Conference rooms and workstations represent valuable space. And for every moment they’re not being used, that space is wasted. If you want to make the most of your real estate, you need an intuitive, convenient way for your employees to access resources around campus. A robust space reservation system like Tango Reserve ensures everyone can use rooms and equipment, and you have visibility into how these resources are being used.

The widespread adoption of hybrid workplace models has heightened the need for companies to invest in desk booking software. As your virtual workforce coordinates days and times to come into the office, hoteling becomes a more essential component of your workplace.

Whether your business has a single location or tens of thousands, a smooth reservation system helps you and your employees use and manage your workplace.

The immediate need is clear, but if you’re unfamiliar with desk booking software, it’s hard to tell what a good solution looks like. You don’t want to choose a solution you’ll need to abandon in a year. And you and your employees may wind up using this tool every day.

Here are nine essential features to look for in a space reservation system.

1. Diverse scheduling capabilities

In modern workplaces, employees don’t just need to reserve a meeting room. As they plan their day on campus, a remote worker may need to reserve a parking spot before they begin their commute, find a workstation next to their colleagues, book a conference room, order amenities, and check out specialized equipment.

You have a finite supply of space and resources. A quality reservation system gives you and your employees better visibility and access to what’s available, whether your employees need dedicated workstations, neighborhoods, offices, or something else.

If your desk booking software doesn’t let you manage a schedule and handle reservations for all of the resources your employees need to reserve, you’re stuck paying for more one-off solutions, or else your employees have to improvise their own methods for sharing.

2. Integration with IWMS

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses rushed to find digital tools to accommodate their new virtual workplaces. As a result, these companies often wound up buying piecemealed solutions that didn’t function with their other tools or have the functionality they needed long term. An integrated workplace management system brings together all of the tools you need to manage your workplace, whether you cobble together modules from different vendors or use a single, cohesive platform.

By integrating your desk booking software with an IWMS platform, you can bring your reservations data to your other tools and increase visibility into your overall space management. You don’t have to jump in and out of programs because everything you need lives in one place.

Tango Reserve is a purpose-built office booking system that was designed as part of Tango’s IWMS, Tango Workplace. Using them together gives you access to advanced space management capabilities. 

3. “No-show” cancellations

If an employee misses their reservation, the room or workspace they reserved is still vacant. Someone could be using it for another task. When your office booking software is part of an IWMS, you can use data from Internet of Things sensors like blurred vision cameras and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) to recognize when a reserved space is unoccupied.

Whether a space has been reserved for an hour or an entire day, if nobody shows up to use it, you want your reservation software to be able to reclaim this space so that it’s available for someone else. Your company policies can define exactly how the process will work to avoid conflicts, but cancelling missed reservations will help you better utilize your space and get a more accurate view of how employees are interacting with your workplace.

4. Employee reservation app

The easier it is to access your reservation system, the more your employees will use and appreciate it. Nobody should have to be at a desk to reserve one. Giving your employees a reservation app ensures they can quickly find the resources they need and schedule time with them anywhere and anytime

Tango’s  Reserve app lets your employees find a workstation, share their schedule with colleagues, find a schedule that’s been shared with them, provide feedback about spaces they’ve used, make service requests, and more.

5. Automatic wayfinding

For some employees, the friction of wayfinding prevents them from reserving unfamiliar spaces. Wouldn’t it be nice if your employees could confidently navigate anywhere on campus? With clear wayfinding, they don’t have to worry about using a new workstation, room, or collaborative space they’ve never been to before. There’s less anxiety, and it takes less time to get where you need to be.

Since Tango Reserve is part of the same system as Tango Space, our platform automatically calculates the distance between every space on campus, giving your employees clear directions from one place to another.

6. Booking recommendations

In a dynamic workplace, employees often select which days they want to come to campus and choose from the available workstations. They’ll often try to reserve times and spaces with their closest colleagues, maximizing the opportunity for collaboration and making their time on campus as productive as possible.

With artificial intelligence and machine learning, your desk booking system can streamline this coordination with automated recommendations. As employees reserve workspaces, Tango Reserve recognizes patterns in who they work with and when and where they work. When they sign in to the reservation app, Tango can suggest they come in at the same time as a coworker they typically work with, then find a space near them.

7. Employee surveys

If there’s something wrong with a room or piece of equipment, you need to know right away so you can resolve the issue before it affects other employees. Providing your employees with a fast, simple feedback system ensures that you’ll always have a pulse on the quality and status of each space, as well as things that would make each room or area more useful.

8. Real-time floor plans

From your reservation system, administrators should be able to get a bird’s-eye view of your campus in real-time. As people reserve areas and use equipment, that should be reflected in a real-time floor plan that lets you quickly pinpoint unoccupied spaces (so you can potentially repurpose them) and locate important items.

Real-time floor plans are a core component of real-time occupancy management, where your business reacts to the current demand for space by making adjustments in the moment, based on how your resources are actively being used.

9. Workplace analytics and reporting

If you want to use your space as efficiently as possible, you need relevant data about how your reservable spaces have been used historically and meaningful ways to explore that data, so you can accurately forecast future demand.

Maybe there’s a single conference room that’s always in use, and another your employees won’t touch. Or everyone wants to work in neighborhoods, and nobody wants isolated workstations. Recognizing trends can help you make informed decisions about the most valuable ways to use your space and square footage you could potentially do without.

Tango Reserve collates reservation data with other workspace optimization metrics, then organizes it in ways that help you turn this information into actionable insights.

Book a demo of Tango Reserve

Tango Workplace is a comprehensive IWMS solution built for companies and enterprises of all sizes. We serve businesses with a few  locations and tens of thousands of them, helping them manage workplaces all around the world.

If you have rooms, workstations, hoteling spaces, amenities, and other shared resources your employees need to reserve in order to use, try Tango Reserve.