Bookings App Overview

Bookings

1. What it is

Bookings lets employees reserve physical workplace resources — meeting rooms, hot desks, parking spots, lockers, phone booths, AV equipment, company vehicles, and gym equipment — from a single calendar that prevents double-bookings automatically. Admins track who is checked in where, monitor space utilization, and send targeted emergency alerts by building or floor.

• Enablement: Bookings is pay-as-you-go and available to every tenant without a license decision. You are billed per bookable space, not per user.
• What it is not: Bookings reserves physical resources and prevents conflicts on them. It is not a calendar app (events and schedules are handled by Calendar) and it does not manage external visitors (that is Guest Pass, which is a separate app today).
• Rooms held for meetings: a Calendar meeting can hold a Bookings room for each of its dates, and an Appointment Scheduler appointment can hold one too. A Calendar meeting’s room is changed or released from the meeting, not from Bookings — though a Bookings admin can release it for a single date (the meeting stays, that date isn’t booked again, and its host is told). An appointment’s room moves with the appointment. Rooms held for meetings don’t count toward anyone’s daily booking limit and are never auto-released.

2. Standing it up

1. Open the Bookings app from your Apps menu. The app is enabled automatically for every tenant — no license activation is needed.
2. Go to Bookings → Spaces and create your first space. Each space needs a name, a type (e.g. Meeting Room, Desk, Parking Spot), and a capacity. New spaces are active and bookable by default.
3. Go to Bookings → Settings and review which resource types are turned on. All eight — Desks, Meeting Rooms, Parking, Lockers, Phone Booths, AV Equipment, Company Vehicles, and Gym Equipment — are on by default; turn off any you do not use.
4. Set your booking policies: how far ahead people can book (default 30 days), maximum bookings per person per day (default 3), maximum duration per booking (default 8 hours, and 12 hours for desks, parking spots and lockers), the cancellation cutoff — how close to the start a holder can still cancel (default 2 hours) — and the change cutoff — how close to the start the time or space can still be changed (default 2 hours).
5. Confirm it works: have a test user open Bookings, pick a resource, and create a booking. They should see a confirmation and receive a confirmation email with a calendar invite (.ics) attached.

What silently does nothing until you also configure it:

• Auto-release is off by default. Enabling it in Settings does nothing until you also have spaces of a matching type (Meeting Room by default). The job releases unchecked-in bookings after a configurable grace period (default 15 minutes) — never a room a Calendar meeting or an appointment holds, and never a walk-up booked on a room display.
• QR code check-in is on by default. People can check in by scanning a space’s QR code, so print each space’s code from its detail page and post it at the space; until a code is posted there, people check in from their confirmation email’s Check In button, a room display’s QR code, or the booking itself.
• Floor plans show the uploaded image. Rooms are linked to a plan by the Floor plan column of the spaces spreadsheet import; placing rooms on the map isn’t available yet, so the wayfinding view shows the plan without room markers.
• Room display devices (tablets mounted outside rooms) require a registered device paired to a space; without pairing the display has nothing to show.

3. How it fits together

Spaces and bookings — A space is any reservable resource: a conference room, a hot desk, a parking spot. Each space has a type, a capacity, a location (building, floor, area), and optional amenity and equipment tags (e.g. “projector”, “whiteboard”, “video conferencing”). A booking ties one user to one space for a time window. Bookings auto-confirm on creation — there is no approval queue and no recurring-booking option today. The system blocks overlapping bookings for the same space automatically.

Example: “Conference Room A” is a Meeting Room with capacity 8 on Floor 1, East Wing, tagged with “projector” and “video conferencing”. An employee books it from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM for “Project planning” with 4 attendees. The system assigns a unique booking reference, sends a confirmation email with a calendar invite (.ics) attached, and blocks that slot from other users. Fifteen minutes before the start time, a reminder email goes out. The employee scans the room’s QR code to check in, and after the meeting checks out — which marks the booking completed and triggers a feedback request — an Inbox notice, plus an email when they have an address — asking them to rate the space.

Resource types and toggles — Each of the eight space types (Desk, Meeting Room, Parking Spot, Locker, Phone Booth, AV Equipment, Company Vehicle, Gym Equipment) has an independent on/off toggle in Settings. The toggle controls whether that type appears in the booking form’s quick-actions on the dashboard and whether spaces of that type are offered. Spaces of a disabled type still exist but are not bookable through the standard flow.

Check-in and check-out — Users check in to confirm they actually showed up, in any of four ways: the Check In button in their confirmation email or the QR code on the room display outside a meeting room (neither needs them to sign in; both work from 15 minutes before the start to 30 minutes after), or the QR code posted at the space (it opens on their signed-in phone) or the booking’s own page (both from 15 minutes before the start until the booking ends). When auto-release is enabled, unchecked-in bookings are marked as no-shows and released back to the pool after the grace period — except rooms held for Calendar meetings or appointments, and walk-ups booked on a room display. Check-out marks the booking as completed and optionally triggers a feedback request (an Inbox notice, plus an email when the person has an address).

Waitlist — When a space is fully booked for a desired time, users can join a waitlist. If that booking is cancelled or auto-released, the first person on the waitlist is notified by email and in-app and gets a 15-minute head start to book the freed slot. The space is not held for them — anyone can still book it in that time — and if they have not booked it when the 15 minutes are up, the next person in line is told. Waitlist is on by default and can be disabled in Settings.

Service requests — Users can attach service requests (Catering, AV Setup, Room Configuration, Cleaning) to a booking. Requests are routed to the facilities team (admins) and tracked through a lifecycle: pending → assigned → completed (or cancelled).

Emergency dashboard — Admins and security staff see a live view of who is checked into which rooms, filtered by building and floor. From this dashboard they can send targeted emergency alerts and export an occupant roster for first responders. Each is its own setting under Bookings → Settings → User Permissions — Who can see who is in the building?, Who can export the occupant roster? and Who can alert everyone checked in to a building? — and all three default to admins and Bookings app admins. Safety Hub’s emergency alerts are a separate capability with their own setting in Safety Hub.

Favorites — Any user can star a space to add it to their personal favorites. Favorite spaces appear on the dashboard for one-tap re-booking. Favorites are per-user; they do not affect other users or the space itself.

Space feedback — After check-out, users can rate a space and report issues (broken equipment, cleanliness, temperature). Feedback is visible to all users. Managers see a feedback analytics view with aggregate ratings and an issues list. Admins can moderate feedback (hide or flag entries).

Floor plans and wayfinding — The people named under Who can manage floor plans? (admins and Bookings app admins by default) upload floor plan images per building and floor, and rooms are linked to a plan by the Floor plan column of the spaces spreadsheet import. Placing rooms on the map isn’t available yet, so the plan shows without room markers. The wayfinding view is open to everyone who can open Bookings.

4. Running it

Managing spaces

Go to Bookings → Spaces (people named under Who can add and edit spaces? — managers and above by default — and app admins). You can create, edit, activate, deactivate, and duplicate spaces. A Bookings app admin or contributor limited to specific places manages only the spaces at those places, unless they are also named under Who can add and edit spaces?. Each space can have:

• A place — one of your organization’s locations, which decides who manages the space
• A location (building, floor, area) for filtering
• Amenity and equipment tags for search
• An optional hourly rate for cost tracking
• An optional bookable-hours schedule restricting when the space can be booked (empty schedule means always available)
• A linked floor plan for wayfinding (set through the spaces import)

Only administrators (business admins and Bookings app admins) can delete a space, and only one that has never been booked — deactivate it instead to take it out of use.

Reviewing bookings

Go to Bookings → Bookings. Managers see all bookings in the business; non-managers see only their own. Filter by status (Confirmed, Cancelled, Completed, No show), resource type, or date range. Admins can bulk-cancel or bulk-delete selected bookings.

Each user also has a My Bookings view showing their personal booking history, upcoming bookings, and stats (total bookings, upcoming count, hours booked this month).

Running reports and analytics

Go to Bookings → Analytics for utilization dashboards: booking trends by day, usage by resource type, top spaces, peak hours, a utilization heatmap, and user engagement stats including no-show rate. Go to Bookings → Reports to generate a Space Utilization, Booking Trends or Space Performance report for a date range.

Handling service requests

Go to Bookings → Service Requests. The facilities dashboard shows pending, today’s and assigned requests. Staff can assign a request to themselves or a colleague, then mark it completed with notes and actual cost.

Managing room display devices

Go to Bookings → Room Displays (people named under Who can manage room display devices? — managers and above by default). Register a tablet device, pair it to a space, and mount it outside the room. The display shows real-time booking status and allows quick-book from the device. You can activate or deactivate a device from its detail page; regenerating its device token or removing it is for business admins and Bookings app admins only, since every tablet using the old token stops working until it is set up again.

Using the campus and emergency dashboards

Bookings → Campus Dashboard shows real-time room availability across all buildings, with drill-down to individual buildings and floors. Any authenticated user with app access can view it.

Bookings → Emergency Dashboard opens for the people named under any of the three emergency settings. It shows live head counts by building, and — to people named by Who can see who is in the building? — a live map of who is checked in where. From here you can send a targeted emergency alert (critical, warning, or informational) to everyone checked in to a building or floor (people named by Who can alert everyone checked in to a building?); the room displays there show it too, even when nobody is checked in. People named by Who can export the occupant roster? can export the roster as CSV for first responders. The dashboard lists the latest alerts sent from it, with who sent them and who they reached.

5. Settings

All settings are at Bookings → Settings (admin only).

Setting	Default	What it changes
Desk	On	Whether desks appear as a bookable resource type
Meeting Room	On	Whether meeting rooms appear as a bookable resource type
Parking Spot	On	Whether parking spots appear as a bookable resource type
Locker	On	Whether lockers appear as a bookable resource type
Phone Booth	On	Whether phone booths appear as a bookable resource type
AV Equipment	On	Whether AV equipment appears as a bookable resource type
Company Vehicle	On	Whether company vehicles appear as a bookable resource type
Gym Equipment	On	Whether gym equipment appears as a bookable resource type
Book ahead (days)	30 days	How far in advance users can book
Bookings per person per day	3	How many confirmed bookings one person can hold on a single day, on the space’s clock — rooms held for Calendar meetings or appointments and walk-ups at a room display don’t count
Longest booking (hours)	8 hours (12 for desks, parking spots and lockers)	The longest a single booking can last
Cancellation cutoff (hours)	2 hours	Inside this many hours of the start, only an administrator can cancel a booking
Change cutoff (hours)	2 hours	How close to the start time a booking’s time or space can still be changed
Live sensor feed	On	Whether the real-time sensor table is shown and occupancy sensor readings are accepted
QR code access	On	Whether QR code check-in and space QR codes are available
Waitlist	On	Whether users can join a waitlist for fully booked spaces
Auto-release	Off	Whether unchecked-in bookings are released after the grace period (never a room held for a Calendar meeting or an appointment, or a room-display walk-up)
Auto-release grace period	15 minutes	How long after the start time before an unchecked-in booking is released
Notifications	On	Whether booking confirmation emails and reminders are sent

6. More help

• Bookings FAQ — specific setup, limits, and operating questions
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Bookings from these articles