AV News

New Technology for the Future Workplace: Room Scheduling Technology

Written by Craig Heiman | Aug 31, 2021 3:11:56 PM

Employees are increasingly in and out of the office. In the hybrid workplace, employees want to maximize their in-office work time with face-to-face meetings and interpersonal collaboration. Room scheduling technology streamlines the meeting reservation process by making it simple and easy to reserve conference rooms, boardrooms, auditoriums, huddle spaces and other meeting spaces – remotely. Room scheduling tools encourage people to get back into the office because they know they have designated spaces and in-person meeting reservations planned. Employees feel more in control of their workload when they can personally manage and update their schedules. 

Room scheduling technology is accessible across all devices; it can be utilized directly through digital signage in the office or an application on your laptop or smartphone. In addition, it also allows you to invite and notify other attendees when you reserve a space for a meeting, keeping everyone who needs to attend in the loop. This improves productivity and communication, especially since people may not typically be interacting with each other as much in the office. 

Utilizing digital signage on office walls is a simple method for employees to visualize available spaces and room capacities. Through these touchscreen displays, they can also directly reserve or manage reservations. This technology eliminates the risk of double bookings and shows you where and when employees will be. When scheduling, you can also see what features certain rooms have available, such as video conferencing technology, if you will have remote participants tuning in. 

Occupancy sensors, which detect movement in meeting spaces, can be connected to room reservation systems to update in real-time when rooms are unexpectedly vacant or unavailable. With room scheduling technology, you can visualize data from past meetings to improve space utilization, such as which rooms are used most frequently and average meeting sizes for each space. For example, suppose a meeting space with an occupancy of 20 people is being reserved by smaller groups of only a handful of people. In that case, managers can encourage them to use the smaller available spaces instead of taking up larger conference rooms. 

Crestron’s Enterprise Scheduling Platform is a reliable, easy-to-use solution for corporate environments. It provides many features and customizations for users. This platform integrates with popular calendar tools such as Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook with a simple web-based setup. On-screen displays inside meeting spaces can be paired with external signs making it easy for those looking for a room to know where they are and if a room is vacant or not, and how long there is until any given room’s next reservation. Crestron Fusion also works as a data analytics tool to show you when people make reservations, what percentage of rooms are being used and if the room scheduling technology is being employed successfully. 

Productivity is key to increasing success in your business and getting back on track after the past year, and implementing room scheduling technology is a great place to start. AV Planners can help you navigate room scheduling tools and choose the best set up for your office space. Contact AV Planners to learn more about our services. Keep up with the latest news from AV Planners on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.