What are booking policies

Booking policies serve as essential frameworks that govern the process of bookings spaces for various purposes. Whether it's a conference room, a general meeting room, or a desk, these policies establish rules and guidelines to ensure smooth and fair utilisation of spaces.

A booking policy defines how a certain space type can be booked. They define when spaces can be booked, which dates may be excluded, and the rules for starting and ending bookings in addition to how the booking behaves in the system once created by the end-user. You can use those settings to foster certain booking patterns or limit unwanted behaviour.

Policies are typically created by the owners or administrators of the different spaces types and play a crucial role in maintaining order, maximising efficiency, and accommodating various user requirements.

When creating or exploring an existing booking policy, make the most of the available options in the sections:

• Policy Information
• Slots
• Excluded Dates
• Duration Limits
• Behaviours
• Approvals
• External Services

1 - Policy Information

Policy Name. Define the name of the policy that only admins will see. 

Policy Description. Add a description that all end users will see detailing what the policy is used for or what restrictions are in place. Keep the consistent message across all your booking policies to help others with booking effectively.

⚠️ Remember to always add descriptions to your booking policies to let your organisation know what are the limitations that you've set for using the spaces. They will learn about space booking limitations only from the descriptions in Flex or Roamer.

✅ Limit your description to 170 characters to be properly displayed to users in IBSS apps on the space information screens.

2 - Slots

One fundamental aspect of booking policies is determining when spaces can be booked. This includes specifying the availability of spaces during different times of the day and days of the week.

Define at which times bookings are possible. As your booking policies are different for desks, meeting rooms, and other spaces, these time slots can be adjusted accordingly. Different slots can be allocated on each working day offering more flexibility than a static booking approach.

3 - Excluded Dates

The excluded dates section allows you to define days on which bookings are not possible. This could include:

• National Holidays
• Planned maintenance or building closures
• Company meetings or special events

If a date is added to this section, users will be unable to book the assigned spaces for the duration and will be notified in the application that booking is not allowed. Specifying such dates helps manage spaces effectively and avoid having to disappoint users by cancelling bookings later.

4 - Duration Limits

The rules for when a booking can start and end are vital to ensure efficient space utilisation and fairness among users. Policies can specify the minimum and maximum duration for reservations, allowing for efficient scheduling.

This section allows you to define flexible or fixed time durations for when a booking is created. There are to tabs within this section:

• CONFIGURABLE LIMITS
• FIXED TIME LIMITS

Configurable Limits

This option allows a flexible booking time anywhere between the minimum and maximum defined duration.

Fixed Time Limits

This option allows booking spaces only at fixed durations that you set in minutes.

✅ Mind typical booking duration for the space type that will be assigned to this policy. When people typically search for spaces for shorter or longer periods than the Fixed Time Limits that you set here, they won't see these spaces that are assigned to this policy in the search results.

5 - Behaviours

Start and End Intervals

Policies can also define specific times when booking may be allowed to start or end, to ensure any additional support services around those spaces get time to carry out any regular activities.

This section details the times at which a booking is allowed to start and end:

• By selecting Repeating start and end interval you select at which times a booking may start or end in a repeating pattern.
  ⚠️ If you want your users to be able to book for as soon as possible, set Repeating start and end interval to Any.
• By selecting Specific start and end interval you can specify exact time intervals that a booking might start on.

Auto-Check-in

Booking policies can now define for specific spaces how you might want to allow users to be checked in automatically, for example, not scan a QR code to validate that they are in the space.

⚠️ Using this setting prevents from having reliable data about what bookings were actually checked in and used.

Early Check-In Threshold

This setting defines how early a user can check into their booking provided the space is available prior to their slot. This provides a smoother user experience, allowing them to check in at a time that suits them, rather than having to wait for the booking start time exactly.

⚠️ However, if both settings – auto check-in and early check-in – are enabled, auto check-in precedes, and there will not be any Check In button displayed for user in Flex and Roamer. For Unity and Inspire, early check in remains available.

Auto-cancellation

The policies also allow for much more control on how you want to handle the cancellation of bookings. For example, you may not want to cancel a desk booking in case they show up later. Or for a meeting room, you may only want to give people a 20 minute grace period for the booking after which the booking is cancelled to make it available to others.

Booking Horizons

Use this setting to define the shortest period (Minimum Booking Horizon, in days) when your users can start booking for and how far in advance they can book (Maximum Booking Horizon).

This should help ensure for certain high-value spaces that they aren't pre-booked several months in advance to give everyone a fair chance at making a booking based on when they become available.
To make sure for fairness, booking policies can also be used to define how short a leeway needs to be provided to make a booking or how far in advance it can be made.

⚠️ Remember that Booking horizon is a rolling period that changes with every start and end interval that you have set up under the booking duration section.

Minimum Booking Horizon

This defines how short-notice a user can book a space.

Maximum Booking Horizon

This defines how far into the future a user is allowed to book.

Booking Offset

Booking offset time defines time of the current day when you're allowed to start booking for the last day that is set by Maximum Horizon.

⚠️ If the Maximum Booking Horizon is set to 0 (which means that you can only book for today), the Booking offset is not used.

By default, Booking offset is set to 9 AM.

✅ If you are using it, indicate this in the policy description for users to know how they can book.

Example of booking offset

Booking offset	Booking Horizons	Explanation
11:00 AM	Minimum Booking Horizon: 0 Maximum Booking Horizon: 7	Users can make bookings of the spaces associated with this policy as usual for 6 days within your 7-day booking horizon. They can start booking for the 7th day – last day allowed by the Maximum Booking Horizon –only after 11:00 AM of the current day.   Let's say it's Tuesday, May 4th, 08:00 AM: ✅ Users can book for the current day. ✅ Users can book for any day up to Monday next week, May 10th. ✅Users can start booking for Tuesday, May 11th, only after 11:00 AM on Tuesday, May 4th as set by Booking offset.   ❌ Users cannot book for Wednesday, May 12th, because this is limited by Maximum Booking Horizon and would be the 8th day in advance then. ❌Users cannot book at 11:00 AM on Tuesday, May 4th, for Tuesday, May 11th, because this is limited by Maximum Booking Horizon and Booking offset time.

 

 

Recurring Bookings

For certain spaces, you may want to allow users to create recurring appointments using the same location. This can be achieved by setting up multiple bookings at once while ensuring efficient utilisation of the space for regular activities. Setting a limit to this prevents users from creating a non-terminating appointment which may block up a space for a long time.

The Recurring booking threshold setting defines whether recurring bookings are allowed – up to a maximum of 52 recurrences:

• If the setting is switched off – only singular bookings are allowed.
• If the setting is switched on – users are able to book meetings on a recurring basis (weekly, monthly, etc.).

✅ Mind what is set for the Booking Horizon as it will limit number of possible recurrences. If the booking horizon is set to 7, weekly recurrences will not work.
 

6 - Approvals

For certain high-value spaces, you may want to include an additional measure of ensuring compliance by having a manual approval step involved. This can now be done on a per booking policy basis to ensure that only the relevant spaces need to go through any manual validation.

This setting defines whether booking for spaces allocated to this policy require approval:

• With the setting switched off, bookings made by users are automatically accepted into the system when they are created.
• With the setting switched on, booking made by users are visible in the OneLens360 administration screen where the set of allocated users can approve or deny the booking requests.

The Auto Rejections After X Days is an optional setting where booking are automatically rejected if the requests are left unanswered for this defined period of time.

7 - External Services

For catering orders and bookings of linked spaces, define one responsible person per service to handle these requests.

• Catering Manager: For any space where this booking policy is associated, each catering order will have this responsible person assigned automatically to process it, communicate with the kitchen staff, or assign this task to the catering task resolver.
• Floor Manager: For any space where a setup or tear down slot is required (for example, linked space or layout change), the setup and reset booking slots and activities are assigned to the Floor Manager and block anyone from using the space before and after this booking of a linked space. 

Policies that are meant for desks, do not require this setting as there are no services available for desks.

Booking policies and IBSS for M365 Sync Service

For organisations that use IBSS for M365 Sync Service and Outlook as the primary source for space bookings, there's no need to set any booking policies as they are ignored by the Sync Service.

Conclusion

Booking policies play a critical role in establishing rules and guidelines for reserving and using spaces efficiently. By defining availability, exclusion dates, booking durations, etc., these policies ensure fair access and optimal utilisation. Understanding and adhering to booking policies is crucial for both space administrators and users.

Read more about booking policies here:

• Creating a booking policy 
• How can I interact with booking policies via the API?