General
Customers using Workplace or an external calendar application like Outlook or Google Calendar create meetings every day, to reserve their (favorite) meeting rooms or workplaces beforehand. If customers use both Workplace and a calendar application it is very important that reservations/bookings/meetings reflect the same on both sides. With the calendar integration for Workplace, it is possible to sync reservations created from a Workplace touchpoint (Workplace App, Go, Room display, etc.) to the external calendar application and visa versa.
| Info |
|---|
Some screenshots below are from Exchange/Outlook, but the calendar integration sync can also be configured with Google Calendar. |
Sync bookings with Outlook/Google Calendar
Connect room mailboxes to reservable resources in Workplace and have meetings synced across both platforms.
Synced across all devices
Monitor both calendars and automatically synchronizes any booking made, edited or deleted, enabling users to make bookings using any Spacewell touchpoint like kiosk, app or room display.
Keep your trusted environment
The calendar integration has no impact on your existing calendars, so users who prefer to remain in Microsoft Outlook/Google Calendar won’t even notice the difference.
Touchpoints for convenience
With everything in sync, users can enjoy their preferred touchpoints whenever and wherever they are, which will positively impact the user experience.
User Story
As a user of Spacewell's Workplace software, I want the reservation module to seamlessly sync with my Outlook/Google Calendar, enabling room-centric synchronization of single and recurring reservations, both single and multi-room scenario’s. This will ensure that our users can efficiently manage and book meeting rooms in either Outlook/Google Calendar or from Spacewell Workplace apps, while maintaining up-to-date availability.
When an employee makes a reservation through Outlook/Google Calendar, the integration ensures that the reservation details are accurately reflected in all relevant Spacewell Workplace touchpoints. Similarly, when a reservation is made through one of the Spacewell Workplace touchpoints, the integration synchronizes the reservation to Outlook/Google Calendar, keeping both systems up-to-date.
What is synced back-and-forth?
Subject
Start Date & time
End Date & time
Organizer email address
Required participants (email address)
Optional participants (email address)
Recurrence
Subject
Start date & time
End date & time
Responsible (Organizer email address)
Reservation Lines (reserved room)
Participants (only via web portal)
Recurrence
Room-centric vs user-centric
The integration between Workplace and the external calendar application (Outlook/Google) works in a room-centric way. Another variant is user-centric. What is the difference? How does it work? More information is described in this chapter.
Room-centric: In room-centric mode the main focus is on integrating with the room calendar (mailbox). For this approach there needs to be full access to the meeting rooms mailboxes. A meeting from Workplace is created in the rooms calendar and users are invited as participants.
User-centric: In user-centric mode the main focus is on integrating with the users calendar (mailbox). For this approach there needs to be full access to the users mailboxes. A meeting from Workplace would be created in the requestors calendar, the room is added as a resource and additonal users are invited as participants.
In room-centric mode, it is necesarry to set up permissions in the external calendar application, so that Workplace has access to the room calendar to be able to create, edit and delete meetings. A meeting created in Workplace can now be synced to the calendar application, where the meeting is created in the rooms calendar and the users are invited to the meeting as participants. The users can accept or decline the meeting in Outlook/Google, but the requestor of the meeting in Workplace, cannot edit or delete the meeting in Outlook/Google.
In the room-centric approach, meetings can only be changed/cancelled in the system the meeting is created in. But there are a few exceptions where an update is done from Workplace to a meeting created in Outlook or Google:
A customer can have occupancy sensors set up in a meeting room and can have a brain rule (automation) set up to automatically cancel a meeting if no occupancy is detected. This prevents meeting rooms being reserved but not used. An inbound meeting (created from Outlook/Google) can be cancelled by a brain rule if the occupancy sensor does not detect occupancy within the specified period. The reserved room will become available again.
can be found here: Room-centric calendar integration with Workplace