Introduction to the 800 MHz NMR Facility Booking Program
Applying for Time on the Instrument
You can book time on the spectrometer as soon as you have applied for
a user ID and have been granted access. When using the spectrometer
please observe the following as a courtesy to other users:
- Ensure the instrument is ready for the next person to start by the
end of your booked time.
This means exiting from TopSpin (or XWIN-NMR)
and logging off of the computer, although you may log in to transfer
data if you wish. If you leave Topspin running, it will prevent other
users from starting it remotely.
- If you can't use some or all of your booked time,
use the delete or truncate functions in the "List, Cancel, Modify
bookings" section of the booking program so that other people have
a chance to use the unwanted time.
- If you want to extend your time,
use the "modify" option in
"List, Cancel, Modify bookings", or add a new booking for the time
required. In the unlikely event that you use the instrument without
a booking, and someone else makes a booking on the system, the person
with the booking has priority and your NMR run would have to be
stopped.
- Try to submit your bookings on the web system as early as
possible.
This not only ensures that you get the time you want,
but makes it easier for other users to plan their instrument time. Of
course you may not be certain when a sample will become available.
In this case it is best to book the most likely time,
and then cancel or modify your booking if it becomes necessary -
go to http://bloch.anu.edu.au/NMR800/index.html
and select "List, Cancel, Modify bookings"
Organisation
Users of the system have a login name (4 to 8 characters) and
a password. Users belong to an administrative unit which can
be a university or a department within a university. Each administrative
unit has a coordinator and optionally a second contact who are
responsible for liasing with the 800 MHz NMR Facility, arranging for
payment for time used on the 800, etc.
There are no rules governing how much time you can book, however each
administrative unit has preferential access for certain time periods.
You can book time during the preferential access periods of other
administrative units, however users belonging to an administrative unit
with preferential access are able to override bookings from other
administrative units.
If someone from your own administrative unit is booking so much
time that you are unable to get access, you should take it up with the
coordinator of your unit.
Users can cancel their own bookings, however their administrative
unit is still charged for time cancelled with less than 24 hours
notice, minus any time booked by another user. That is, if you cancel
time and another user is able to jump in at short notice and use some
of that time, you are not charged for the time they used. For example
if a user cancels a three day booking 20 hours before it was due to
start, he is still charged for the first 4 hours, but not for the
whole 3 days.
The exception to this is weekends. If a user cancels her booking
less than 24 hours before 10pm on Friday, her administrative unit is
charged for all the time she had booked until 7am Monday, minus
any time booked at short notice by another user.
Time used on the instrument is charged for at two rates.
Prime time is from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday. All other time
is non-prime and incurs a lower fee.
Getting Started
Before you can use the booking program you need to fill in an
Application for User ID form. This gives
you a login name and password, however your account will not be active
until we have contacted the coordinator of your administrative unit
to verify the application. Anyone can view bookings without even the
need to submit a username, however only users with an active account
can submit bookings.
Booking Time
The first page of the booking
program displays a calendar. Days having a different colour are those where
preferential access has been assigned to a particular administrative unit.
Each week has a book link which allows you to view the schedule
for that week.
The weekly schedule is divided into half-hour time segments from
7am to 10pm Monday to Sunday. Colour coding is used to highlight days with
preferential access. Also the row marked (Pref) gives the name of the
administrative unit with preferential access. The colour used for each
administrative unit is unique, so you will be able to recognise times
where you have preferential access from the colour.
To book half an hour: Click on a single checkbox. Clicking on a
"9:00" checkbox for example, gives you the time from 9:00 until 9:30.
If you click on a single "22:00" checkbox, the system sets your
finishing time to 7am the next day.
To book time within the displayed week: Click on two
checkboxes. The earlier checkbox is your starting time, and the later one is
your finishing time. But remember each checkbox includes the time up to the
starting time of the next checkbox, so if you click on a "14:30" checkbox
for example, your time finishes at 3:00pm.
If you select 22:00 as your finishing time, the system assumes that you want
to finish at 7:00 the next morning. That is, you are billed for an overnight run,
and you need to get in before 7am and remove your sample ready for the next person
to start at 7. If you click on three or more checkboxes, only the earliest two on
the schedule have any effect.
To book time which finishes on the following week:
Click on a starting time as above, and select the last checkbox (22:00
Sunday) as your finishing time. A schedule for the following week is
displayed for you to set your finishing time. If you once again select
the (22:00 Sunday) checkbox for this week, it will simply mean that
your time finishes at 7am the following Monday.
In other words, the 22:00 checkbox really means "by 7am tomorrow"
or "sometime next week." It is not possible to set a finishing time
between 10pm and 7am.
The page where you fill in your login name and password
displays your start and finish times for confirmation, so you have the
opportunity to select the "Back" button in your browser and
change your booking before it is submitted. If you are happy with the displayed
times, fill in your login name and password, then click on the
"book" button. If no problems occur, a Booking successful!
message is displayed. Your booked time will also be visible
if you return to the weekly schedule display.
Bookings can be cancelled, modified etc, by selecting
List, Cancel, Modify bookings in the main
booking page.
Preferential Access
Preferential access times are set in multiples of one day, starting at
9am. Time divisions booked by a user from an administrative unit which
has preferential access do not show a checkbox, making it impossible
to select these times. Of course it is still possible to span a
preferential booking by selecting a starting time before, and a finish
time after it, however the system will reject such a request.
If no preferential access has been assigned for a given time
period, no bookings can be overridden. The weekly schedule will have
no colour coding and no entry in the (Pref) row for those days.
In the examples below, assume that Bart's administrative unit has preferential
access from 9am Monday until 9am the following Monday. No preferential
access has been assigned for the following week. Lisa, from a
different administrative unit, has booked the instrument from 2pm Wednesday
until 2pm next Monday.
- Sometime on Monday, Bart submits a booking for 9am Thursday to 9am
Saturday.
Bart gets his time, and Lisa's booking is split into 2 bookings - one from
2pm Wednesday to 9am Thursday, and one from 9am Saturday to 2pm Monday.
The system uses the idea of a "usable amount of time" to decide
whether to keep an overridden booking or delete it. As long as the remaining
time includes an overnight period, the time is deemed "usable", and
is not deleted. If Lisa doesn't want what remains of her booked time, she has
to delete each of the two bookings formed by the split. (Although it is
possible to book as little as 30 minutes, we don't think that most people
will regard bookings without an overnight period as usable).
- Sometime on Monday, Bart submits a booking for 9am Wednesday to 9am
Monday.
Lisa's entire booking is overridden. Lisa's time next Monday from 9am to 2pm
is deleted because the system does not consider this a usable time period.
- As above, but Bart submits the booking on Tuesday.
Bart's booking is refused, because one days notice is required if a booking
is being overridden. Bart cannot for example use the booking system at
3pm to request time starting at 4pm the next day, thus giving 25 hours notice.
The rule is that after midmight on Tuesday morning, non-priority users
are safe for the whole of Wednesday. The earliest they can be overridden is
7am Thursday.
- Bart submits the booking on Thursday for time starting at
9am on Saturday.
Bart is giving enough notice, so he can override Lisa's time from 9am on
Saturday even though her run is underway.
- Sometime on Monday, Bart submits a booking for 9am Thursday to 5pm
next Monday.
Bart's booking is refused because he does not have priority for the
time period 9am to 5pm on Monday. Bart can however successfully book time
from 9am Thursday to 9am next Monday. This has the side effect of deleting
Lisa's time from 9am Monday until 2pm Monday since this is not a
"usable" time period. Bart can now book this time.
Lisa's time would still have been deleted even if her group had
preferential access starting next Monday, because she is unlikely to
want a 9am to 2pm booking. However she is able to come back and book
time from 9am Monday, overriding the last 8 hours of Bart's booking if
she wants to.
Sound complicated? This is a somewhat "pathological"
example, since Lisa is unlikely to book a long run in another admin
unit's preferential access period, finishing just a few hours into her
own unit's time, but it does highlight the ability of the system to
settle conflicts!
Thus if you absolutely require an unbroken time period of the total
length that you booked, you should book when your admin unit has
preferential access, or no admin unit has preferential access.
The Program
The booking program is a set of CGI scripts written in the Python language
and using the
KirbyBase database
to store booking information. It is used both to make bookings and to keep
records of instrument usage for billing purposes.
It is a new program written specifically for the 800 MHz NMR
facility, and as such, should be considered to be beta test
software. Although we will be keeping separate records as a check, it
would be a good idea for the institutions making use of this facility
to keep their own records. People travelling long distances to use
the 800 MHz NMR facility should also recheck the timetable before they
leave for Canberra, and email or phone to confirm their booking. These
precautions should cease to be necessary when we declare the booking
program "stable", although it is always prudent to check that
no last-minute maintenance on the 800 has become necessary.
The program uses some code designed to catch errors. If your
browser displays anything like this:
NameError |
Python 2.3.2: /usr/local/bin/python
Sat Mar 20 14:19:59 2004
|
|
A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of
function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
|
|
/home/chris/WWW/cgi-bin/pharos/Booking.py in GetTimes
(self=<Booking.Booking instance>, form=FieldStorage(None, None, [MiniFieldStorage('begi...'), MiniFieldStorage('xxxxx', '2004:4:5:21:30')])) |
1248 print "<p><h2>GetTimes - Problem with start date. %s</h2>" \
|
1249 % problem
|
1250 if stop_dt.hour == 22:
|
1251 stop_dt += self.nextmorn # 6:30 next morning
|
1252 stop_dt = start_dt + self.thirty
|
| stop_dt undefined | UnboundLocalError: local variable 'stop_dt' referenced before assignment
args =
("local variable 'stop_dt' referenced before assignment",)
|
. . . please select File, Save Page As
in your browser, and email the output to
Chris Blake