Implementing Room Booking Software: An IT Leader’s Guide

Room booking software makes it easy for employees to reserve space anywhere while offering you valuable insights you can use to optimize your workplace.

Teem’s room booking software is not only intuitive; it’s also incredibly easy for IT leaders to implement.

Here’s everything you need to know to get started—and some of our top tips for better booking.

Room Booking Software Basics

Setting Up Room Booking With Calendar Apps

Teem’s room booking software works with the most common calendar apps, including Office 365, Outlook and Google Calendar.

Regardless of which calendar app you use, you will need to have a user account with access to room calendars in order to synchronize events. This is your Global Administrator user or a newly created account, such as a Room Scheduling Account. We recommend avoiding setting up calendars through any individual’s account so no personal calendars or data will be used, avoiding any potentially embarrassing situations.

For step-by-step instructions, select your calendar app:

• Google
• Office 365
• Outlook

Installing Calendar Plug-ins

Increase Teem adoption across your workplace by meeting employees in the calendar tools they’re already using. The Teem plug-in lives within your existing calendar app to make the booking process simple and easy for everyone, including new employees who are booking rooms for the first time. Calendar plug-ins allow employees to book rooms by location, availability, capacity, amenities and more, directly from their calendar app.

How to Set Up Wayfinding

Wayfinding helps guide employees through your workplace using established navigation and design principles. Teem’s Finder is a wayfinding solution that helps employees schedule meetings by allowing them to see space usage and meeting room availability in real time. Finder works by configuring a map or list view of a particular campus, building or floor to display the location and availability of meeting rooms. Finder combines an intuitive touch interface with a seamless at-a-glance view.

Finder provides information to an employee or visitor when visiting a space, such as room displays with listed meeting times on a flight board viewer. With an enterprise plan, your workplace can use touch-enabled displays to:

• Search for employees and their desk location across different floors
• See the availability of meeting rooms across different floors
• See the availability of desks or work locations
• Book a meeting room right from Finder

The success of your Finder implementation also depends on using the proper hardware to support Finder. There are four recommended hardware specifications to run Finder.

Wayfinding Signage

This is the digital signage display that Finder uses to help employees and visitors locate meeting rooms using wayfinding. Teem recommends a horizontal display for best visibility and usability, preferably 24 to 50 inches in width. You can use touch-enabled or non-touch (view only) devices, though we recommend clarifying that in instructions of usage, as the interaction can create a different experience.

Media Player (Computer Module)

This powers the content on the page and enables touch capabilities for your wayfinding display. Each display must have a media player to function properly. Some displays have media players built into the device itself, such as the iPad Pro, but others do not. We recommend you check with your display provider to see if the media player is included and if it can successfully power a modern web browser running Finder.

Digital Signage

Finder uses Digital Signage hardware to display information to people. Digital Signage is a class of device typically used for commercial signage. The displays range in sizes and use LCD, OLED, LED or Projection technologies.

Teem provides a list of recommended digital signage hardware that has been tested to work with Finder.

Digital Signage Service (Content Management Service)

Digital Signage Service can complement digital signage hardware. It provides remote management capability for digital signage hardware. With a digital signage service, you can remotely:

• Update device software or firmware
• Change device configurations
• Manage system settings

Finder configuration requires entering the URL of a map on a web browser on a supported device.

Set Up Maps

To provide accurate maps of meeting rooms and office space around your building with real time availability, you will need to provide Teem with accurate floor plans to connect and associate with your account. Teem builds these maps for customers by request.

Make sure your floor plan includes important features like water fountains, restrooms and anything else you would like included in the digital version. Teem will use this as the foundation to create a simple and intuitive floor plan that will be displayed throughout the Teem platform.

Here are a few tips based on what Teem has seen over the years:

• This map file can be in PNG, PDF and JPEG formats, though Teem prefers the image with the best resolution you can provide.
• Teem needs a scale indicated on the map. This can be done with a measurement placed on a wall within the floor plan. Teem can scale against a visual representation.
• Teem needs notation on the map of room names. These must match the names in the Teem admin dashboard exactly.
• Note on the map or file name which campus, building and floor each individual map represents.
• Teem can add annotations for printers, food, drink, fountain, office supplies, first aid and fire extinguishers. Mark those on the image files if you’d like them included in your final conference room display maps.

Your account manager will contact you when Teem has completed the maps for your organization to use. Please allow for 10-14 business days for this process.

Once you receive your maps, confirm that your organization’s spaces in the Teem Admin Dashboard mirror your physical office layout. For example, if you have to delete a room and create a new one with the same name, that new room won’t be available on the map.

How to Set Up Room Displays

Room displays allow employees to see a room’s status and upcoming schedule. They can also book a meeting and see other available rooms from a map on the display.

You can use the Teem Room Display app on iOS, Android and Crestron devices. If you’re planning on using the Teem Room Display app for iOS or Android, a basic setup for each meeting room display would be a tablet, an enclosure, a PoE adapter, and a lightning cable. If you’re using Crestron, then there are even more enterprise-ready hardware options at your disposal.

For conference room displays, Teem currently supports the following devices:

• Crestron TSS Touch Screens
• iPad (Generation 2 and beyond that supports iOS 9 or later)
• iPad Mini (that supports iOS 9 or later)
• Android devices with a 7 inch screen or larger and that support Android 6.0 or later

To set up devices, download the Event Board app to set up your tablets. For step-by-step set up instructions, select your operating system:

• iOS
• Android

In order to run Teem’s EventBoard app on your conference room displays, you’ll need to connect the devices to your organization’s Teem account. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to add, move or delete EventBoard devices.

Customizing Your Room Booking Software Settings

Once your room booking software is up and running, there are a few steps you can take to take to customize it for your organization.

Here are a few of our top recommendations:

1. Select A Theme For Your Room Displays

You can choose from a variety of themes, including custom background images or a professionally designed theme created for your company’s branding. You can even have a professionally designed video for your room displays!

2. Turn Off The ‘Overbooking’ Setting

The “overbooking” setting allows users to override existing events and schedule new meetings in their place. You might choose this setting if you want to maintain a level of administrative control; however, this can allow for double bookings. If you do keep this feature on, consider only allowing its use for select individuals, such as your executive team.

3. Turn Off The ‘Immediate Reservations’ Setting

When enabled, this feature allows reservations made from your room displays to only be booked with an immediate start time. For this reason, we recommend turning this feature off.

4. Require Check-In

Requiring check-in allows rooms to be freed up again if no one checks in after a designated period of time (such as 15 minutes.) This can help you avoid “zombie” meetings.

5. Don’t Restrict Room Booking Length

Enabling the “restrict booking length” feature will limit all users to a designated meeting length of your choice. However, sometimes employees might have legitimate reasons for wanting to reserve a room for the entire day. Single room reservations cannot be made for longer than 24 hours at a time. Unless you have employees who routinely book rooms for longer than they need them, we don’t recommend restricting room booking length.

You ultimately know what’s best for your organization. Teem has many other options for customizing your settings based on the needs of your workforce. And if you need help solving a specific challenge, we’re here to help you find creative solutions.

We look forward to working together to build a culture of collaboration!