A desk booking system or solution allows people to find and book desks or workstations to work at in an office.  There are often different types of desks involved including hot desks, hoteling space, permanently assigned spaces or a mix of all three.  Users may have access to book some, all or none of these and may be subjected to rule such as not having “concurrent bookings” - meaning they can’t have multiple desks booked at the same time.  

Desk booking systems often commonly allow users to search for and view the locations of colleagues on interactive floorplans, as well as offering the ability to book multiple different resource types beyond just desks.  

The primary difference is in how these spaces are reserved, and by whom. Hot desks are typically available on a first come, first served basis and may or may not be available for pre-reservation.  Hot desks are designed with maximum flexibility in mind. 

Typically, hoteling desks are booked in advance and offer a little more structure than classic hot desks.  Hoteling spaces will often be restricted to certain users or teams, and sometimes even to those individuals or teams on specific days, to fit hybrid work schedules and provide a little more predictability to how the office will look and operate. 

There is no right or wrong answer to this question! Most organisations though will likely not find that a one size fits all approach to providing access to the desk estate provides the best value. 

Placing some restrictions on which users or teams can access which spaces and when can provide a lot of structure into a hybrid office, even with significantly less space than if everyone had a permanently assigned desk.  Combining restrictions with advanced booking rules or releases of rules within certain time periods (such as - “this is a sales team desk.  If it is same day and unbooked though, any user can book this desk) can add significantly to the flexibility of office space. 

Additionally, many organisations have diverse workforces where individual users, even within a team, may have different needs and requirements.  It may, for example, therefore be appropriate to give some team members permanently allocated spaces because they will be in the office most days, whereas other members of the same team may remain with access to hot or hoteling spaces only as they will be in less frequently. 

For teams, the amount of space allocated should depend on the number of people in the team, the volume of time they are expected to be in the office and whether you want to keep teams together in single neighborhoods or encourage office mobility and for people to move between different spaces meeting new colleagues.  This will all be balanced against the total desk estate available and whether desks are the right resources to be provisioning or whether adding further rooms or collaboration resources would provide further benefit. 

For individuals, it is a little different.  Whether an individual should be assigned a permanent desk, or a permanent desk on certain days of the week, will be dependent on each users personal circumstances.  A common example of this is where certain users are not properly equipped for remote work – such as not having an area to use as an office at home.  These users may benefit from additional access to space which others users do not need. 

No! It is not always necessary to “book” a desk in advance, or even on the spot! Many organizations use desk booking solutions to allocate spaces to groups and use the office maps but do not require direct booking.  There is also the possibility of auto-assigning space to users when they enter the building and “check in” either with a building pass or at a tablet. 

There are advantages though to booking as well.  Booking spaces will let colleagues know exactly where others are, when they will be in and allow them to find a space to work near their preferred colleagues. 

If you choose to go down a route where booking isn’t necessary, just be sure to make sure that the metrics you will be tracking for reporting and analytics don’t rely on the granular data that direct booking provides. 

Space restrictions and permissions are the methods by which your desk estate will be divided up and certain individuals, user groups or teams being given priority access. 

For many users of workplace booking systems, these are essential for making sure that people know where to book, when and where their colleagues will be. 

With desk space now limited for many organisations and well below the total number of people in the team, restrictions allow priority access to be given for different teams to the same desk – greatly enhancing estate value and simplifying the process of helping teams know when to come to the office. 

In it’s most simple form, an example would be “Desk 001 is restricted to user of the sales team on Monday, Finance on a Tuesday, Marketing on a Wednesday and is available for anyone on Thursday and Friday”.  This can significantly increase the flexiblity and utilisation of your spaces – and make hybrid work scheduling easier. 

Your workspace booking system should offer you the flexiblity of booking more than only desks.  Standard resources which are bookable often include rooms and parking spaces – but you should look for a solution that can easily accomodate everything in your office that might enhance the in-office experience of people.  This may include lockers, phone booths, gym slots – the list is endless. 

Additionally, a system should allow users to book multiple of these different resources at the same time – greatly simplifying their experience of booking their day in the office, and inviting colleagues to join them.