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.
Some older Calven offices may still be using Calven's legacy desk booking algorithm, which has different configuration options. Click here to learn more
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.
Desk booking 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
Auto-booking preference
- Individual favorite desks means Calven will remember users' favorite desks based on which ones they often manually book, then try to book each user at their favorites when auto-booking. Calven will still book primary members of groups in the neighborhoods their group has been allocated to, but primary members will be more spread out across the neighborhood, as opposed to right next to each other.
- Team togetherness means Calven will prioritize booking primary group members at desks next to each other when auto-booking. If groups have been allocated to specific neighborhoods, members will be booked next to each other within those neighborhoods, regardless of their individual desk preferences. Groups that haven't been allocated to specific neighborhoods will still be booked together, in any designated overflow neighborhoods for the office
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.
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Manual booking window: how far in advance employees can manually book desks via the floor map
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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
