meeting room booking system Archives

Say Hello To Kadence Conference Room Booking For Mobile

Posted on August 16, 2022October 2, 2023 by Luke Christian-Farman

Flexible working isn’t just turning up to the office whenever it suits us. How do we know who’ll be there, or what spaces will be available before we decide to commute? What happens when plans change at the last minute or someone needs to make a conference room booking quickly for an urgent meeting? Flexible working is the vital balance of in-person, and remote collaboration, and making great choices about where, and when we best work whether pre-planned or in-the-moment. However, managing this at scale is hard, especially when it comes to knowing who will be in the office, and when.

Time wasted on commutes to the office, and booking great spaces to collaborate with your coworkers when it counts are proof that your teams need an easy solution. A solution that makes coordinating schedules with coworkers, booking spaces with the amenities you need and receiving notifications to check in to be just as accessible on the move as they are in the office.

We did it with Kadence Desk booking for mobile, now say hello to Kadence Conference Room Booking for mobile.

Schedule meetings wherever you are

With Kadence conference room booking on your mobile, you can truly feel the freedom of flexible working wherever you are. Whether you’re commuting to the office, working from home, or in your favorite coffee house, having access to coworkers’ schedules to see who’s working where that day and the ability to reserve spaces in an instant, are all readily available on your mobile. With Kadence, conference room booking on your mobile is easy. Simply see when your coworkers are available on a given day by looking at your team schedule, find an available room on the office floor map, and invite your team for a meeting from wherever you are.

Find, book, and invite guests at the last-minute

As a Personal assistant, office manager, or even Team manager, booking a conference room in advance is useful for planning, yet sometimes having to find space for a last-minute meeting your CEO has with an investor, or an urgent project that needs to get started can often make things tricky.

With Kadence conference room booking users can easily search for, find, and reserve available rooms for the specific times they need that day straight from their mobile. They can invite who they need to be there including external guests with just their email address, send meeting information, and even arrival instructions from wherever they are. Now that’s what I call convenience!

Choose your amenities to find the perfect room

When you’re wanting to book a room to deliver a presentation to your board, or you need a space for a whiteboarding session with your engineering team, it’s vital to have the right amenities available to make your meeting productive and worthwhile.

Whilst finding an available conference room is easy, finding an available conference room with all of the amenities you need during that time is even easier. On the Kadence mobile app as you make a booking, users can quickly drill down to find the perfect conference room they need by using the amenities, and room capacity filters. A fast, and no-nonsense way of booking the right room for the right purpose.

Never miss a check-in

Within the Kadence mobile app under ‘Profile’, users can choose to receive check-in reminders for their bookings. Simply hit the settings icon in the top right of your profile screen, and tap ‘Notifications’ to choose which ones you’d like to receive. From here, whenever you make a booking, you will receive a reminder to check into the room once the booking starts, and if you’re not around, then any other participant can check into the space to start the booking. Simply tap on the booking, and check in directly from the mobile app.

Conclusion

Why go through the hassle of waiting to get to the office before you know what conference rooms are available? Or wasting time on complicated room booking processes when it can all be done in under 10 seconds, and from wherever you are at the time straight from your mobile?

Kadence conference room booking for mobile makes finding a perfect room, inviting guests, and checking in so easy, that it would seem silly not to try it out for yourself for free!

How do you and your teams make conference room bookings, and invite guests in the moment or on the go?

How it works?

Kadence web app

Open your Kadence mobile app and go to ‘New booking’
Select ‘Room’ and tap ‘Participants’
From here you can choose to book the room for yourself, or your coworkers by typing their names, as well as external guests by using their email
Next, choose where you want your meeting to take place
Select the capacity size of the room you’re looking to book, as well as any amenities you may need for the room
Add an optional meeting link if you prefer
Now choose when you need your meeting to happen
Next, tap ‘Select a space’, and find any suitable space on the interactive office floor map
Tap on the room you’d like to book and add a meeting description so any participants know what the meeting is about
When you’re done, simply tap ‘book this space’ to reserve your room

Watch the video here to see how it works

Introducing Kadence conference room booking: The easiest way to book a room

Posted on July 1, 2022October 2, 2023 by Luke Christian-Farman

Meeting face-to-face in the office is powerful. It creates engagement, encourages community, and significantly boosts team productivity. That’s why conference room booking has become so important for hybrid workplaces. It motivates multiple people to come together in the same space to truly collaborate and innovate.

At Kadence we found that gathering scores of people together face-to-face can quite often be hard, frustrating, and complex. That’s why we knew we needed to build a product that made finding the right room, at the right times for everybody, and for the right purpose straightforward, fast, and easy.

So that’s what we did!

Easily find the right room with exactly what you need

When your team is looking for a conference room for a last-minute team briefing or has planned a creative workshop in advance with some of your brightest minds, there is nothing worse than wasting time trying to find the right room. Over 4 in 10 US office workers waste 60 minutes every week searching for the right spaces. That’s a lot of wasted time with an average global cost of $27.5 billion per year!

To maximize better team coordination, users can see what rooms are available within the ‘Live office’ view on the kadence web app. By hovering over each space users can see the maximum people capacity of each space as well as the amenities they have. Users can also search for the right conference room in the ‘Bookings’ menu by using the capacity and amenities filter to quickly find the most ideal room for their meeting.

No more meeting spaces going to waste

Ever been desperate to find an available space to have your team meeting, yet find yourself walking past the only available room that’s empty but shows as ‘booked’? In stating the obvious, not only is this an inconvenient and frustrating experience for your employees, but it’s also not a great use of space management.

With our conference room booking solution, you can finally say goodbye to wasted space forever! Admins can now choose to automatically release room bookings from 5 minutes up to 15 minutes from the beginning of the booking if no one has checked into their spaces.

Avoid booking conflicts

One of the biggest hindrances to employee productivity is wasting precious time rounding up your troops for a meeting and finding a suitable space for your needs. Without a system in place, your office soon falls into a chaotic free-for-all space booking nightmare which wastes time, and resources, and makes for a bad experience.

Luckily with Kadence, you can ensure you and your team are not held back or distracted by minor details. Users can see what conference rooms are available instantly on the interactive office floor map in real-time. They can also make bookings in advance and know that once their booking is locked in, it cannot be re-booked by anyone else during that time.

See it in Kadence, and in your calendar

As with most people, calendars are equally as important when it comes to scheduling, space reservations, and knowing where you have to be and when. That’s why Kadence’s integration with Google and Outlook calendars makes all the difference when it comes to booking the right conference room, and inviting your team in just a few simple clicks.

Users can book a room through their preferred calendar or the Kadence web app, and invite their teammates with zero effort. Choose an available room, add a meeting description, and add an ‘MS Teams’ or a ‘Google Meets’ meeting link so those working remotely can participate too.

Watch a quick video here to see how it works with both Google and Outlook calendars.

Analyze how your conference rooms are being used

Understanding your employee booking habits, knowing who is booked in where, and for how long, as well as seeing which spaces are more popular than others is essential to smooth space management.

To give your teams a great experience and to save exponential office space costs, Kadence Insights lets you drill down into your room’s usage by exporting booking data via CSVs. From here you see which users or teams are ‘super users’ as well as those who tend to book but not show up. You can also understand the usage of the conference rooms that are booked the least allowing you to repurpose these spaces and save utility costs.

Conclusion

Many workers are wanting to return to the office. Over 67% of these want to return for face-to-face work and collaboration which is why having a conference room booking tool is so important. The bottom line here is that ‘when you lose connections, you stop innovating,’ and one of the primary ways employees feel connected is through being together in person.

That’s why we built conference room booking into our product. We understand the true solution people need, and it’s much bigger than room booking. It’s a simple, and easy way of making coming together count.

Interested in getting started with Kadence conference room booking? Kick off your free trial today or get in touch with our team for a demo.

How easy is it for you to bring your teams together?

How it works?

Kadence web app

Open the Kadence web app and go to ‘Bookings’ in the sidebar menu
In the top right of your screen, click ‘New booking’
Under ‘Where’ click ‘Room’ and choose your building, and floor
Next, choose your minimum capacity (optional)
Choose the amenities you need (optional) and click ‘When’ to select a date and time
Next select ‘Who’ and type in the names or email addresses of those you’re inviting
When you’re done click ‘Next’ to find a room on the interactive office floor map
Click on an available room, and write a small description of what the meeting is about
After, click ‘book this space’ to reserve your room

Watch the video here to see how it works

Outlook Calendar

Open your Outlook calendar, and click ‘New event’
Add a meeting title, invite who you need to attend, and select a date and time for your booking
Select an available room, add an MS Teams link, and write a description of what the meeting is about
Hit ‘Send’ to send an invite to your colleagues

Google Calendar

Open your Google calendar, and double-click on the exact date and time you need for your booking
Add a title, a Google Meets, and choose who you want to invite to your meeting under ‘Guests’
Next click ‘Rooms’ to find an available room
Add a small description of what your meeting is about, and click ‘Save’ to send everyone an invite

Watch the video here to see how it works

5 steps to make your hybrid meetings more inclusive

Posted on May 18, 2021October 2, 2023 by Luke Christian-Farman

Long live the meeting room. At a time when remote working has become the norm and organizations are transitioning to a hybrid workplace, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the humble meeting room’s days are numbered. Not so. As workplaces evolve and teams are spread across different locations, hybrid meetings are a way to ensure collaboration and decision-making doesn’t grind to a halt.

They do, however, bring their own unique set of challenges. How do you, for example, ensure that virtual attendees at a hybrid meeting aren’t disadvantaged and left to feel like second class citizens?

Let’s take a look at what a hybrid meeting is and how you can run them as effectively as possible.

What is a hybrid meeting?

A hybrid meeting involves a mixture of in-person and remote attendees. Remote attendees join the meeting via a virtual meeting platform, such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom. In-person attendees sit together in a dedicated meeting room. Sometimes each participant will take part in the meeting using a personal device, regardless of whether they’re physically in the meeting room or not. In other instances, in-person attendees will use a central screen.

Hybrid meetings can help oil the wheels of teamwork, collaboration and decision-making in your organization, because you don’t need to interrupt meeting cadence even if some employees aren’t in the office.

In the post-Covid office, health and safety is higher up the agenda than before. Hybrid meetings are the perfect way to minimize the number of people physically present in a space. Social distancing isn’t a problem, because you can limit the number of people in the meeting room.

With a meeting room booking system, you can ensure rooms don’t get oversubscribed, have an oversight of who’s using each meeting room and get a long-range view of future bookings. The system also provides touchless check-in via an app that integrates with touchless door entry – minimizing contact with surfaces in the office.

Hybrid meetings are time-efficient and good for the planet too. Traveling into the office for one meeting is time consuming and creates unnecessary journeys. Hybrid meetings that give employees the option of remaining at home eliminate that commute time and reduce carbon footprint.

Combined space: Connecting face-to-face teams with remote employees

To make the most of hybrid meetings, you may need to make some upgrades to your meeting spaces and the way you manage them. The modern meeting room will rely on technology more than a traditional meeting space. Sound, video and connectivity are all important.

In terms of sound, ceiling- or desk-mounted microphones that aren’t sensitive to background noise, and that can distinguish who is speaking, will ensure remote attendees don’t miss out on conversation.

For remote attendees, a laptop will typically be their window into the meeting room. In-person attendees will either use a tabletop screen that combines video and audio, or a central video conference screen. Each person in the meeting should feel like they have equal opportunity to engage with the discussion and contribute their ideas. Your technology will need to accommodate screen sharing so that every attendee can see the meeting content and contribute to a virtual whiteboard or equivalent.

Meeting room scheduling

In-room technology is only half the picture; meeting room scheduling software also plays a central role.

In a hybrid workplace, people aren’t in the office Monday to Friday, nine to five. There’s less opportunity for impromptu office chats, so you need to be more disciplined in meeting scheduling. Optimizing meeting room configuration is also important because you’re more reliant on meeting spaces working well.

A meeting room booking system allows your employees to plan their hybrid meeting schedule in advance. It will also give office managers and space planners the power to manage meeting spaces, coordinate cleaning schedules, avoid overcrowding and identify pinch points in demand.

The usage data a meeting room booking system gives you will show you whether you’ve got enough meeting spaces in your workplace, and whether they’re the right size and spec for the people using them. The requirement to check in means you’ll also be able to see where rooms are booked but not used. You can release unused spaces back into the availability pool, eliminating the problem of reserved but unused rooms.

Smart room booking systems include extra features that enhance the employees’ experience, such as auto-syncing with Microsoft and Google calendars, and suggesting the most appropriate spaces and amenities for a meeting based on requirements.

How do you run an inclusive hybrid meeting?

Hybrid meetings can present a unique set of challenges. We’ve all been in meetings that get dominated by one voice. One opinion prevails, other attendees disengage, and the organization as a whole suffers. In a hybrid meeting, remote attendees can feel left out, and it’s harder to pick up social cues when you’re sitting in front of a laptop screen.

The hands-on elements of a meeting can exclude remote attendees too. Writing ideas on Post-it notes or sharing a plate of cookies around the room can unwittingly create a sense of inequality. And finally, surprising to nobody, tech issues can kill a meeting before it’s even started – and it’s usually the remote attendees who will suffer.

So here are five tips to help you run hybrid meetings that work for everybody, whether they’re sitting at their kitchen table or in your office’s AV equipped modern meeting room.

1. Asynchronous communication can mean a meeting isn’t always the answer

First off, consider whether a meeting is the best way to fulfil your communication needs.

When offices shifted to remote working in 2020, many of us were tempted to stack up meetings to ensure communication lines between colleagues stayed open. As we’ve got better at remote work, smart organizations have realized that many of those meetings aren’t required.

Communication tools such as Slack mean co-workers can communicate with each other easily and move things on without holding a meeting. Asynchronous communication means an immediate reply isn’t expected in the discussion, so you can accommodate different working patterns and locations without hampering progress.

2. Plan your hybrid meetings carefully

Cutting back on the number of meetings means you can carefully plan the ones you do have. In a hybrid culture, people come into the office for a specific reason. Carefully planned meetings will ensure they can make the most of that time.

Next time you’re tempted to quickly pencil in a hybrid meeting in colleagues’ calendars, pause and take a few moments to think about:

The purpose of the meeting
The decisions you need to take
Any pre-reading you can send attendees
Which meeting room you will use, and whether it has the tech to accommodate remote attendees

That way you can make the preparations you need to ensure the meeting is productive and inclusive.

3. Consider meeting timings

As we know by now, video calls are tiring. They’re tough on the eyes, it can be hard to focus and we don’t benefit from physical interaction with other human beings.

Make sure you take all this into account when you’re planning your hybrid meetings. Try not to make them too long and schedule breaks where remote attendees can switch their screens off and get away from their laptops.

Also, be strict on meeting start time. If a meeting is late to start, in-person attendees can chat outside the room or go and grab a coffee. A remote attendee just gets to see their own face staring back at them as they wait for the host to press go.

4. Structure contributions from meeting attendees

To avoid remote attendees getting ignored, be more structured in the way you invite contributions. This can be as simple as taking the time to ask every attendee directly if they’ve got anything to add at the end of each agenda item.

5. Get everyone to use the same technology

So that the meeting doesn’t become disjointed, ask that everyone uses the available technology regardless of whether they’re in-person or remote.

For example, if you’re using a virtual Post-it note platform such as Miro, make sure everybody uses it. Try to avoid a situation where half of the attendees are scribbling on a whiteboard in the meeting room and the other half are using the virtual platform.

A final thought on the future of meetings

The meeting is a staple of office life. It plays a key role in decision making and collaboration, and its place in our workplace culture is secure. But as circumstances force the workplace to evolve, the way we approach meetings must adapt too.

Inclusivity is key, as is the right technology to support a modern meeting room. AV equipment, virtual communication tools and meeting room booking software all have an important role to play in ensuring that meetings remain effective business tools, and that they’re enjoyable, engaging and inclusive.