You add a new classroom or gallery to one of your locations in Altru, save it, go to schedule an event or program session there, and the room isn’t in the dropdown. Or it shows up, but picking it does nothing useful. The room exists. Altru just won’t let you use it.
This is almost never data loss. In nearly every case the room is fine, and something between the location record and the screen you’re on is filtering it out. Below are the usual causes, roughly in the order worth checking, plus a few ways to confirm what’s going on before you open a support case.
Start with the simplest explanation: the form was already open
Altru loads many lookup lists when a form or page opens. If you had the event or program form open in another tab while you added the room, that form is still showing the old list. Close it completely, refresh the browser, and open the event again from scratch.
It sounds too obvious to matter, but it accounts for a lot of “it’s not there” moments, especially when one person is setting up the location and another is building the schedule at the same time.
Make sure the room is on the location you think it is
Many organizations end up with near-duplicate location records over the years: “Main Campus,” “Main Building,” “Museum – Main.” If the room was added to one of those and the event points at another, the room will never appear in that event’s list, because rooms are offered based on the location the event is using.
- Open the location record you added the room to and confirm the room is listed and saved.
- Open the event or program and check exactly which location it’s set to.
- If they don’t match, either move the event to the right location or add the room where the event already lives. Then clean up the duplicate location so it doesn’t happen again.
Check whether the room is already booked
When you pick a room for an event, Altru may check for scheduling conflicts with other events using that room at the same time. Depending on your setup, a conflict might block the selection or just warn you. Look at what else is scheduled in that room for the same date and time, including recurring events and events someone created as placeholders.
If you’re not sure how conflict checking behaves in your database, test it: create a throwaway event in the same room at an hour nothing else is booked. If that works, the problem is the schedule, not the room.
Look at capacity
Rooms carry a capacity, and events carry their own capacity. If the event’s capacity is set higher than the room can hold, Altru may not accept the room, or it may push back when you save. Compare the two numbers. Either raise the room capacity (if the space really holds more) or lower the event capacity to fit.
A blank or zero capacity on the new room is worth checking too. Someone setting up the room quickly may have skipped that field.
Consider site security and permissions
If your database uses sites to separate departments or campuses, location and event records can be tied to a site. A user whose security only covers one site may not see rooms or locations attached to another. The same applies if the room was created by an administrator but the person scheduling has a more limited role.
The quick test: have an administrator with full rights open the same event and try to select the room. If they can and you can’t, it’s a security or site assignment issue, and your Altru admin can fix it in user roles.
Program events versus standalone events
Program-based events used in daily sales and advance sales are set up somewhat differently from standalone events like lectures or galas. Where location and room are defined can vary: sometimes at the program level, sometimes on the individual event. If you changed the room on the program but the existing scheduled events were created before the change, those events may still be holding the old location or room. You may need to update the existing events, not just the program, or regenerate them for future dates.
Because this behavior can depend on how your programs were built, confirm it on one future event before editing a whole season.
A short troubleshooting order
- Close every open form, refresh, and try again.
- Confirm the room is saved on the exact location the event uses.
- Check for overlapping events in that room.
- Compare room capacity with event capacity, and make sure the room’s capacity isn’t blank.
- Have a full-rights administrator try the same selection.
- For program events, check whether existing events still carry old location settings.
When to call Blackbaud
If the room is saved on the right location, nothing else is booked, capacities fit, and even a full administrator can’t select it, you’ve likely hit something that needs Blackbaud support to look at directly. When you open the case, include the location name, the room name, the event you tried to use it on, the date and time, and a screenshot of the room on the location record. Mention what you already ruled out from the list above. It saves a round of back-and-forth.
And once it’s working, write down how rooms get added at your organization: who creates them, which location they belong to, and that capacity is required. Most room problems trace back to two people setting things up slightly differently.
