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The Space Usage dashboard provides a high-level overview of space utilization for calendars managed by Robin. It helps teams understand how to optimize existing space and plan for new ones.

Navigate to  Analytics > Dashboards drop-down on the left > Space Usage tab. Note: some custom roles & permissions may restrict user visibility. 

Use the drop-down menus at the top of the page to filter the data on this page by time range, campus, building, floor, & individual spaces. Keep in mind the graphs do not include the data for the current day. 

Utilization: Does your office have enough space for events?

This chart shows the percentage of time that spaces were reserved during the selected date range. Utilization is calculated by dividing the total number of reserved hours in bookable spaces by the total potential hours based on 9am-5pm 8-hour workday and Monday through Friday workweek. 

In calculating the utilization, Robin assumes a 9am-5pm 8-hour workday and the default work week is Monday through Friday. If your team has customized the Office Hours in a building, the utilization calculation will consider which days the office is open to determine the work week.

For example, an office might be open Sunday through Thursday and closed Friday and Saturday. In that case, Robin still uses the default 9am-5pm workday, but updates the work week to Sunday through Thursday when calculating utilization.

Why it’s helpful

Identify typical utilization patterns for spaces within your office, and compare averages with seasonal peaks or lows. Hover for the daily, weekly, or monthly percentage and compare it against the previous range. Use the day, wk (week), mo (month) buttons to switch between views.

“What should I do with this information?”

• Between 40-60% utilization is normal and healthy, where people in your workplace have no problems finding space for their events.
• Under 40% utilization is low, and a sign that you could repurpose some spaces for higher demand activities.
• Over 60% is high, and people likely find it difficult to find spaces for events at times they expect.

Overall utilization is a good way to identify building-wide trends, but not all spaces will have the same utilization.

• Select individual spaces to explore why they are in such high demand. You might find these spaces have certain amenities that others don’t.
• If you’re investigating high utilization, the Event Fit, and Space Type visualizations highlight which segments of space are in the highest demand, so you can plan growth.

Utilization by time of day: When is the office busiest?

This chart calls out scheduling bottlenecks throughout the week and times of day when colleagues find it more difficult to find a space, and when resources are plentiful. Roll over each block to see which hour(s) of the day have the greatest number of spaces reserved for events or other activities.  

Why it’s important

Understand whether your office is truly cramped for space, or if some schedule adjustments--such as meeting days, times or locations--might help alleviate some of the crunch. If the latter is the case, some cultural adjustments may save you from expanding to new space too early.

Dive deeper

Take a look at upcoming events from the Schedule view in the web dashboard, and toggle to work days and times that are particularly busy. For particularly meeting dense times of day, evaluate the events taking place. Are there certain routine events, such as team status meetings, that have the flexibility to move to a different time of day or day of the week? Could one or two-person events, such as one-on-ones or calls, move to other semi-private areas within the office instead of reserved meeting rooms? Are there certain events that should no longer be on the calendar at all? Filter for events with low RSVP rates, for example, to see events that may be good candidates to remove completely.  

Recommendations

Abandoned meeting protection will help free up spaces that aren’t in use. Enable this feature on spaces with Room Displays to make it extra easy for folks to find available space. Here’s how.

 

Event and Space Fit: Are spaces and events well-matched?

Are people reserving the right space for their events? Or just any space? The Event Fit chart compares the capacity of the space, the number of participants a space could hold,  with the number of invitees who haven’t explicitly declined the event invite. This data does not include ad-hoc events started via the room display. 

Understand whether your office has the right combination of spaces from the Spaces by the capacity chart, which tallies the number of spaces that can accommodate individual, small, medium, large, or extra-large events. Event fit only includes spaces that have configured capacity.

• “Too Small” - the capacity was less than the number of attendees for the event.
•  “Ideal” - the capacity was an ideal match for the number of attendees for the event.
• “Too Large” - the capacity was greater than the number of attendees for the event.

For Spaces with a capacity, that is less than or equal to 4, when a space hosts events with 5 or more attendees the space is classified as “too small” for the event. When a space hosts events with 4 or fewer attendees, the space is classified as “ideal” for the event.

For Spaces with a Capacity greater than 4, when a space hosts events with more attendees than the capacity, the space is classified as “too small” for the event. When a space hosts events with fewer attendees than the capacity, Robin uses an algorithm to decide the fit. If 75% of the seats in the space were empty, the space is considered “too large” for the event. Otherwise, the space is classified as ideal for the event.

Let’s assume a space has a capacity of 12. Any event with 3 or fewer attendees, the space is considered “too big” for the event. For events where that have 4 to 12 attendees, the space is considered “ideal” for the event. Finally, for any events with more than 12 attendees the space is considered “too small” for the event.

Why it’s important

Offices that are functioning at peak utilization will have a mix of spaces that reflect and support the work taking place. Take a hard look at the data; how does the percentage of events with fewer than 3 invitees align with the spaces in your office for small group work? On the flip side, what percentage of events hold over 10 people? Does your office have the right ratio of spaces and space types?

Dive deeper

For a breakdown by space, download the Spaces export from Analytics > Exports in the web dashboard.

Recommendations

If this data doesn’t look quite right to you, check the capacities assigned to each of your spaces in the dashboard. You can update details like capacity, space type, and amenities from the space details page. 

Event breakdown by space type: How are spaces used?

Events by duration 

The new event duration chart lets you know at a glance what are the typical event durations in your organization.

Why it’s important

Events present opportunities to share information, provide individual coaching, plan projects, brainstorm, and collaborate. Meetings are also cited as the number 1 issue that gets in the way of productive work*. Unproductive meetings waste time and can be a source of employee frustration. Experts suggest simple best practices**, circulate an agenda, consider banning devices, limit the number of invitees and keep the length of the event as short as possible based on what you are trying to accomplish. What is the meeting culture of your organization? What percentage of events are over an hour? How many are 30 minutes or less?

Event breakdown by space type

The Event breakdown by Space Type chart shows the relationship between spaces and the types of events they host.

• Recurring meetings are part of a long-running series.
• Planned events are one-off events scheduled more than two hours before the start time.
• Ad-hoc events are one-off events scheduled two hours or less before the start time, typically from a room display.

Why it’s important

Like the space fit chart above, the breakdown by space type helps summarize where most events are taking place. If huddle rooms are booked most frequently, is this because your office has more spaces built to this standard? Or because this space standard best suits the work taking place? Dive deeper into the most frequently used spaces to help answer this question.

When spaces host a majority of recurring events, it makes it harder for folks to find time to schedule new events in those spaces and may lead to superficial feelings of overuse. Before adding new spaces, take a look at the recurring events on the schedule. Are all of these events still active or can some be removed to free up space?  Having time available for ad-hoc events gives your office the flexibility to meet the demands of today's fast-paced business needs.

Recommendations

For the most meaningful breakdown, evaluate your meeting spaces and tag them with the closest available space type. You can update details like capacity, space type, and amenities from the space details page.

Recaptured time: How much space can your office save?

This chart only shows for buildings that use room displays and the Abandoned Meeting Protection feature. This chart tallies the total time released when nobody checks into their reserved space. This is the time freed up for others to grab for ad hoc events. Recaptured time illustrates how much of that released time is used for ad hoc events. Offices with flexible schedules and high numbers of ad hoc events will typically see higher rates of recaptured time than offices where most events are planned in advance.    

Why it’s important

Typically about 20% of space reservations will be abandoned. This typically happens when multiple spaces are added to an event and go unused, or when folks cancel or reschedule an event without updating the room reservation.  Robin releases these unused space for others to grab. This chart quantifies how room displays help manage the schedule of bookable spaces in your office.

Recommendations

If you’re seeing a higher percentage of released time for your office than expected, it may be because people are forgetting to check in to their events. There are many ways people can check into their events using Robin. Learn more, here. Here’s a guide for (re)introducing abandoned meeting protection and check-ins in your office. 

If you’re seeing low rates of recaptured time, recommend adding a status board in a high trafficked area on each floor. This helps increase visibility for spaces that are currently available or about to become available.

 

 

*Referenced article https://www.workfront.com/sites/default/files/files/2018-09/Report_2017-2018-State-of-Work-Report-FINAL.pdf

*Referenced article https://hbr.org/2015/07/the-condensed-guide-to-running-meetings