Office space booking
Hot desking and office space booking.
Office space booking system
Office space booking has its own challenges. With covid-19 office space booking has new requirements with respect to social distancing.
The requirements are not just limited to simple social distancing between desks. If you leave a desk empty all the time, it will reduce the utilization of space into half.
For example an staff occupying a desk from say 10 AM to 2 PM has impact on the availability of the nearby desks which in turn has impact on other nearby desks. So office space booking to meeting social distancing involves managing time slot occupancy of individual desks along with the distancing requirements with other desks and its occupancy.
So typically the booking for office space can be summarized as
- Availability of individual office desk or space is dependent on its availability and the availability of nearby desks.
- Dependency between office desk or space can vary based on office plan layout and it can be configured by administrator easily to comply with minimum social distancing requirements.
- It is not always possible to use hot desking, as employees tend to keep their personal or office belongings in that desk. So the scheduling and availability of office space needs to consider that. However the office space utilization have to be optimized without leaving space or desks empty all the time
- Employees may take leave or absent due to various reasons. Scheduling should consider this to maximize occupancy.
Features
Availability based on nearby desks
Dependency
Availability of an office space is not always just a simple check if a certain period of time is available or not. With social distancing rules, office space availability checks depends on the occupancy status of the nearby desks as well.
BookAndPay booking engine checks the availability of the dependent desks before an employee can book. Perhaps a simple example may help.
Lets say there are 10 desk / office space. D1 to D10. The desk D9 is next to D8 and D10. If an employee wants to book say D8 from say 9.30 AM to 2.30 PM, the system will check the availability of desk D8 and D10 for that time. If they are available, then the employee can book D8 for that period of time. It doesnt stop there. If the employees books D8, then the booking management system will busy out or block out desk D8 and D10 for that duration.
Hot desking and auto selection.
Hot Desks
Hot desking is a feature that enables the same desk space to be used by different employees. In some business hot desking works well. This is particularly useful if the employee can switch between different desks or office spaces easily.
Auto selection allows an employee to select the date/time and see the availability of any bookable desks / space available. This will avoid checking availability one by one.
The booking management engine support both hot desking and non hot desking environments. Non hot desking environment restricts a certain desk or space can be booked only by a particular employee.
Meeting room booking
Meeting Rooms
Though meeting room booking are typically done via office suite or calendar applications, there are benefits in using a proper booking management software solution which will help you with safety and compliance.
Meeting room booking can also ensure maximum occupants and gaps between bookings if any. The booking engine can use existing email / calendar systems for improved synchronization and to avoid duplication.
Reminders to staff
Notifications
Users get notifications via Email, SMS or Whatsapp about bookings they made and reminders if required. Notifications are very useful for hot desk booking with auto selection where the employee books for any available desk instead of a specific desk.
For more details see notifications
Self Hosted or Cloud
Hosting
Employee data is confidential and needs to be secure. You can host our booking management software in your own on premise server or your private cloud. See hosting options
Data privacy and security
Security
We support enterprise level security including OAuth 2, SSO, LDAP integration and SAML integration. Your data is secured in a secure database. If you like to host the system in your own server or private cloud you can do that as well.
For more details see security
Email integration to your system.
Email Integration
You can use your own email servers to avoid issues with security, convenience and integration. You just need to configure the SMTP details on the BookAndPay booking management software engine and its done.
Complex schedules and rosters
Schedules and Rosters
We understand that not every booking space is 9 to 5. Schedules may vary. Some space may be bookable during weekends. Some need minimum duration. Some desks may need special permissions. Some booking may not allow immediate booking or intervals between booking.For example if an employee books a desk from 10AM to 1 PM, the desk/space may not be available from 1PM to 1.30 PM as a leeway to pack up or for cleaning.
Read more about schedules
Self service for employees
Self-service
Self service allows your staff to make changes to bookings easily via secure login. Users can view their past bookings and get simple reports as well. In addition to convenience, self-service will also help your users with compliance and auditing. See details on self service for hot desking here
Recurring booking for office desk
Recurring booking
Booking Engine supports recurring booking. The recurring patterns can be simple patterns such as every working day 9 to 5 or more complex such as every alternate monday, tuesday, thurday from 9 to 3Pm and fridays from 10 to 4pm See supported booking types
Compliance and audit reports.
Reports
Reports are available in PDF or CSV files. Reports will help you with auditing, compliance and general information analysis on office desk space bookings. If you are familiar with SQL, you may create or customize reports to your specific needs as well. See full details on reports
See full List of features