In the previous parts, we covered the introduction to a desk booking system and the initial preparation for transitioning your workplace to a flexible office environment driven by a desk booking system. In this article, we will cover the details of scoping the needs of a desk booking system.

When implementing any software into the business, you need to gather certain requirements that will align with your overall objectives and goals. As mentioned in the previous section, the objectives and goals are set by the management.

Once set, they form the boundaries for the scope and functionality that is expected from the desk booking system.

The next step is to elicit and solidify the basic requirements that the desk booking system needs to provide to achieve those objectives and goals.

Below, we will discuss how we go about doing that in detail.

 

User Stories

The first step is to create user stories around the desk booking system. User stories are documentation of  usage scenarios of a typical person who will use the product.  User stories bring out the sequence of steps needed to help users get their job done as efficiently as possible.

The user stories will form the basis for highlighting features that you will need in the desk booking system. This will then help assist you in evaluating different products in the market.

What is the fastest way to book and manage desk bookings causing friction to the user? Remember, a product that causes friction for the user will not be well received or 100% adopted.

You can approach user stories from different roles that are required in the workplace to manage desk bookings.

 

End User Stories

Determine how the users will access the desk booking system. Will it be through the website, a mobile app, or a tablet? In most cases, a website is the most powerful interface with a wide screen and greater functionality. However, when there are staff that move around a lot, such as field agents, then a mobile app will be more useful.

Determine their login and access options. Whether to link to your corporate directory services or manage a local username and password.

What is the sequence of steps they will take to search, view, and book a desk? How easy it is to get the job done.

What are the ways to check in? Is it better to have an app check-in or do they need to have a QR-Code or a digital device to check-in?

How will they edit or cancel the booking?

Can they reassign a booking to someone else if they are not using the desk?

Can they book on behalf of others?

In addition to that, if you have controlled desks, what is the approval process going to be like? Who will be in charge of approving the booking requests?

What are the rules that need to be set up in the system? Is your office accessible 24×7 or only on weekdays from 09:00 am to 06:00 pm?

Can they book in bulk or only one at a time?

How will you process no-shows and auto-cancellations?

 

Administrative & Management Stories

Administrative stories revolve around the management of the workplace. Various aspects of administration need to be taken care of. For example:

How are the desks going to be managed and allocated?

What are the business rules that are required to control access and usage to the desks?

How will the users be managed? How will they be grouped and what permissions to be provided for each group?

What are the terms and conditions and usage policies of the desks?

Under what conditions will administrators provide consideration for special cases? For example, cases of bookings that fall outside the normal booking rules.

 

Reporting Stories

Understand the types of reports that need to be generated for you to effectively manage the workplace. For example, what are the metrics that you want to track?

What are the metrics that management will be required to review?

How will the reports and metrics be generated? In what frequency and scope will they be reported? In table form or graphical form?

For example, in most businesses, administrators and management would like to know the details of the bookings and their occupancy levels. However, for larger organizations with multiple locations, utilization metrics will be important.

 

Other Aspects

 

Scalability

Understand the need to scale the desk booking system along with your business. How will be the product change according to the business needs. How will it scale in terms of tram size and geographical locations and time zones.

 

Security

Understand how the system will be secured and the data protected. In terms of a typical software service, the data will be in the cloud. If you are in a sensitive industry, governed by regulations on data privacy and residency, these play an important role in selecting a product.

 

Data Migration

If you have existing data that you need to migrate, you should consider that option as well. How do you want the data to be migrated? How easy it is? Will the vendor do it or do you want the capability to do it yourself?

 

Consolidation

Based on the user stories elicited in this exercise, you can begin to uncover the features and functionality of the product. Each feature of a desk booking system should tie back to the user stories and the workplace operational requirement so that you can effectively manage the office in the future.

Determine gaps in the user flow and loop holes that may exist. For example, is there ways that users can bypass the checking in?

Will users book and reserve desks for others preventing free usage?

Brainstorm on how they can be solved.

Will a hardware solve the check-in problem?

If they cannot be solved using software, just like most human behavior, craft policies and procedures that must be followed.

The deep conversations that you have from the user stories will form the list of capabilities that the product should have. These are explained below.

 

Capabilities

Scoping of the features required for the desk booking system relies on the user stories that are captured in the above exercise. This can greatly enhance the product evaluation process.

These can be broken down into 2 main capabilities:

1. Product Capabilities
2. Vendor Capabilities

Product Capability

Some of the key areas that need to be considered and are part of all desk booking system requirements are provided below.

 

Corporate Branding

While this is a very simple requirement, it plays a very important role in presenting and disseminating corporate brand image. Departments such as corporate communications will most likely have their say in how the system should look like and how it fits into their overall brand image consistency.

Formulate questions that can help in understanding how a chosen product can be customized to the look and feel of the organization. In most software-as-a-service systems, customization may be only limited to uploading your corporate logo and perhaps a background image.

 

User Management

Ultimately, users are going to use the system daily when they need to come to the office. Therefore managing users is a critical aspect of a desk booking system.

Look for products that allow you to integrate with your corporate directory services so that the users can be synchronized frequently. This helps to onboard new staff while deactivating accounts of staff who are going to leave the organization. This also helps prevent the need to manage individual accounts with their passwords (which can become a nightmare when people join or leave the organization).

Also, the synchronization task needs to be automated periodically without any human intervention, which relieves the administrator from having to create and manage the accounts manually. The only task for the administrator is to manage the users into different groups and set their permissions and business rules.

There must be a grouping functionality that allows administrators to assign permissions and business rules to users within a group. This prevents the user from having to set the permissions and business rules at the user level. Groups can be considered as a collection of users sharing the same set of permissions and business rules.

Groups can be organized according to the department, level, work, or any other categorization that the users deem fit.

 

Managing of Desks

The potential desk booking system should have an easy interface to create and manage desks. Typically, desks are created and mapped to a floor plan that allows the users to search, view, and book the desks. So, get your floor plans ready in case they need to be used for the system. The floor plan does not need to be extremely comprehensive such as an AutoCAD drawing. It should be simple enough to show the desks, walls, partitions, and important areas such as restrooms, lobby, fire exits, meeting rooms, pantry, and so on. Non-essential items need not be shown.

If required, desks should be categorized by country, building, and location so that users can easily navigate the interface and look specifically within a location for their desks. If you are a multi-national organization, categorizing the desks by location also allows you to book desks in those time zones.

Look out for business rules that come with the desk booking system that allows you to control various aspects of the desk.

Some of the key features that are required are as follows:

Booking windows that allow or prevent users from booking too early or too late into the future.

Bookable days that allow or prevent users from booking during weekends and public holidays.

Cancellation permissions that prevent cancellation at the last minute.

No-show and Auto-Cancel rules can help release desks that are booked but not occupied.

Apart from these, other configurations such as bookable hours, approval requirements, and amenities can be included in the selection criteria.

Check if these rules are controlled at the desk level, category level, or location level. While the desk level provides the greatest functionality, it is also a bit tedious to set up in the initial stages.

 

Permissions

Permissions are a very important aspect of a desk booking system. Permissions allow us to determine if a specific user can book a desk. Permissions are set by the administrator based on the needs of the different departments. As mentioned in the previous article, certain departments require privacy while others are more flexible. In such cases, desk reservation, allocation, and zoning rules are tied to the permissions.

Determine what kind of permissions are needed for the desks and how many desks are assigned to each set of permissions.

 

Booking Options

Booking options provide convenience for the users. For example, booking via the web is powerful, but booking via a mobile app is more efficient. In that case, the focus should be more on the mobile app rather than the web.

Understand what are the most common types of booking preferences that users use. For example:

Layout booking provides a bird’s eye view of the entire floor plan with color-coded desks to show if they are available or booked. This can provide a quick view of the available desks.

Schedulers on the other hand provide a timeline-based view that can provide a clear picture of all the current and subsequent bookings of desks over a day. This helps the user to plan their time at the office easily.

Check if recurring booking options are available.

Check if notifications are sent out after each creation, editing, or deletion of bookings. Who is notified? How are they notified? Etc.

Notifications

The need for timely notifications on actions taken by the user such as confirmations and reminders. Also the mode of notifications such as app or email.

 

Reporting

What kind of reports need to be available for your management needs? For example, booking details reports, cancellation and no-show reports, utilization reports, occupancy reports, heatmaps, and so on.

What should the report formatting be? Is it HTML, Spreadsheet, or PDF formats?

The above set of feature requirements is to be part of the formal requirements specifications that you will pass to the vendor. In addition to these requirements are the vendor’s credentials and capabilities that need to be considered.

 

Vendor Capabilities

Understand how the vendor providing the desk booking system helps and assists you in this ongoing process.

The support levels provided. What is their turnaround time?

The means of contact. Will be online, by telephone, email? When will the support operate?

Is there on-site support or is it 100% remote? Typically, a cloud-based SaaS will have 100% remote support.

The extensiveness of help, online resources, and videos to help get started.

What certifications that the vendor have to protect data security, integrity, and privacy?

Check if there is a trial period or a demo that you can try out so that your use cases can be trialed on the version. Get some of your colleagues involved to gather consensus on the most user-friendly product.

This can help further shortlist the product and be confident that, when needed, the support is there for you and your staff.

 

Concluding

At the end of this exercise, you should have a selected a product that fits as close as possible to the user stories and features that you expect.

Once the product is selected and the vendor has been chosen, the next step is to implement and roll out the desk booking system to the office. In the next article, we will cover the implementation, change management, and monitoring and feedback of the desk booking system in the workplace.