Best practices for office maps

Introduction

This guide gives best practices to set up and maintain office maps in Robin. Your map is the live view of your office that everyone books from. A clear, current map helps people find and book the right desk, space, or resource.

What is an office map?

An office map is the floor plan for one floor (level) of a building. Admins place desks, spaces, points of interest, and furnishings on top of the map. Employees use the map on the web dashboard and in the mobile app.

How is my office organized?

Robin uses this office hierarchy: organization, campus (optional), building, level, space, desk group, and desk. For example: Acme Inc > San Francisco > 25 Broadway > Floor 3 > Marketing > Desk 1.

Why do office maps matter?

People book from the map. If the map does not match the real office, people book the wrong desk or cannot find a room. An accurate map also gives accurate analytics, because Robin reports desk and space data by building and floor.

Best practices for office maps

• Set up your buildings and floors first. Make one building for each office address. Add building details and group buildings into a campus if people meet across buildings. Then create a floor for each level you occupy.

• Choose the fastest way to get a map. You have three options:

  1. Upload a CAD file (.dxf, under 30MB, one floor at a time). Robin traces it for you.
  2. Draw a custom map in the Map Editor. This works well for simple offices with one or two floors.
  3. Send a PDF, JPG, or PNG (under 25MB) to Robin's maps team. The team emails you when the map is live, usually in 2 to 3 business days.

  Then assign the map to its floor.

• Keep structure and resources separate. When you import a CAD file, keep wall layers on and turn desk and furniture layers off. Place desks, spaces, and furnishings later in the Layout tool.

• Place desks and spaces in the Layout tool. Drop desks and spaces onto the map and name them. Every desk must be in a desk group before you can save. You can publish desks before you set up rooms.

• Name things so people can find them. Robin gives default names such as Pod 1 and Desk 1. Replace them with real names. Name desk groups for the team, the location (for example, East Wing Seating), or your office theme. Use the same pattern on every floor.

• Set how each resource is used. Give each desk a desk type: hot, hoteled, or assigned. Set each space to on-demand, scheduled, or request only. Scheduled and request-only spaces need a room calendar.

• Add amenities. Add amenities such as a monitor or dock so people can filter for what they need. Create custom amenities for equipment that the default list does not include.

• Group desks into neighborhoods. Neighborhoods show color-coded groups of desks on the map, so teams can sit together. If you move from pod names to neighborhoods, use map layers to hide pod names and show only neighborhood labels.

• Show what is not bookable. Add points of interest such as restrooms and elevators. Add furnishings such as couches and tables. People cannot book these items, but they help people find their way.

• Put other bookable items on the map. Use the Layout tool to add parking, lockers, and custom resources. For mobile items such as laptops, set up a virtual closet on a floor map.

• Update the map when the office changes.

  1. Edit walls and rooms in the Map Editor. A new CAD upload keeps your desks and spaces, but you may need to move them to the correct place.
  2. Ungroup desks to form new desk groups. This keeps the desk setup but removes the pod name and policies.
  3. Mark a desk unavailable if it must stay on the map but not be booked.
  4. Archive a desk or space to remove it from user-facing maps and release its license. Archive keeps past reservations. Delete removes all past, current, and future reservations and assignments, and removes the data from exports.

• Match status colors to your brand if needed. Change status colors in Manage > Themes. The colors apply to maps and room displays.

• Turn on the new office map. The new office map loads faster, lets people book all resource types, and moves actions into a right sidebar. To turn it on, click Switch to beta in the Map view of the Office tab. Read the FAQ for details.

Measuring results

Use analytics to check that your map matches how people use the office. Filter each dashboard by campus, building, and floor.

• Desks Today dashboard: see how many desks are booked, available, and unavailable today.
• Office Density dashboard: see how busy each day is for hot and hoteled desks.
• Space usage dashboard: see the percentage of time spaces are reserved.