About Robin's Automatic Desk Booking feature

What Automatic Desk Booking does

Automatic Desk Booking saves employees with a regular schedule the time they spend planning office days. Robin books desks automatically for employees who have a default schedule set and the feature turned on.

How it works

After employees turn on the feature, Robin books their desks each day, in a random order, up to the office's Advanced Booking Threshold (or a maximum of 31 days). Robin books desks only if the building's Advanced Booking Threshold is longer than the desk's Advanced Booking Threshold.

For example, if the building's Advanced Booking Threshold is 14 days, Robin books desks up to 14 days out. If the threshold is 3 months, Robin books desks up to 31 days out.

Requirements for Automatic Booking

Automatic booking works only when all of these are true:

• An admin enabled the feature for the employee's preferred office location.
• The employee enabled the feature in their user preferences.
• The employee has a default schedule set (remote/in-office status).
• The employee booked a desk in the last 90 days.
• The Require Desk Booking setting is NOT enabled for your organization.

How Robin chooses a desk

Automatic Desk Booking uses an algorithm that suggests desks to users based on their past bookings. The algorithm learns a user's preferences over time and recommends the desks they want most.

The algorithm uses these factors:

• Frecency: A mix of how often and how recently a desk is booked. Robin looks at your desk reservations over the last 90 days. Desks you book more often and more recently get a higher score.
• Preferred Floor: If you set a preferred floor in your Robin profile, desks on that floor get a small boost to their score.
• Preferred Location: If you set a preferred building location, desks in that building get a much higher score. Desks outside your preferred location get a much lower score.

Manage the feature

Admins manage the feature for locations, and users turn it on for themselves.

Step 1. Manage the feature for the organization or for specific buildings

Automatic Desk Booking is enabled by default. Admins can disable it for the organization or for single buildings.

1. Go to Manage > Organization.
2. In the "Features" section, turn off Automatic Desk Booking for the whole organization.
3. To manage single buildings, select Manage buildings and select the locations.

Step 2. Tell users to enable the feature in their settings

Automatic Desk Booking is disabled by default for each user. Users turn the feature on or off in their user settings, from their user profile or their WorkWeek Schedule page.

User profile settings

Workweek preference settings

Automatic Desk Booking reporting

Reporting shows automatically booked desks as "Automatically booked desks," even if no one comes in. You find automatically booked desk data in these places:

• Desk export
• Reservation export
• The Desk Bookings dashboard, which shows the number of desks booked automatically

Automatic Desk Booking FAQ

These answers cover common questions about how the algorithm picks desks.

If you change desks

If you switched desks and want the algorithm to learn your new preference, book your new desk often for 1-2 weeks. This gives Robin enough data to give your new desk a higher "frequency" score.

After you book your new desk consistently for this period, turn the automatic desk booking feature back on. The algorithm then suggests your new desk first, based on your recent booking history.

If you book the same desk more than once in a day

For your "frequency" score, multiple bookings for the same desk in one day count as one booking.

If a desk is unavailable or you cannot book it

If a desk is unavailable for your requested time and duration, or you do not have permission to book it, Robin gives that desk a negative score for you. Robin does not recommend it.