Bumblebee is a resource management software that helps manage instruments and other resources effectively.
One of the main advantages of Bumblebee is its high level of customization. Users can configure operational parameters such as timeslots when the instrument is available, permissions of each user, and project rates. Users can also view and modify their own bookings, while administrators can modify anyone's bookings and make bookings on behalf of other users. Additionally, the system can record the use of consumables and generate usage reports and invoices in various formats like CSV and PDF.
Bumblebee comes with various features to enhance user experience, such as a calendar view of the booking sheets for a month or a single day. Users can only view booking data for the instruments they are allowed to use. The business logic for instrument billing is designed to support collaborative research in an academic environment, including classes of users and splitting usage costs between research groups.
Administrators can create new instruments, users, and billing categories, and export data for bookings and consumable use in various formats like CSV, tab-delimited, HTML, or PDF. They also have access to different views and summaries of the booking and consumable data, such as a summary of all instruments used by a research group.
The presentation of data and business logic of the application are separated through the use of templates and CSS. The Bumblebee system is also highly configurable, with the ability to use both RADIUS and LDAP authentication for integration with central sign-on infrastructure.
The latest version, 1.1.3 Development Release, includes minor updates such as relaxed default valid-user-regexp to make life easier for non-English speaking users, use of UTF-8 encoding when talking to MySQL, and an enforce username validity test when creating new users. The reworked installer and the upgrade script to manage database changes make it much easier to understand. This release includes minor enhancements to the user interface and improvements to sending email under Win32. Note that 1.0.x versions are not compatible with PHP 5.
Version 1.0.6: N/A