Introduction
The Automatic Desk Booking feature minimizes the time spent planning to come into the office for employees with a regular schedule. Robin will automatically book desks for employees who have a default schedule set (and the feature turned on).
How it works
After employees turn on the feature, employees' desks are booked daily in a random order up to the office's Advanced Booking Threshold (or a maximum of 31 days). Desks are only booked if the building's Advanced Booking Threshold is longer than the desk's Advanced Booking Threshold.
Example: If the building's Advanced Booking Threshold is 14 days, desks are booked up to 14 days out. If the threshold is 3 months, desks are booked up to 31 days out.
Requirements for Automatic Booking:
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Admin must enable the feature for the employee's preferred office location.
- Employees must enable the feature in their user preferences.
- Employees must have a default schedule set (remote/in-office status).
- Employees booked a desk in the last 90 days.
- The Require Desk Booking setting is NOT enabled for your organization.
How does the algorithm work?
The Automatic Desk Booking feature in Robin uses an algorithm to suggest desks to users based on their past booking behavior. This ensures that the system learns a user's preferences over time and recommends desks that are most desirable to them.
The algorithm considers several factors, including:
- Frecency: This is a combination of how frequently a desk is booked and how recently it was booked. The system analyzes your desk reservations over the last 90 days. Desks booked more often and more recently receive a higher score.
- Preferred Floor: If you've set a preferred floor in your Robin profile, desks on that floor will receive a slight boost in their score.
- Preferred Location: If you've set a preferred building location, desks within that building will be highly favored, while desks outside your preferred location will be significantly de-prioritized.
Managing the feature
Step 1. Manage feature for the organization or for specific buildings
Automatic Desk Booking is enabled by default. Admins can disable it at the organization or building level:
- Go to Manage > Organization.
- In the "Features" section, toggle off Automatic Desk Booking for the entire organization.
- To manage individual buildings, click Manage buildings and select the relevant locations.
Step 2. Instruct users to enable the feature under their settings
The Automatic Desk Booking feature is disabled by default on the user level. Users can enable/disable the feature under their user settings from their user profile or their WorkWeek Schedule page.
User profile settings:
Workweek preference settings:
Warning
If the "Require Desk Booking" setting is enabled, the "Automatic Desk Booking" feature will not function. This is because the "Require Desk Booking" setting disables users' ability to establish a default work schedule, which is necessary for the "Automatic Desk Booking" feature to operate correctly. Thus, the two features cannot work together at this time.
Automatic Desk Booking reporting
Automatically booked desks appear in reporting as "Automatically booked desks," even if no one shows up. Automatically booked desk data can be found in the following:
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- Desk export
- Reservation export
- The Desk Bookings dashboard displays the number of desks booked automatically.
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FAQ:
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Q: What if I'm changing desks?
A. If you've recently switched desks and want the automatic desk booking algorithm to learn your new preference, we recommend booking your new desk frequently for 1-2 weeks. This will give the system enough data to assign a higher "frequency" score to your new desk.
Once you've consistently booked your new desk for this period, you can turn the automatic desk booking feature back on. The algorithm will then prioritize suggesting your new desk based on your recent booking history.
Q: What if I book the same desk multiple times in one day?
A: For the purpose of calculating your "frequency" score, multiple bookings for the same desk within a single day will only count as one booking.
Q: What if a desk is unavailable or I don't have permission to book it?
A: If a desk is unavailable for your requested time and duration, or if you don't have permission to book it, the system will assign a negative score to that desk for you, ensuring it won't be recommended.