Requirements

• Admin

Set up desk booking policies to help the office run smoothly. You can apply desk policies to an entire building and/or to specific desk groups, we've outlined how to do both at the bottom of the guide.   

Here are a few things to keep in mind before jumping in:

• Hot desks are always only reservable for a maximum of one day, and can’t be reserved in advance.

• Assigned desks don’t have an end date and default to your set office hours. 

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

• The Advance check-in window for desk check-ins must be configured at the building level and cannot be set within the layout desk page. 

• A "skip desk check-in" permission for user roles is not available today. 

• We also provide a setting that requires users to book a desk if they're visiting the office. This setting is associated with Robin's Schedule page, and it's managed on the organizational level.  Learn more here. 

Desk policies

Advance booking threshold: Restrict how far in advance hotel desks can be booked (based on when the reservation starts). Only applies to hotel desks. 

Max reservation length: Restrict how long a hotel desk reservation can last (measured from start to end). 

Desk check-ins: Ask people to confirm whether they're using their desk. Choose to apply it to flexible seating only (hot/hotel desks) or to all desk types, including assigned seats, using the drop-down menu. 

Advanced check-in window: Restrict how far in advance flexible desk reservations can be confirmed. Can only be configured at the building level & applies to hot & hotel desks.

Local check-in only: This setting disables all other desk check-in methods and requires employees to be at the office in order to confirm their seats. If this setting is enabled, then a local on-site check-in method must be configured, such as QR codes & NFC tags and/or automated check-ins. 

Abandoned desk Protection:  Allow desk reservations to be automatically canceled if no one checks in by the end of the abandoned desk threshold. Applies to hot & hotel desks with desk check-in enabled. Learn more here!

Abandoned desk protection threshold: Set the time to wait before an unconfirmed desk reservation is canceled. Applies to hot & hotel desks with desk check-in & abandoned desk protection enabled.

Desk sharing: Allow people to temporarily share (“reverse hotel”) their assigned desk when out of the office. Learn more here. Only applies to assigned desks. 

Allow overlapping reservations: Allow users to book a desk when they already have one reserved. Can only be configured at the building level.

Restrict reservations to working hours: When enabled, desks can only be reserved during working hours. Can only be configured at the building level.

Reservation privacy: Allow users to "hide" flex desk reservations from the office map (and People tab) on the web dashboard, mobile app, or kiosk. Private reservations display as "Reserved" on the map. Learn more about who can see hidden reservations here. 

Desk policy visibility

Employees can see the policies associated with a desk in the desk details:

Applying desk policies to an entire building

Navigate to Manage > Offices > select a building > scroll down to "Desk policies." Don't forget to click "Apply to all" after configuring your policies. 

Applying desk policies to a single group of desks

If you have a group of desks that are used a little differently than the rest, head over to the desk layout tool.

Office > Edit floor drop-down > select Layout > select a single desk group. Once a desk group is selected, specify the desk reservation policies using the Policies tab on the right-hand panel. 

⭐ Reminder: The Advance check-in window for desk check-ins must be configured at the building level and cannot be set within the Layout tool.