Bookings
1. What it is
Bookings lets employees reserve physical workplace resources — meeting rooms, hot desks, parking spots, lockers, phone booths, AV equipment, company vehicles, and gym equipment — from a single calendar that prevents double-bookings automatically. Admins track who is checked in where, monitor space utilization, and send targeted emergency alerts by building or floor.
- Enablement: Bookings is pay-as-you-go and available to every tenant without a license decision. You are billed per bookable space, not per user.
- What it is not: Bookings reserves physical resources and prevents conflicts on them. It is not a calendar app (events and schedules are handled by Calendar) and it does not manage external visitors (that is Guest Pass, which is a separate app today).
2. Standing it up
- Open the Bookings app from your Apps menu. The app is enabled automatically for every tenant — no license activation is needed.
- Go to Bookings → Spaces and create your first space. Each space needs a name, a type (e.g. Meeting Room, Desk, Parking Spot), and a capacity. New spaces are active and bookable by default.
- Go to Bookings → Settings and review which resource types are turned on. All eight — Desks, Meeting Rooms, Parking, Lockers, Phone Booths, AV Equipment, Company Vehicles, and Gym Equipment — are on by default; turn off any you do not use.
- Set your booking policies: how far ahead people can book (default 30 days), maximum bookings per person per day (default 3), maximum duration per booking (default 8 hours, and 12 hours for desks, parking spots and lockers), the cancellation cutoff — how close to the start a holder can still cancel (default 2 hours) — and the change cutoff — how close to the start the time or space can still be changed (default 2 hours).
- Confirm it works: have a test user open Bookings, pick a resource, and create a booking. They should see a confirmation and receive a confirmation email with a calendar invite (.ics) attached.
What silently does nothing until you also configure it:
- Auto-release is off by default. Enabling it in Settings does nothing until you also have spaces of a matching type (Meeting Room by default). The job releases unchecked-in bookings after a configurable grace period (default 15 minutes).
- QR code check-in is on by default. People check in by scanning a space’s QR code, so print each space’s code from its detail page and post it at the space; until a code is posted there, people check in from the booking instead.
- Floor plans show the uploaded image. Rooms are linked to a plan by the Floor plan column of the spaces spreadsheet import; placing rooms on the map isn’t available yet, so the wayfinding view shows the plan without room markers.
- Room display devices (tablets mounted outside rooms) require a registered device paired to a space; without pairing the display has nothing to show.
3. How it fits together
Spaces and bookings — A space is any reservable resource: a conference room, a hot desk, a parking spot. Each space has a type, a capacity, a location (building, floor, area), and optional amenity and equipment tags (e.g. “projector”, “whiteboard”, “video conferencing”). A booking ties one user to one space for a time window. Bookings auto-confirm on creation — there is no approval queue and no recurring-booking option today. The system blocks overlapping bookings for the same space automatically.
Example: “Conference Room A” is a Meeting Room with capacity 8 on Floor 1, East Wing, tagged with “projector” and “video conferencing”. An employee books it from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM for “Project planning” with 4 attendees. The system assigns a unique booking reference, sends a confirmation email with a calendar invite (.ics) attached, and blocks that slot from other users. Fifteen minutes before the start time, a reminder email goes out. The employee scans the room’s QR code to check in, and after the meeting checks out — which marks the booking completed and triggers a feedback request email asking them to rate the space.
Resource types and toggles — Each of the eight space types (Desk, Meeting Room, Parking Spot, Locker, Phone Booth, AV Equipment, Company Vehicle, Gym Equipment) has an independent on/off toggle in Settings. The toggle controls whether that type appears in the booking form’s quick-actions on the dashboard and whether spaces of that type are offered. Spaces of a disabled type still exist but are not bookable through the standard flow.
Check-in and check-out — Users check in to confirm they actually showed up. Check-in is available starting 15 minutes before the booking’s start time. When auto-release is enabled, unchecked-in bookings are marked as no-shows and released back to the pool after the grace period. Check-out marks the booking as completed and optionally triggers a feedback request email.
Waitlist — When a space is fully booked for a desired time, users can join a waitlist. If that booking is cancelled or auto-released, the first person on the waitlist is notified by email and gets a 15-minute head start to book the freed slot. The space is not held for them — anyone can still book it in that time — and if they have not booked it when the 15 minutes are up, the next person in line is told. Waitlist is on by default and can be disabled in Settings.
Service requests — Users can attach service requests (Catering, AV Setup, Room Configuration, Cleaning) to a booking. Requests are routed to the facilities team (admins) and tracked through a lifecycle: pending → confirmed → in progress → completed.
Emergency dashboard — Admins and security staff see a live view of who is checked into which rooms, filtered by building and floor. From this dashboard they can send targeted emergency alerts and export an occupant roster for first responders. Each is its own setting under Bookings → Settings → User Permissions — Who can see who is in the building?, Who can export the occupant roster? and Who can alert everyone checked in to a building? — and all three default to admins and Bookings app admins. Safety Hub’s emergency alerts are a separate capability with their own setting in Safety Hub.
Favorites — Any user can star a space to add it to their personal favorites. Favorite spaces appear on the dashboard for one-tap re-booking. Favorites are per-user; they do not affect other users or the space itself.
Space feedback — After check-out, users can rate a space and report issues (broken equipment, cleanliness, temperature). Feedback is visible to all users. Managers see a feedback analytics view with aggregate ratings and an issues list. Admins can moderate feedback (hide or flag entries).
Floor plans and wayfinding — Admins upload floor plan images per building and floor, then position rooms on them with a drag-and-drop editor. The wayfinding view is available to all users and shows live availability overlaid on the floor plan.
4. Running it
Managing spaces
Go to Bookings → Spaces (people named under Who can add and edit spaces? — managers and above by default — and app admins). You can create, edit, activate, deactivate, and duplicate spaces. Each space can have:
- A location (building, floor, area) for filtering
- Amenity and equipment tags for search
- An optional hourly rate for cost tracking
- An optional bookable-hours schedule restricting when the space can be booked (empty schedule means always available)
- A linked floor plan for wayfinding
Spaces with active bookings cannot be deleted — deactivate them instead.
Reviewing bookings
Go to Bookings → Bookings. Managers see all bookings in the business; non-managers see only their own. Filter by status (Confirmed, Cancelled, Completed, No Show), resource type, or date range. Admins can bulk-cancel or bulk-delete selected bookings.
Each user also has a My Bookings view showing their personal booking history, upcoming bookings, and stats (total bookings, upcoming count, hours booked this month).
Running reports and analytics
Go to Bookings → Analytics for utilization dashboards: booking trends by day, usage by resource type, top spaces, peak hours, a utilization heatmap, and user engagement stats including no-show rate. Go to Bookings → Reports to generate utilization, booking analysis, or space performance reports for a date range.
Handling service requests
Go to Bookings → Service Requests. The facilities dashboard shows pending, in-progress, and today’s requests. Staff can assign a request to themselves or a colleague, then mark it completed with notes and actual cost.
Managing room display devices
Go to Bookings → Room Displays (Manager or above, or app admin). Register a tablet device, pair it to a space, and mount it outside the room. The display shows real-time booking status and allows quick-book from the device. You can activate, deactivate, or regenerate the pairing token from the device detail page.
Using the campus and emergency dashboards
Bookings → Campus Dashboard shows real-time room availability across all buildings, with drill-down to individual buildings and floors. Any authenticated user with app access can view it.
Bookings → Emergency Dashboard opens for the people named under any of the three emergency settings. It shows live head counts by building, and — to people named by Who can see who is in the building? — a live map of who is checked in where. From here you can send a targeted emergency alert (critical, warning, or informational) to everyone checked in to a building or floor (people named by Who can alert everyone checked in to a building?); the room displays there show it too, even when nobody is checked in. People named by Who can export the occupant roster? can export the roster as CSV for first responders. The dashboard lists the latest alerts sent from it, with who sent them and who they reached.
5. Settings
All settings are at Bookings → Settings (admin only).
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Desks & Workspaces | On | Whether desks appear as a bookable resource type |
| Meeting Rooms | On | Whether meeting rooms appear as a bookable resource type |
| Parking Spots | On | Whether parking spots appear as a bookable resource type |
| Lockers & Storage | On | Whether lockers appear as a bookable resource type |
| Phone Booths | On | Whether phone booths appear as a bookable resource type |
| AV Equipment | On | Whether AV equipment appears as a bookable resource type |
| Company Vehicles | On | Whether company vehicles appear as a bookable resource type |
| Gym Equipment | On | Whether gym equipment appears as a bookable resource type |
| Advance booking window | 30 days | How far in advance users can book |
| Maximum bookings per day | 3 | How many bookings one user can make in a single day |
| Maximum booking duration | 8 hours (12 for desks, parking spots and lockers) | The longest a single booking can last |
| Cancellation cutoff | 2 hours | How close to the start time the holder can still cancel |
| Change cutoff | 2 hours | How close to the start time a booking’s time or space can still be changed |
| Live sensor feed | On | Whether the real-time sensor table is shown and occupancy sensor readings are accepted |
| QR code access | On | Whether QR code check-in and space QR codes are available |
| Waitlist | On | Whether users can join a waitlist for fully booked spaces |
| Auto-release | Off | Whether unchecked-in bookings are released after the grace period |
| Auto-release grace period | 15 minutes | How long after the start time before an unchecked-in booking is released |
| Notifications | On | Whether booking confirmation emails and reminders are sent |
6. More help
- Bookings FAQ — specific setup, limits, and operating questions
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Bookings from these articles