Set desk booking policies

Desk booking policies help your office run smoothly. You can apply desk policies to a whole building, to specific desk groups, or both. The steps for each are at the end of this article.

Before you start

Keep these points in mind:

• Hot desks can be reserved for 1 day at most and cannot be reserved in advance.

• Assigned desks have no end date and default to your set office hours.

• When you first enable policies, the default max reservation length is 1 week, and the advance booking threshold is 90 days.

• You configure the Remote check-in window for desk check-ins at the building level. You cannot set it on the layout desk page.

• User roles have no "skip desk check-in" permission.

• A separate setting requires users to book a desk if they visit the office. This setting belongs to the Robin Schedule page, and you manage it at the organization level. See Require desk booking when coming to the office.

Desk policies

You can set these policies:

• Advance booking window: Limits how far in advance people can book hotel desks, based on when the reservation starts. Applies only to hotel desks.
• Max reservation length: Limits how long a hotel desk reservation can last, from start to end.
• Desk check-ins: Asks people to confirm that they use their desk. In the drop-down menu, choose to apply it to flexible seating only (hot/hotel desks) or to all desk types, including assigned seats.
• Remote check-in window: Limits how far in advance people can confirm flexible desk reservations remotely. Robin confirms reservations booked within this period automatically. You can configure it only at the building level. It applies to hot & hotel desks.
• Local check-in only: Turns off all other desk check-in methods. Employees must be at the office to confirm their seats. If you enable this setting, configure a local on-site check-in method, such as QR codes and NFC tags, WIfi check-ins, or a badge integration.
• Abandoned Desk Protection: Cancels a desk reservation automatically if no one checks in by the end of the abandoned desk threshold. Applies to hot & hotel desks with desk check-in enabled. See Abandoned Desk Protection.
• Abandoned desk protection threshold: Sets how long Robin waits before it cancels an unconfirmed desk reservation. Applies to hot & hotel desks with desk check-in & abandoned desk protection enabled.
• Desk sharing: Lets people lend their assigned desk to others when they are out of the office. See desk sharing for reverse hoteling. Applies only to assigned desks.
• Allow overlapping reservations: Lets users book a desk when they already have one reserved. You can configure it only at the building level.
• Restrict reservations to working hours: When enabled, people can reserve desks only during working hours. You can configure it only at the building level.
• Reservation privacy: Lets users hide flex desk reservations from the office map and People tab in the web dashboard, mobile app, or kiosk. Private reservations show as "Reserved" on the map. See who can see private desk reservations.

Apply desk policies to a whole building

1. Go to Manage > Offices > select a building.

2. In the "Administration" tab, select Desks from the drop-down menu.

   

Apply desk policies to a single group of desks

If a group of desks is used differently from the rest, use the Layout tool.

1. Go to the Office tab > Edit floor drop-down > select Layout.
2. Select a single desk group and use the Policies tab in the right panel.

Reminder:

Configure the Remote desk check-in window at the building level. You cannot set it in the Layout tool.