Please note that your subscription plan determines the specific set of features available to you, which may result in differences between what you see and the images presented in this article. For further details on the features included in your plan, please contact your OfficeSpace Admin.
Maintaining the privacy of your employees is an important concern. With OfficeSpace, you have control over the visibility that your employees have into the details of their coworkers’ desk bookings. Using multiple privacy options, you are able to make the choice that best suits your company’s needs.
Managing Desk Booking Privacy
Making Private Desk Bookings
Desk Booking Privacy in Visual Directory
Managing Desk Booking Privacy
Your management team has multiple tools available that assist in maintaining privacy among your employees. Using the desk booking settings, you have control over your employee’s future booking visibility and their ability to create private desk bookings.
Disabling Future Booking Visibility
Enabling Private Desk Booking
Disabling Future Booking Visibility
By default, your employees are able to see future desk bookings of their coworkers in Visual DirectoryⓇ. They will be able to see future desk bookings using the date picker, the book a desk flow, their calendar view, and Who’s In.
If you want to disable this visibility, you can do so in Site Specific Desk Booking Settings. Scroll down until you locate the Enable Future Booking Visibility setting. The toggle is blue, indicating that it is enabled by default. Select the toggle to disable future booking visibility. The toggle will then be grayed out.
With this setting disabled, your employees are only able to see their own desk bookings, both current and future, as well as any of their coworkers’ desk bookings that are currently in progress. This will be achieved in multiple ways across the various OfficeSpace features.
Enabling Private Desk Booking
By default, your employees are only able to make public desk bookings, meaning that their desk bookings will be visible to their coworkers in Visual Directory. Their coworkers are able to see their scheduled desk bookings using the date picker, the book a desk flow, their calendar view, and Who’s In.
If you want to allow your employees the ability to create private desk bookings, you can do so in Global Desk Booking Settings. Under the General Settings section, select the Enable private bookings option checkbox to allow your employees to make private bookings.
Making Private Desk Bookings
An employee can choose to make their desk bookings private so that any of their desk bookings, both current and future, will be hidden from their coworkers. With this setting enabled, the employee and Admin users will still be able to see the employee’s desk bookings in Visual Directory.
Your employees can change their preferences in the Manage Account settings to allow them to create private desk bookings. Check out the Managing Your User Account article in the Workplace Portal for more information.
Desk Booking Privacy in Visual Directory
If your company disables Future Desk Booking Visibility or a user makes their desk bookings private, their booking details will be hidden across Visual Directory. These privacy settings affect the date picker, the book a desk flow, seat info cards, and Who’s In.
Who’s In
Date Picker
Book a Desk Flow
Seat Info Cards
Who’s In
When future desk booking visibility is disabled, your employees are only able to see currently active bookings in the roster. Any bookings that are scheduled to start later in the day will not be shown.
If future booking visibility is enabled, all currently active bookings and bookings that begin at a later time will be shown. The Date and Time Selector (1) will be visible and employees will be able to see future scheduled bookings (2) that begin after the time they selected.
If an employee has made their desk bookings private, their coworkers will not see the booking in Who’s In.
Only the employee and Admin user will be able to see the booking in Who’s In.
You will see a building icon next to the bookable seat icon of a person who has an active desk booking, and is confirmed as present in the office.
Date Picker
With future booking visibility enabled, your employees are able to see and use the date picker. They can see booked seats at a future date and time of their choosing.
When you disable your employees’ future booking visibility, the date picker is affected. When employees are in Visual Directory, the date picker does not show.
If an employee has scheduled a private desk booking, the date picker will not be affected. When their coworkers view a floor plan at a future date and time, the booked desk will show as Reserved.
Book a Desk Flow
When an employee uses the book a desk flow, they are directed to select a desk on the floor plan. If the future booking visibility is enabled, the booked desk’s floating card will show which employee has booked the desk.
When the future booking visibility is disabled and they click on a desk that is already booked, the floating card for the desk shows as Unavailable.
If an employee has booked a desk privately, it will show as Reserved when their coworker is using the book a desk flow.
Seat Info Cards
If the future booking visibility is enabled for your employees, they are able to see who has booked a desk in two places on a seat’s info card. When they click on the seat in Visual Directory, an employee can see a list of the bookings scheduled that day for the seat. Under Today’s Bookings, they see a list of their coworkers who have booked time at that seat.
An employee can also select the See Desk Calendar button to see the Calendar view of future bookings at that seat. As they look through the future dates, they can see which of their coworkers has scheduled a booking at that seat.
When the future booking visibility is disabled, an employee only sees that the desk is Unavailable during scheduled future bookings. No employee names are displayed.
When a private booking is scheduled at a desk, an employee only sees that the desk is Reserved during scheduled future bookings. This information can be seen under Today’s Bookings in the info card.
The desk also shows as Reserved in the Calendar view.
