TRMNL Booking

TRMNL Booking turns connected calendars into live availability displays for rooms, desks, vehicles, people, and other shared resources. Visitors can also scan a QR code to see availability and reserve a supported resource without a TRMNL account.

This documentation is for:

• Calendar users connecting a personal Google or Microsoft account.
• Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 administrators connecting organization resources.
• TRMNL owners configuring displays, collections, and walk-up booking.

Quick start

1. Install Booking from the TRMNL app directory.
2. Open Integrations and connect Google, Microsoft, or an iCal feed.
3. Select Synchronize for a connected account or workspace.
4. Check Synchronized Calendars and select the calendars Booking should manage.
5. Open Calendars, select a resource, and add it to a TRMNL device.
6. Optionally enable its booking QR code or group several resources into a collection.

The first synchronization selects every discovered calendar for you. After that, newly discovered calendars arrive unselected — a room added at the provider later stays hidden until someone selects it in step 4. This is the most common reason a resource is missing.

Set up a meeting room display walks through steps 4 to 6 in full, including time zones, device placement, and walk-up booking.

Organization administrators should prepare their resources first:

• Google Workspace administrator guide
• Microsoft Exchange administrator guide

Core features

• Live availability: Shows whether a resource is available or occupied, the current meeting time, today's next booking, organizer details, attendee count, and capacity when the provider supplies them.
• Walk-up QR booking: Visitors scan an on-screen or printable QR code and reserve a supported resource without signing in.
• Conflict prevention: Refreshes provider availability and rejects overlapping reservations.
• Resource collections: Groups rooms, desks, people, vehicles, or other calendars on one list or grid display.
• Flexible placement: A resource or collection can appear on multiple TRMNL devices and in supported dashboard or mashup layouts.

Concepts

Calendar or resource

A calendar is the schedule imported from Google, Microsoft, or an iCal URL. Google Workspace and Microsoft Exchange calendars can include resource metadata such as type, building, floor, section, features, and capacity.

Booking

A booking is a time interval on a connected calendar. Google and Microsoft remain the source of truth: TRMNL synchronizes their events and writes supported bookings back to the provider.

Collection

A collection is a selected group of calendars displayed together. Its type helps filter resources while editing; the resources you explicitly select determine what appears. See Resource collections.

Owner

The installation owner is its only manager: they control organization-wide connections and manage calendars, collections, displays, and settings. Workspace authorization is tied to that owner, as is every personal connection they establish.

Integration capabilities

Google Personal booking assumes Calendar event access is authorized during connection.

Personal integrations

Google Personal

Connecting Google imports the calendars returned by the account's Google Calendar list, including calendars it owns and calendars to which it subscribes.

With Calendar event access authorized, TRMNL can:

• Synchronize current and upcoming events.
• Create bookings directly on a selected calendar the account can edit.
• Cancel bookings created through TRMNL on that calendar.
• Offer walk-up booking for an editable calendar.

A Google Workspace user can expose organization rooms through this personal connection:

1. Sign in to Google Calendar with the Workspace account.
2. Next to Other calendars, select Add other calendars.
3. Select Browse resources.
4. Subscribe to the rooms or resources that should appear.
5. Return to TRMNL and synchronize the Google account.

This is useful for a small selection of subscribed resources. Use the Google Workspace integration to discover and manage organization resources directly.

Microsoft Outlook

Connecting a Microsoft account imports its available calendars. TRMNL can synchronize events, create and cancel bookings, and provide walk-up booking for calendars the connected account can edit.

Use the Microsoft Exchange integration for organization-wide room and workspace discovery.

iCal URLs

Use an iCal integration for any standard .ics feed URL. iCal is read-only: new bookings and walk-up QR codes are unavailable, and events must be added or changed in the source calendar.

Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and other providers often expose a private iCal URL containing a secret token. Treat that URL as a password: anyone who receives it may be able to read the calendar feed.

Work integrations

Google Workspace

The Google Workspace integration discovers Calendar resources across the connected domain, including conference rooms and OTHER resources such as desks and company cars. It synchronizes resource schedules and metadata, and creates or cancels bookings directly on the resource calendar.

See the Google Workspace administrator guide for resource creation, permissions, bulk upload, connection, validation, and troubleshooting.

Microsoft Exchange

The Microsoft Exchange integration discovers Exchange Online rooms and Microsoft Places workspaces, then synchronizes their schedules through Microsoft Graph. Bookings are created from the connected account or an optional shared organizer mailbox and sent to the room for acceptance.

See the Microsoft Exchange administrator guide for room policy, delegation, consent, validation, and troubleshooting.

Resource collections

Collections provide an at-a-glance view of multiple resources on one display. They support list and grid layouts, device and mashup placement, and an optional shared QR code that first asks the visitor which bookable resource to reserve.

See Resource collections.

Walk-up booking

Walk-up booking can be enabled for the installation and then shown or hidden on each resource or collection. A visitor can review the next seven days of confirmed bookings, choose a quick or custom duration, and reserve an available interval without signing in. How far ahead they may reserve is set by the Bookable Until setting.

See Walk-up booking.

Display and time settings

Per resource or collection:

• Booking QR: Enable or disable the QR code on each resource or collection display.
• Device assignment: Show a resource or collection on one or more devices, including supported mashup positions.

Installation-wide, under Apps > Booking > Settings:

See Walk-up booking for how the booking window, calendar view, and URL rotation behave in practice. To take one room from a connected account to a working display, follow Set up a meeting room display.

Privacy and security

• Event titles, organizers, and attendee counts can contain sensitive information. What TRMNL can display depends on the details returned by the provider.
• A printable or on-screen booking QR contains a public, tokenized URL. Anyone with the URL can open that booking page while walk-up booking is enabled. Enable QR Code Security to expire those URLs daily.
• A private iCal URL commonly grants read access to the feed. Do not publish or share it unnecessarily.
• Disconnecting an integration removes its synchronized resources from installations that use it and stops future synchronization.

Restrict what synchronizes. A connected account often exposes far more calendars than a display needs — personal calendars, colleagues' shared calendars, rooms in other buildings. Rather than connecting a narrower account, clear the calendars you do not need under Synchronized Calendars on the integration:

1. Open Apps > Booking > Integrations.
2. Select Edit on the connected account or workspace.
3. Under Synchronized Calendars, clear everything Booking should not manage. Select none clears the list so you can select only what you need.
4. Select Save changes.

A cleared calendar stops synchronizing: TRMNL fetches no further events for it, it disappears from Calendars, and it can no longer be placed on a device, added to a collection, or booked through a public link. This is the narrowest control available short of disconnecting the integration, and it is worth applying before the first display goes up in a public area.

Clearing a calendar also removes it from every device display and collection that used it, and re-selecting it does not restore those assignments.

This applies to Google and Microsoft integrations, which import many calendars at once. An iCal feed is added one URL at a time, so remove the feed itself when it should no longer synchronize.

Troubleshooting

Provider-specific failures are covered in the Google Workspace and Microsoft Exchange administrator guides.