Office booking settings

Calven offers an advanced suite of booking configuration tools, automations, and space types to reach the right outcome for your office. Before diving into this granular overview, be sure to check out how desk booking works in Calven.

To get started with booking settings, open Calven and navigate to the Booking Settings tab for the office you’d like to edit.

How are desks booked in Calven?

Calven offers multiple ways of booking desks, and you can mix and match depending on what suits the needs of your workplace. 

• Auto-booking is at the core of what Calven does. First, users set their working location on a recurring default basis (or for a specific day). Then, each day, Calven's auto-booking algorithm will run and auto-book desks for a day in the future - how far in the future is dependent on the office's auto-booking horizon. 
• Manual booking allows users of the mobile/web app to navigate to the floor map, tap on an available desk, and explicitly book it for a given day.
• Presence-based booking allows users to book desks via presence. If your office has presence integrations configured, they can be used to automate the desk booking process and keep a realtime view of who's sitting where in the office. Learn more about presence automations

Booking priority settings

Booking priority settings allow you to customize to the way Calven's auto-booking algorithm will allocate desks when auto-booking for the whole office.

Distribution order

• Prioritize frequent attendees will prioritize booking desks for the users who have attended the office the most over the last 30 day period
• Prioritize equal distribution will distribute desks equitably to users, based on who received bookings first in the past, who ended up in secondary neighborhoods instead of their group's first allocated neighborhood, and who ended up on the waitlist

Seating priority

• Group togetherness only (previously called team togetherness) will book primary group members together without considering individuals' desk preferences
• Groups first will book individuals with their groups first and foremost, while accommodating desk preferences when possible.
• Individuals first will prioritize book individuals according to their desk preferences first, while also seating groups together. Under individuals first, group members might be slightly further apart from one another, in order to accommodate preferences.
• Learns user preferences (previously called individual favorite desks) will book individuals at desks they've previously booked

Dynamic margin

Dynamic margin refers to whether Calven should leave margins of available desks when auto-booking groups together. With dynamic margin enabled, Calven will leave room between groups, for late planners to book desks. This will only happen when there is additional desk capacity available:

With dynamic margin disabled, Calven will place groups directly next to each other, to optimize space usage:

Booking windows and horizons

• Auto-booking horizon: how many days in advance Calven will auto-book desks for those who plan to be in this office.

• Manual booking window: how far in advance employees can manually book desks via the floor map

• Administrator booking window: how far in advance booking administrators can manually book desks for themselves or others 

Neighborhood booking order

Use the neighborhood booking order table to determine which neighborhoods will be auto-booked by groups and people who have not been allocated to specific neighborhoods.

Click here to learn more about space planning and allocating groups to neighborhoods