UBook
The state-of-the-art Room and Hot Desk booking system, designed for NHS organisations.
- Book rooms and hot desks in seconds
- Add in car parking spaces
- Control availability
- Manage low desk-to-staff ratios
- Quick, reliable, no limits
- Works great on desktop, iPad and smartphone
- Designed by the NHS for the NHS
- Used at twenty NHS organisations and growing.
30,000 people are using UBook every day, across twenty NHS organisations, from PCNs to large Acutes
(May 2022)
UBook is a state-of-the-art resource booking system, developed by NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit. As an NHS organisation itself, MLCSU understands the value of efficient, easy to use administrative systems which can be deployed at sensible cost.
UBook allows staff at your organisation to book meeting rooms, treatment rooms, hot desks, parking spaces, bike racks, projectors, pool vehicles and any other physical 'resource' which you wish to publish.
With its specification informed by twenty NHS organisations across Acute, Community and Primary Care, UBook is perfectly designed to facilitate return to work, particularly in the context of reduced desk availability and hybrid working.
UBook is constantly being updated and improved upon, see our road map for the upcoming planned development.
"The service we have received from MLSCU with regard to the implementation of UBook has been exceptional. We contracted with them after looking at several commercial companies as we found them to be the most cost effective and flexible in meeting our needs"
Jenny O’Donnell, Infrastructure, Capital and Estates Programme Lead, Lancashire and South Cumbria ICS. May 2022
Consolidating multiple organisations into an ICB? UBook has already been installed with great success at one ICS/ICB in 2022. If you need similar, ask us for a demonstration.
Rich space usage data:
UBook includes a live dashboard for Estates leads and site administrators. See charts and tables of current bookings, Did Not Arrives, peak usage, most used sites and assets and drill through for the detail.
Monitor current occupancy, see usage over time, highest consuming teams and more.
With a separate Report Builder, which will export any or all data into Excel or PDF for your further analysis.
All staff, whether central admin team, PAs or any staff making a booking, will save significant time by completing the transaction with a few mouse clicks. Changes or cancellations are just as easy, with no need to contact anyone else.
- Manage no-shows
- Significant admin time saving (we can give you real figures to illustrate this in your business case)
- No more double-bookings
- Book several rooms at once
- Book a parking space with a desk
- Check in by QR code or e-mail link
Return to Work / Hybrid Working:
UBook will provide two clear benefits in regard to your organisation’s new working arrangements:
- Provide simple and reliable space booking, avoiding conflicts and competition
- Provide real, rich data to evidence your changing footprint and rationalisation of your estate.
Almost every organisation which has taken on UBook post-pandemic is adopting agile working and great value is attached to the usage data behind the UBook dashboard. Many Estates and Space leads have never had access to these metrics before UBook.
"MLCSU have been exemplary in their commitment to making the system work for our needs. Their response time to queries is excellent and at no point have I had to chase any updates/actions. I've not had any negative feedback about UBook. The admin staff find it extremely useful and easy to use and the ward staff are all positive too. I've learned so much from working with CSU and I'm extremely grateful, I couldn't recommend them highly enough. I think that UBook is phenomenal and will benefit any organisation that uses it."
Amanda Tierney, Project Manager, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust. July 2021
Admin Features:
- Access from any browser, desktop, tablet or smartphone.
- Your own administrators can set up any room or other resource and make it bookable.
- Lock out sequences of hot desks to maintain social distancing.
- Restrict particular rooms to only certain staff groups.
- Have bookings instantly processed, or set certain resources, e.g. clinical rooms, to require approval by a central person/team.
- Optionally require users to check in on arrival by scanning a QR code with their smartphone. If they don’t within a set time, the room is automatically freed up for booking again.
- Confirmation e-mail to booker includes ‘Add to your Outlook calendar’.
- Confirmation e-mail to booker includes link to Cancel or Edit.
- Links to Active Directory or NHSMail, so users are automatically logged in.
Single Sign-In
UBook integrates with:
- NHSMail sign-in
- Azure Active Directory
Integrations:
- UBook integrates with PAS / EHR systems, to pull data into your UBook bookings.
- UBook integrates with the latest MS Teams-equipped devices, e.g. passing details of your booking to the actual TV and audio equipment in your meeting room.
Avoiding wasteful administration, unshared Outlook calendars and spreadsheets, UBook is hugely popular with its many thousands of users and is available to your organisation now.
Technology:
- Connects to NHSMail and Active Directory for single sign-on
- UK-hosted in state-of-the-art Microsoft Azure Cloud Data Centres
- SLA-backed 99.5% uptime
- 24/7 availability
- Your bookings backed up nightly
- Advanced anti-malware
- 256-bit SSL/TLS encrypted
Support:
- Full technical support included.
- Our own UK-located Service Desks.
- All calls ticketed and trackable.
- Response times governed by our UBook Service Level Agreement.
Governance:
- We'll fill in the DPIA for your IG team.
- GDPR-compliant out of the box.
- UBook is annually security tested / penetration tested, by independent testing companies. The latest report is always available for inspection by clients.
Training:
- We train your nominated UBook administrators live over Teams.
- For all staff there are lots of quick 'How to' tutorials and full User Guides in the on-line Help.
- Click to book
- Live visibility of availability
- Receive Outlook invitation seconds later.
Pricing:
Recognising fellow NHS organisations' cost pressures, we have designed a tiered pricing structure for UBook. Pricing is by band and bands relate to the number of rooms you plan to make available on the system. Up to 10 rooms is the lowest cost band, followed by 11-50, 51-250, and so on. That way you only pay for the extent to which you'll use the system and you can understand and plan your outlay. As a fellow NHS organisation, we gladly accept Purchase Orders and SBS or local payments.
We have a structured schedule specifically for deploying UBook in NHS organisations and we use the associated products you would expect from a properly managed project: PID, Project Plan, Risk and Issue Logs, Change Log and End Project Report.
We will run the project, or will work within your existing project or programme.
Online Demonstration:
To arrange an on-line demonstration of UBook, or for a quote, please contact:
Corin Hennessy
Midlands and Lancashire CSU
Tel: 01244 835 014
E-mail: corin.hennessy@nhs.net
Downloads:
Demand for UBook in 2023 is high as many organisations return to work, so please allow as much lead-in time as possible for implementing a booking system. But if you only have a limited timeline please contact us: we will always try our utmost to help.