What's new

Advanced Booking

Starting from this release, Flex now has two pages for you to make space bookings under the Find a space section: Single Booking and Advanced Booking. The Advanced Booking page allows booking workspaces for recurring events, booking of linked spaces in various space layouts as well as you can make a booking for right now. The new booking paradigm shifts the process while removing some of the usability issues raised by clients.

The Advanced Booking page is divided into three columns to reflect three stages of booking spaces and provide structured view as you go:

• Search for the space by indicating your criteria for the space in the first column.
• Select an appropriate space in the middle column.
• Select layout options in case of linked spaces, then add and confirm booking details in the third column of the page.

Here’re some of the most notable improvements that we introduce:

• The date is only selected once. There is no longer an extra step to decide both the start date and end date.
• Space Type/Work Type is no longer shown in two dropdown lists. A single list is provided allowing you to select a space type.
• The As soon as possible option, allowing you to create a booking for a fixed slot (or until the end of the day) without needing to precisely set times.
• Additional search options are hidden behind a separate menu avoiding accidental clicks.
• Booking Name is now a mandatory field to ensure no more bookings with empty names.
• Better support for linked spaces and rooms requiring set-up and tear-down times (important for client rooms).

Read more about the concept and usage of Advance Booking in Flex here: Advance booking in Flex 

Other

• You can set the preferred zone along with the building and floor that were previously available settings in Flex under Settings > Workplace Preferences.
• You can check in in Flex now.

What's changed

Catering improvements

For the organisations where catering is enabled and set up, you were able to make catering orders along with meeting room bookings. With the new functionality introduced on the operational side, there are changes to how menus are built. With kitchen operating hours and preparation time in mind, your organisation’s order policies regulate what you will end up seeing on the menu. You will see those items on the menu that can be prepared for your meeting given how far in advance you are making the order. We’ve added the following functionality for you to do the following:

• Filter items by allergens or dietary restrictions.
• Read the nutritional info if it’s filled in.
• Leave notes for the order and inform kitchen staff of your allergies.
• (For organisations that use cost codes) Select what cost code(s) to bill the order to.

Tasks in Flex

Following feedback from operational users, we have removed the ability to resolve tasks directly from Flex. Now, in Flex, there’s only the My Tasks sections with Tasks Raised where you can see the progress of the tasks that you raised for spaces. Facility managers will change status and resolve these tasks in OneLens from now on.

API changes

Additional performance improvements have been made to API.

What's fixed

• Made WCAG compliance improvements – fixed areas and alt text and tab index.
• Made various UI fixes and visual improvements.
• Fixed the issue with time selectors when creating a booking.
• Fixed time zone issues.
• Under My Schedule > Bookings, the default number of rows is now correctly set to 25.
• Scalability of page elements on pages Bookings, My Tasks, My Notification works fine now when resizing the screen.
• Made several updates to error messages.
• Fixed issues with adding equipment.
• Fixed naming issue for recurring bookings of linked spaces.
• Fixed creating of recurring bookings within specified weekdays for Germany.
• Enabled checking out of an amended booking and from the booking made behalf of someone else.
• Fixed the issue with preferred floors for new users.
• Now, if the building that is set in user preferences is removed, user has no issues with logging in IBSS apps.
• Bookings on behalf of someone else have now all necessary details under My Schedule > Bookings for others.
• Fixed security rights and other issues with adding or importing visitors.
  Adding a visitor in Flex does not check them in automatically into the building while adding an ad hoc visitor in OneLens or at the Guest tablet does check them in automatically.
• Searching on My Visitor page is now case insensitive.
• Enabled editing the freeform cost code.
• Cost codes are no longer removed when editing a booking.
• Visitor Import button is now security controlled.
• Removed auto check-in when adding a visitor.
• After cancelling a booking, user is returned to the previous page.
• Improved performance when searching for users.
• Fixed duplicate dates when making a recurring booking.

Known issues

• Preferences buttons under Settings are not perfectly aligned to the left.
• It’s only possible to search by cost code ID, not by the cost code description.
• When opening a created booking after it is checked in, the Cancel button is shown instead of the Check Out button that should be in place. 
• Column sort options have been disabled in the user interface, the ability to sort will be added directly to the API in an upcoming release.
• When booking for as soon as possible on the Advanced Booking page, the search results for spaces show the date that was set before turning on the As soon as possible toggle on. But this is a visual issue only, bookings will be made for the current day as expected.