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The latest map update brings a few new ways to find the people and places within your workplace, complete with a few new presentation options. Also “Dark Light Mode”.

The office floorplan just got an upgrade, giving your workplace in Robin a few new things:

• Updated design
• New point of interest (defibrillators, fire exits),
• 2X faster loading, with smarter room labels that show at more zoom levels.
• All apps are now powered by the same workplace map engine previewed in the desk booking update for mobile, allowing people to easily search for spaces or coworkers and see the results on a map.

See search results on a map

You can now choose to view search results on a map of the office. This makes it easy to find nearby spaces, people, and desks. Once you’ve started a search, you can now review options with context before making the best decision where to sit or meet.

Easy to deploy wayfinding, now with desk booking

As of today, you can book both rooms and desks from the status board’s interactive map. Run the status board on a touch-screen kiosk for interactive wayfinding throughout a floor in your office. Find where coworkers sit and reserve a nearby desk, or book space for an impromptu conversation.

We’ve designed the interactive mode for easy setup, even without a touchscreen kiosk nearby. Just share the link on your internal company wiki to help people find and book spaces or seats – no login required.

Status Boards

Status board has new configuration options available for both display and interactive (aka “kiosk”) modes. They now support custom theming, allowing admins to set the boards into either light or dark mode. Premier plans can now also customize the colors used for availability (e.g., in use, booked).

No map yet? Let’s fix that.

Office maps are included with all desks plans, and all scheduling plans except Basic. Ready to add maps to your workplace? Send us your floorplan to get started.

Starting today, workplace analytics available on the web dashboard. This update comes with a smarter way of calculating space utilization, better filters, and extra context for sharing charts with the rest of the team.

With this update, you’ll have an easier time answering some of the most common questions about workplace utilization and how it impacts the average employee’s ability to get stuff done. For example:

1. Does your office have enough spaces?

2. When is the office busiest?

3. Are spaces and events well-matched?

4. How are spaces used?

5. How much space can your office save from abandoned meetings?

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve also added a few ways to share these results with the rest of your team in presentations (complete with talking points!). What good is a chart if it can’t go into a Powerpoint presentation, after all?

A few highlights…

New! Event Duration summarizes typical meeting length, and helps you discover how duration changes between spaces.

Event breakdowns now call out ad hoc meetings separately. In most offices, this represents at least 25% of meetings and is a strong indicator of flexibility, versus predictable routine meetings. A more flexible office will have an easier time adapting to changes.

Refined utilization calculations to weigh factors like working hours and ad hoc meetings to get you a more accurate picture of your workplace in action.

Navigation that scrolls with you, for fast access to filters.

Clearer visualizations, with contextual tooltips that help you navigate each chart.

Share with others via image (png) or spreadsheet (csv).

Workplace analytics are available on all accounts starting today, via the web dashboard. Looking for a more in-depth tour of your new metrics? We’ve prepared a few guides to get you started

Small, recent enhancements to make your Robin experience a little easier. Curious what else we're working on? Check out the upcoming features on the Roadmap.

Upgrades for finding people and managing seats

• See where coworkers sit by clicking their desk location. Requires office maps.
• Apply settings to all desks within a section of the office for easier bulk configurations of things like reservation length.
• Office maps now render faster in web and mobile, making it easier to find what you're looking for.

Upgrades for scheduling events and managing spaces

• The room display app now runs on the Chromebase Mini in addition to iPads, Kindle Fires, and most Android tablets.
• Book and manage recurring meetings from the mobile app.
• Configure spaces like call rooms just for ad hoc use or add calendars to support booking in advance.

Administrators on Premier plans can now further customize permissions and roles for their users with new settings for executives, assistants, or scheduling admins.

Bypass booking policies

People with permission may override any set scheduling policies for the designated space(s) or location(s). This setting would be most useful for office managers, executive assistants, or other folks who manage scheduling for other people.

How this works:

• Members without this permission will have scheduling policies enforced
• Members with this permission will be able to override any set scheduling policies
• Admins are able to bypass booking policies by default

Manage events

Like bypassing policies, this setting is handy for people who manage scheduling for for others. People with permission may edit details or cancel events within the designated space(s) or location(s). Note that some event changes may require the user to have additional permissions within Google, Office 365, or Exchange.

How this works:

• Members without this permission are able to manage only the events they have created
• Members with this permission will be able to manage all events
• Admins are able to manage all events by default

Skip Check-in

People with this permission will not have room reservations automatically unbooked if they forget to check in within the specified time. This setting is most useful for executives and other team members who's meetings should remain on the calendar.

How this works:

• By default, all unconfirmed meetings will be automatically unbooked when the Abandoned Meeting Protection setting is enabled
• All meetings organized by members with this permission will be confirmed automatically, and will not be canceled

Robin Administrators will now see improved navigation and a simplified view of device reporting within the web dashboard. Starting today, the "Analytics > System Status" and "Manage > Devices" tabs will be consolidated into a single overview for device management.

Where to view device information

To see the current status of configured Room Displays as well as the details around each device, navigate to Manage > Devices > Room Displays. The System Status page has been removed from Analytics, and Administrators looking for the link there will be redirected to Manage > Devices.

Looking for a way to filter by building? You’ll have options to view displays by their assigned location in the coming weeks.

Want to know which teams are creating meetings or reserving desks?
Customers, with a Pro or Premier plan, who have the ability to download exports will now see User Group information in the reports. Creator's Group(s) and Host's Group(s) have been added in the event history report and Creator's Group(s) and Assignee's Group(s) have been added in the desk reservation history report. If a user is a member of more than one group, all applicable groups are listed and separated by commas.

If you are importing the downloaded report into a different system, please note that new fields have been added between the name and email address fields.

Event History Report ^* *_{^{snippet of report}}.

The Robin Help Center provides a guide to all the fields in the event history and desk reservation history reports.

A revamped desk booking experience arrives in mobile this week. It’s packed with improvements, including fully interactive maps. With results on the map, you can grab a desk in the perfect corner of the office, or find a better place to work for the afternoon before you even get to the office.

If you have desks enabled on your account, you’ll find a new option to browse results from a fully interactive map instead of the standard list of desk names in search results.

As the workplace gets more complicated, admins will need better ways to introduce changes to their teams without retraining new workflows. We believe maps are a key foundation to building a flexible office for admins and employees alike. Today’s mobile release is the first step of many aimed at helping you manage more of the workplace — not just conference rooms.

What it does

For those familiar with workplace maps already, you'll recognize a few differences to make the whole experience a little bit better. Mobile is the first place you’ll see the brand new Workplace Map engine. The new maps are built from the ground up to support not just desks and conference rooms, but a growing collection of integrations that power modern offices. They load faster, with smarter label rendering at all zoom levels… even if you’ve named your desks something terribly long.

Scout a new desk, or manage your current assignment Explore points of interest near your new seat (e.g., elevators, or something more interesting)

Faster availability summaries w/ full context of where the rest of your team sits, so you can make the best decision for the day’s work.

Why maps matter

Unlike conference rooms, finding your desk can be harder when there are hundreds or thousands to choose from.

We've heard how important wayfinding is to navigating a sea of seating well. For admins trying to introduce their workplace to activity-based work or flexible seating arrangements, lists of desks don't onboard folks in the right way.

Going forward, you can expect maps to become the preferred way to use new features. If you haven't set up your floorplan in Robin yet, it's a great time to get started — especially if you're considering introducing outside the usual admin group.

Learn how to get started

Administrators can now add users to groups from within the Robin dashboard, or sync member and group information from existing user management tools. Grouping users into department, project team, or location opens up a suite of new features for both the end user and account administrators.

A more robust directory search for users

The People tab lists all employees with Robin accounts and includes key details about where they sit, which group or department they’re part of, and their contact information. This directory view makes it easy to find answers to common questions within the office, such as which floor does the marketing team sit on? Or, how do I get in touch with the person who has administrator access to Robin? Today group information is included within the web and mobile apps. Later this summer, expect group search to make its way to kiosk as well.

Greater insight into how your office works

Get visibility into how different departments use space within your workplace by filtering Utilization insights by group. Are people on the marketing team more likely to reserve spaces with screen share and presentation capabilities? Are there enough of these spaces for the size of the team today, or should the IT team consider outfitting an underused space with the necessary amenities? Start thinking about what your workplace needs to support employees today, and what’s needed in order to scale.

Group information will be included with the standard event and desk exports in early July, and visualizations of this data will make its way to the Insights page later this summer.

Enforce permissions and customize access to features based on groups and custom roles

Administrators on all plans can assign individuals or groups to one of the three default roles: Member, Admin, or Owner. Each of these roles has varying level of access to scheduling and management within Robin.

Account administrators on Premier and legacy Enterprise plans can create custom roles which comply with existing booking policies and levels of access control. For example, create a custom role which restricts certain groups from booking spaces or desks on a specific floor. Or, choose which content members are able to see from the web dashboard and mobile apps by hiding billing, analytics, or people tabs for certain roles. Groups or individual members may be assigned to any of these roles.

Who’s impacted

Account administrators can create and manage groups and permissions for that group.

The ability to sync user and group information from user management tools like Okta or Active Directory is available to Premier plans. Custom roles and permissions are available to Premier plans.

How to get started

Want to create groups for your organization? Here’s how to get started.

Ready to dig into custom roles? This guide shows you how.

We've changed the way permissions work to create an experience that's easier to understand and configure for your users and groups. This change affects organizations that opted into the Permissions Beta only.

What’s changing?

Early Beta: Users have the access allowed by their most restrictive role.

For example: If a user belonged to two groups, one group with access to "A" and another group with access to "A" and "B", then the user would only be able to book "A".

Now: Permissions are additive, and users have access to the greatest number of permissions allowed to them. That same user from the example above now has access to book "A" and "B".

Why are we making this change?

Your feedback throughout this early Beta period was clear — the old way was super confusing, and hard to manage for larger organizations where users belonged to multiple groups. Before releasing to everyone, we’ve decided to change the way permissions are applied.

With this change, the actions that a user is allowed to do is the sum of all the things their roles and groups allow them to do. If the user belongs to any groups with a role that allows for something (e.g., booking a room) then the user will be able to do it — even if another role doesn't grant this permission.

This approach makes managing permissions more straightforward, since you now only need to determine if a user belongs to a group which has permission to do something. You can also grant power with a new role without reviewing all existing role assignments.

Today's change was key to making the feature more intuitive, and the additive permissions approach should be familiar for teams already using Role-Based Access Control across their organization.

What should administrators do?

If you have created custom roles, we recommend taking a minute to review any groups with multiple roles assigned. You may need to update them to avoid granting access to rooms you’ve explicitly blocked previously. See below for tips on how to do this.

Understanding and modifying the default roles

Does this statement apply to your organization?

“Everyone can book everything (all rooms and/or desks) in our organization.”

If so, then change nothing. Remember that all new users with automatically join with the Member role, and that this role allows booking all spaces and/or desks by default.

If this isn't the case for your organization, then you'll want to modify the permissions for the Member role by restricting them to the lowest common level of access. This may mean preventing members from booking any spaces or desks at all.

Creating custom roles

In the new permissions model launched today, permissions are now additive.

So if this statement applies to your organization:

“People in the Marketing group can book anything on the 6th floor except for two executive board rooms;”

Then you'll want to do the following:

1. Modify the default Member role by restricting any spaces, levels or locations that aren't bookable by everyone.
2. Create a custom role that's allowed to book anything on the 6th floor. For that same role, add two exclusions for the executive board rooms.
3. Assign the Marketing group to the new custom role. Ensure that the group contains the appropriate members -- you can use SCIM to sync these automatically from your Identity Provider.

In this case, everyone in the marketing group starts with the default permissions allowed for the Member Role, and then gets the added permissions of new custom role.

Assigning permissions to a single user

“I only want this to apply to a single person, why do I have to make a group?”

Today, roles must be assigned to a group, and not a specific user. If you’ve created many highly specific policies meant for specific users, you’ll need to create a group and assign the policy to them that way.

Opportunities for collaboration aren't confined to traditional meetings. In most modern offices, remote teams connect through video conference, managers help their direct reports grow in weekly one-on-ones, and focused work -- either alone or with a peer -- all contribute to employee productivity.

The workday contains multiple activities, and the refreshed calendar extension highlights the best spaces for getting work done and the best times based on who needs to be included.

The extension works alongside Google and Outlook, and updates recommended spaces and/or times based on user input.

How it works

Select an activity type from the drop down based on what you need to get done.

Adding new invitees? The extension will find times that work for everyone on the list, and call out how many spaces are available at that time.

Need a space? Suggested spaces will populate based on the activity type and invitee count. Find spaces that have the resources needed to get work done -- whether that's a whiteboard, audio conferencing support, or space for 100 people.

If you're scheduling a call with a remote team member, add a space for them too.

Release Timeline

Robin is available as a browser extension for Google Calendar, or add-in for Office 365 (Outlook).

May 2 - Roll out to all Robin administrator accounts.

May 15 - Roll out the browser extension (Chrome, FireFox, Safari) to all users with Google Calendar.

June 15 - Roll out the Outlook add-in to all users with Office 365.

Activities will make their way into Insights, and the web and mobile apps later this spring.

Learn More

• Getting Started: Google Extension

• Getting Started: Outlook Add-in