What are ghost spaces and why are they hurting your space planning?
Microsoft Outlook® enables a remote user to reserve an office space several days or weeks ahead but plans often change. In many cases, the user forgets to cancel the use of the booked space. That leads to “ghost spaces” – where the space is booked, but no one is using it. This prevents other users from using that space.
Sometimes it is accidental. In the heat of the moment, the user forgets to cancel the booking. Sometimes it is laziness as there are is no consequences for not canceling the booking.
Don't waste your internal resources
Recurring meetings are even worse – a desk or meeting room could be locked to a user for weeks or months ahead with them having no intention of using it. The user might even have left the organization, but their recurring meetings are still there.
If services had been pre-ordered for the reservation – catering, table set up, AV equipment setup, other people in the organization are disrupted, delivering a service to an empty room!
It also takes up space in your calendar and makes it challenging for others to schedule meetings with you because they aren't sure which meetings in your calendar are still accurate.
How can you resolve this?
Add On Products offers a check-in capability surrounding resource booking – it can be used against any office resource - meeting rooms, workspaces, desks, parking spots, etc.
Each resource is given a predefined check-in period based on the reservation start time. The user has to confirm their attendance for the use of the resource within the check-in window. If they fail to do so, the resource reservation can be auto canceled, and the space can then be put back into the availability pool for someone else to use. A record can then be written to the No-Show report, listing those users who booked but did not check-in for their reservation.
Benefits:
Increases the accuracy of resource utilization
Identifies the users who are behaving badly
Repeating meetings can be identified
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