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ManualsEquipment › Understand the fair use policy

Understand the fair use policy

Step 1

Certain pieces of equipment might have a fair-use policy. To view such a fair-use policy, navigate to a certain piece of equipment, for example via the "Details" view.

Step 1

Step 2

On the first tab of this page, "Reservations", we can scroll down. Here, there is a section called "Usage policies". There are two types of fair use policies available for a piece of equipment. The first one is the reservation time: this is the maximum amount of time the equipment can be reserved for in a set window, which will be discussed later. The other one is the reservation count, this is the amount of times the equipment can be reserved within the set window.

Step 2

Step 3

All policies are active within a certain window, the "fair use days": this is a rolling window of days in which the current policies are enforced. This means that if the window is 7 days and the maximum reservation time is 8 hours, if on the 1st day of the window the equipment has been reserved for 4 hours, there are still 4 hours left in the next 6 days. Then, if the machine is not reserved in the those remaining 6 days, on the 8th day the total reservation time of 8 hours is once again available. This works similarly for the reservation count.

Step 4

Usage policies exist on several levels: there can be individual usage policies, but usage policies can also exist for partners. In the first case, policies apply for every individual that wants to make a reservation for a piece of equipment. In the second case, the policy applies for per organisation. For example, if a particular organisation has a maximum reservation count of 1, individual members from this organisation can only reserve this piece of equipment in total 1 time.

Step 5

The last important thing in the fair use policy is the "outside opening times multiplier". If a piece of equipment is reserved outside of the usual scheduled opening times of the lab, an extra penalty can be applied to the fair use policy. For example, if the multiplier is set to 1.5, a reservation of 4 hours actually counts for 6 hours to the total quota of the user or organisation. Similarly, if the multiplier is set to 0.5, the actual count is 2 hours.