Guide: Academic Room Request

Astra Portal: How to Submit a General Academic Room Request

The General Room Request Form submission deadline is 168 hours (7 days) from the event start date. All student organization events are required to maintain a 15 minute gap between the reservation time and the end of an academic class should it precede or follow the event. The SEAR Team has the authority to adjust your requested reservation time accordingly to adhere to this 15 minute buffer rule.

There are two types of General Rooms; those that can be approved directly by the SEAR Team, and those that require secondary approval before being approved by the SEAR Team. Student organizations MUST NOT contact the secondary approver listed for the room they want to reserve; the SEAR Team acts as liaison on behalf student organizations requesting rooms with secondary approvers. The only difference between secondary and non-secondary approval rooms that pertains to the student organization, is that rooms with secondary approvers may take longer to process and approve. Information on how to identify secondary approval rooms is detailed in the instructions below.

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1. Click the General Room Request Form button on the Student Organization Astra Portal homepage
   • NOTE: You should review the dates that are blocked due to exams, holidays, etc. before proceeding with your request submission. If you have an event that needs to be scheduled during these blocked dates, you can for availability in the SU/SSA/SSB/SU Mall by going to utdunion.mymazevo.com.

2. Under the event questionnaire, in order to receive a receipt of your request submission, you must enter the following:
   • Requestor’s Name – enter your own name
   • Requestor’s UTD Email – enter your utdallas.edu email address

3. After completing the questionnaire, click the ‘Add Meeting’ button

4. The following pop-up will then appear:

• Choose Meeting Occurrence

• Single Meeting allows you to create one independent meeting date
• Multiple allows you to create a meeting group, involving choosing multiple days and times that do not follow a pattern
• Recurring allows you to specify a recurring pattern to create a series

For Multiple Occurrence Meetings

For Recurring Occurrence Meetings

2. Choose Start/End Time and Start/End Date
3. Enter your “Organizations Name-meeting/event name” into the Meeting Name field
4. Entering a Max Attendance number (optional) will allow the program to do a preliminary search for rooms that will have the minimum seating capacity entered.
5. Click Add Meeting

5. You will be brought back to the Room Request Form questionnaire page; click Request Rooms

6. A pop-up with a list of available rooms will then appear:

7. You can adjust your search filters with the options on the left; then click search to generate results
   • NOTE: Student Organizations are only allowed to book rooms that are listed under the Student Union – Student Org Rooms region. The majority of rooms listed within this region are 110 – Classrooms, which is why those are the default filters applied. You may clear the Room Type filter to view a few additional rooms that may be available for your event
   • By hovering over the ☉ symbol that is next to each room, you can view details about the room, including if a secondary approval is needed. If the Description says “Contact ___”, that means a secondary approval is needed. If the Description says “Approved by RO” or only lists who has priority scheduling, this means that the room can be approved directly by the SEAR Team.
   • Click on the “Avail (Request)” cell under each meeting that corresponds to the room(s) that you would like to request.

For Multiple and Recurring Requests

• Each meeting you set will have a column on the following page. The column will show rooms as available or unavailable.
• If your event has more than one meeting, they will all be listed under one column. The availability shown is for ALL meetings. Conflicts indicate the room is only available for some of the meetings. Use the +/- to expand and see the availability for individual dates in the series.
• If you wish to see what the conflicts are, click or hover your cursor over the “unavailable” option.
• Choose an available room by clicking on the “Available” block or the room number in the Room column.
• “Available” will turn green and show “Selected”

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• If a room you are intending to reserve is not listed, check the Capacity listed on the room filter. Only rooms that meet your capacity will be listed. Change the Capacity to meet the room capacity. Otherwise, the room you wish to reserve may not be a request-able room through Astra. 

8. After the rooms are selected, click OK.

9. Click “SUBMIT” to submit your request.

10. You will receive an email receipt confirming the event request has been submitted.