrasimple administration interface, shown in Figure 9-1, that allows the administrator to add a new user or room. Once a user or room is added, it is immediately available to be scheduled for meetings.

Figure 9-1. Administration Interface