Cameron may be on vacation this week, but their desk doesn’t have to be.

In modern offices, assigned seats stay empty up to half of the week as people move in and out of meetings, work remotely, or go on vacation. These desks could have a big impact for everyone else, and help teams explore how flexible desks could change their work day.

With this release, assigned seats that would otherwise sit empty have a new option. Once enabled by an admin, anyone can temporarily share their assigned desk, making it available for others in the office to reserve. This gives day-to-day flexibility to support people traveling from another office location, or who normally work remotely.

Next time you need to coordinate a seat change, you can skip the spreadsheet:

Highlights

• Coordinate desk moves in one sitting. Work directly on a map with drag and drop, showing changes as you go -- it’s way easier than a spreadsheet.
• Built with change management in mind. Share changes across teams before going live, and share drafts with stakeholders via email.
• Make changes with confidence. Draft and preview changes before publishing to the rest of your team, to confirm you’re making the right moves.
• Find people faster from workplace maps. When occupied, desks now show the name of the person sitting there.

Unlike spreadsheets, these seating charts stay up-to-date with the latest collaboration, without copy and paste marathons. This also makes your work available immediately to everyone in your workplace. Changes push immediately to all interactive maps, reflected instantly in search results for people.

We've also made a few quality of life improvements to help navigate the maps. Map labels now show the current person sitting in a seat, helping you navigate to the right place faster.

Admins can start their first desk move on the web dashboard via Office > Manage seats, or follow a guide to get started

You can now control which part of your map appears when showing maps on status boards. This is especially useful for folks managing multiple kiosks for nearby.

Admins can control how to show the map when configuring status boards. This also works for boards you've already set up, just be sure to refresh once done.

We've also made the "You Are Here" marker easier to configure while setting up new boards, which gives a quick way to orient yourself to the current floor.

Following the recent scheduling upgrades to event composer, today we're following up with Workplace services and meeting approvals. These are available today, and designed for more special case events, like lunch meetings, seminars, or presentations

Workplace services now supports more configuration options to help ensure meeting organizers can connect with the right person from the services team for things like food and beverage requests, help with room set up, or other A/V and amenities needs.

Want to make sure those service requests go through an approval process? Managed spaces require explicit approval to book, so large event spaces, auditoriums, training rooms, or other formal space requests can go through the right channels.

More flexibility when configuring services

Admins can now customize the available service options for their entire organization – or for specific locations, floors, spaces, or users. This provides greater flexibility for admins to configure services, and do things like:

• Designate which spaces support requests like catering, or help from facilities or IT
• Designate which users are able to make service requests
• Configure unique service addresses per location, floor, or space
• Add specific instructions per service type and location, like menu options, contact details, or particular restrictions. For example, “Contact alice@robinplatform.com for any requests less than 24 hours in advance”; or “Facilities help to move furniture requires 30 mins of time before the meeting”.

Users can easily add available services when creating or editing an event right from the web dashboard. Enter a description of the request and desired time of service. (e.g., Get help from facilities setting up).

Submitted requests send the details to the assigned service address. Service providers receive any updates to the schedule via email, keeping everyone in the loop.

Require approval before using a room

Admins may flag specific spaces which require an approval before any event reservations and/or services are finalized. Users will see these spaces as options from both the extension or the web dashboard, and can initiate a request to book these spaces from either platform.

Pending meetings will appear as “on hold” until the request is approved. Admins may approve requests from the web dashboard, or from the email notification.

Turn on services for your workplace

Workplace services and approvals are available with Premier scheduling plans. Get started with these set up guides

• Meeting Approvals
• Workplace Services

Starting today, Robin finds and recommends available times not just for conference rooms, but also the people invited. This update comes with a redesigned new booking experience on the web.

Getting the right room is only part of the process -- and in some offices, the easy part. You'll now find more helpful recommendations finding invitee availability, editing your morning meeting, or shuffling the entire day's schedule. You'll find these and other improvements to the event composer in web and calendar extension.

Connect your account for more personalized scheduling

Connecting your individual Google, Office 365, or (in coming weeks) Exchange account with Robin unlocks some extra powers while scheduling a meeting:

• Manage all events on your schedule, not just those in a meeting room.
• Auto-complete invitees from your contacts.
• Confirm your planned meeting time works for your team
• Block time for focused work
• Schedule events on behalf of others (aka delegate).

Admins can activate personal booking via Manage > Integrations, which allows people to book events as themselves instead of the connected service account. This guide shows how to get started.

Match activities to the best space and time available

You'll find "best fit" recommendations when booking, based on factors like invitees, type of activity, and size. Adjustable filters help you control the specific building, amenities, and capacity when needed.

Delegate booking and team scheduling

Administrative assistants, office operations, and team leads now have a host of new features to help manage events faster. Create events on behalf of others (delegate booking), add multiple spaces for distributed teams, or prevent meetings in spaces during maintenance.

What this means for you

Starting today, everyone will see the option to opt-in to the upgrades from the event composer. This setting applies only to your user account, and not the rest of your organization.

Over the next few weeks, you'll also see updates to workplace services (fmr. "meeting services), recurring events, and a new way to manage approval requests for specific rooms. Both of these features come from strong feedback, and we're excited to show you more soon.

Legacy scheduling features will remain available to all existing accounts through December 1, 2019. At that time, all accounts will be transitioned to the newer versions, legacy features will no longer be available.

Release Schedule

Dates are subject to change, and timing of release may vary by account

• October 28: Opt into new event composer features (Web)
• November 6: Workplace service and approval configurations available to admins (Web)
• December 1: End of life for legacy event composer and legacy extension, all accounts transitioned to new versions automatically.

Maps will now use the same color customizations set for room displays, bringing consistency to all screens running in your office. Your design team will also appreciate the power to use The Official Company Green™ in more places.

Admins can customize availability colors via Manage > Themes and Customizations in the web dashboard.

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. All 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