Create Facilities and Time Blocks

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Create facilities in EDA.
Create time blocks in EDA.

The “Where & When” are What’s Important

The location and time of an event are important when scheduling classes or other school activities. In EDA, a facility is the “where”, and a time block is the “when”.

A facility can be a classroom, lecture hall, lab or other location where a campus activity may be held. A facility can also be a building at the institution that doesn't directly host student activities (for example, maintenance or IT facilities).
A time block can be a block of time you want to track at your school, be it a time when a course is offered or when a facility is available for use.

Facility is the “Where”

Regardless of the size or structure of your institution, Facility can be a key element in your EDA setup. If your campus has any physical buildings, offices, classrooms, or learning spaces, Facility is for you. Let’s look at some possible uses for the facility object.

Nina uses Facility to relate Cloudy College course offerings to particular classrooms and lecture halls. She also uses Facility to relate faculty members to their respective offices and students to their assigned dorm rooms.
In addition to representing classrooms and activity areas, facility records can also be used to define relationships between property assets. For example, Nina created a parent facility record for the Smith Science Building with nested facility records for the East Wing and Lecture Hall 103.

To use the facility object to relate contacts to campus locations, include the Contact lookup field on Facility.

Create Facility Records

We just mentioned that Cloudy admin Nina Brown has created nested facility records for the Smith Science Building, East Wing, and Lecture Hall 103. Keep reading to see the steps she took to create and associate these records.

In EDA, navigate to the Facilities tab and click New. If you don't see the tab, from the App Launcher ( ), find and select Facilities, and click New.
Fill in the details on the facility record.
- Add a name for the facility. For this example, the facility name Nina enters is Smith Science Building.
- Relate the facility to the account that represents the organization responsible for the facility. Nina relates the Smith Science Building to the Educational Institution account for Cloudy College.
- Specify other information like the facility capacity and whether it's part of a larger (parent) facility. Nina leaves the parent facility field blank for Smith Science building.
Click Save & New.
Fill in the details on the new facility record.
1. The facility name Nina enters on this record is East Wing.
2. She relates it to the Educational Institution account for Cloudy College.
3. Nina selects Smith Science Building as the parent facility because the East Wing is part of that building.
Click Save & New.
Fill in the details on the new facility record.
1. The facility name Nina enters on this record is Lecture Hall 103.
2. She relates it to the Educational Institution account for Cloudy College.
3. Nina selects East Wing as the parent facility because Lecture Hall 103 is located in the East Wing of the Smith Science Building.
Click Save.

Nina now has EDA facility records for a building on Cloudy's campus with properly nested facility records for a wing of the building and a lecture hall room in that wing. She can keep creating and nesting facility records for additional wings and rooms until she accounts for every active facility space in the building.

Time Block is the “When”

In EDA, a time block is a period of time during which something may be scheduled or tracked. That “something” could be a course, meeting, event, activity, or the like. Nina uses Time Block to define the hours when specific courses are offered at Cloudy. She is ready to create a time block for the Anatomy course being offered during the Fall 2020 term. Keep reading to see the steps she follows to create this time block.

Create Time Block Records

Before you create a time block, it's a good idea to have an account set up to relate it to, ideally an account that represents an entire institution, or a school within the institution. Nina will be using the Educational Institution account for Cloudy College for the time block she creates.

Much like facility records, you will create time block records for each specific block of time you want to track at your school during setup. Since you will likely create multiple records when you first start implementing time block data, follow these instructions to create multiple records in one work session.

From an Account record, like an Educational Institution, click New in the Time Blocks related list.
1. For example, Nina selects the Cloudy College account record.
Enter a name for the Time Block and add start and end times. Don’t change the Account name.
1. Nina names this Time Block Section 1. She enters a start time of 9:00am and an end time of 10:15am.
Fill in optional fields as needed. Click Save & New, and continue creating additional Time Block records as needed.

And with that, the tour of how to set up your campus in EDA is complete. Well done! By creating the accounts and other records included in this module, you set the foundation for building a connected campus in EDA. What’s the next step? Adding the people! Adding constituents in Salesforce is the key to bringing your institution to life in EDA. When you’re ready to keep learning, head to the Constituent Management in EDA module (linked just below in Resources) to take the next step in the EDA admin journey.