Inside Robin: Space management for the modern office

[00:00:00] Speaker: Hi, this is Ciara from Robin, and I want to walk you through our space management solution. There was once a time when offices were static. Everybody was assigned full-time to a desk, and meeting rooms were available for anyone anytime they needed them. But with hybrid work, things have changed. The office has gotten more chaotic and unpredictable, and you need different tools for flexible offices than for those static offices of the past.

[00:00:32] Today, I’m going to walk you through our solution, which has a goal of being incredibly easy to use, to get you up and running really quickly and make data-driven decisions for your workplace. So we’ll walk through a few workflows: getting your maps and layout going, move management and assignments, and understanding from analytics how you can make the most of your workplace.

[00:00:59] First, I’m going to talk about our map experience. Now, you see a map on screen, but a lot of the time when you’re getting set up, you will create a map from scratch. So I’m going to show you how to get a map into the system. I mentioned that you can draw a custom map yourself, but most companies will have a CAD file.

[00:01:20] So I’m going to find a CAD file and upload it to Robin, and this upload process is very quick. We process your file in five to ten seconds, and then you’ll be able to use it right away once it processes.

[00:01:38] So now I’m going to complete this import, and we’ll take you to the map editor. This is your file, and we’ll understand all of your layers, and you can choose which ones appear on the map. In this case, we have automatically hidden the stairs layer. If you have desks on here, we would also automatically hide those for you, but you could choose to add them if you like.

[00:02:08] Our WYSIWYG editor lets you add really high-fidelity, very specific, beautiful-looking desks and resources to the map, and we do that in a step a little bit later. So I’m going to just keep the walls and go to the next step.

[00:02:23] Now you can edit this map directly inline. You can do this with new maps and also your existing maps. So I can select this wall and move it. This might be really useful for flexible walls in your office, but you also might want to duplicate a floor plan and change around those walls a little bit, so you can do that.

[00:02:48] You can draw another wall from scratch, and you can edit your walls. You can move them around here on the screen. So this is really, really flexible. All right. I’m going to save this map, and now it will appear in a list of maps that I can choose from. We’ll also remember your previous maps. This is great for drafting.

[00:03:11] You can see we haven’t published it yet. So you can save drafts so that your maps are ready to go. You can design an entirely new office while it’s in progress and not have these maps show up for your employees. Now I’m going to take you to a map that already exists. This is a map that we’ve gotten up and running, and we’ve added our desks and spaces.

[00:03:40] This is really easy to do. You can see all these different desk configurations. I can drag them onto the screen and change the size of the desk pod to match your office. We can name all of the desks and add a lot of different policies here. So let me create the desk group. And now you can see all of these different policies, so you can really configure your office however you like.

[00:04:11] We also have added spaces. You can load these spaces in beforehand so that you don’t have to create them one by one. Those would appear on a list here. We don’t have any, because we’ve added all the spaces, but they would appear on a list. And here you can see and edit all of the amenities, photos for the spaces, and connected devices.

[00:04:32] You can even edit the shape. Our map automatically snaps your space to the lines of your walls, but if you wanted to customize that, you could do that as well.

[00:04:42] I’m going to undo that. One other thing I want to share is custom resources. You will see a lot more than desks and spaces. You’ll see fans, hammocks, iPads. These are all what we call a custom resource, and the goal of this is to really represent your office as it is. So not only having a realistic view of your office, but also allowing people to book these resources.

[00:05:13] Depending on various industries, you might have a shortage of, say, iPads, where you have a few that can go out, or if you work in a lab, maybe you have to reserve your microscope or your tools in advance. The possibilities are endless. Parking and lockers are popular options as well. Custom resources are a great asset to you within Robin.

[00:05:37] Now I’m going to move to assignments. The previous view was to make sure that your map is created to your liking, to really represent your office. Now we’re going to look at assignments. This is where you can create your neighborhoods. All of these different neighborhoods here are showing up on the map.

[00:05:56] You can create a new neighborhood and add all of the details here. We already have a lot, so I’m not going to do that. Then we look at assignments. I am going to add Abby to this green open desk, and it’s going to automatically add her for all of the days of the week. In some cases, you don’t want an assignment to be seven days.

[00:06:20] You have certain groups that only come in a few days a week. And so you can remove those assignments. You can assign somebody else to that day. You can also allow for reverse hoteling of that desk. There’s another booking policy called priority booking. So imagine you have a certain piece of equipment.

[00:06:42] You have these lab benches over here. You might want the scientists to have first dibs on those benches. So priority booking allows you to set a policy that only a certain group of people can reserve these resources until that day, or until a specified period of time, and then anyone can book that resource.

[00:07:04] This is really to both optimize for the right people getting the right resources, but also not letting those resources go to waste if they’re not going to use them. Let’s talk a little bit about collaborating on assignments. You’re going to see here we’re in scenario planning mode. You can create multiple drafts of the same floor, or of different floors.

[00:07:27] The goal of this is to be able to design your office and your assignments before you publish them. And a lot of the time, we have multiple stakeholders in this process. You might be a workplace admin who overall proposes a plan, but you have department owners that need to approve the specific people that go into each desk.

[00:07:54] So what we would do here is share, and I can add different admins, different people by name. I’m going to add Austin to this. He’s an editor. I could go ahead and invite him, and then we could collaborate. Once we’re done with that collaboration, we can lock the edits. What this does is allow us to share the plans with the people who are going to be impacted by the plans in advance.

[00:08:22] So let’s say we have a move that’s coming up in two weeks. We don’t want the people who are sitting in a certain seat to be surprised when they’re now at a different desk. So we can notify those users that they will receive an email, and they can see a read-only view of this map, so they have a great heads-up.

[00:08:43] And then on the day of the move or after the move happens, you can publish. Let’s go through the publishing process now. Here, you’ll also see an Export CSV. This is really useful for the movers, the people who are actually going to implement the plans on these days. They can move across multiple desks, multiple floors, and these really add up.

[00:09:08] So that is an option for you, and then you can see all of the specific details. Also, who’s going to be canceled from their desks. If there’s an existing assignment or an existing hotel reservation, we’ll go ahead and cancel those for you, but let you know that that’s going to happen. So there’s a lot of flexibility in collaborative assignments to make sure those moves are well-planned and really smooth.

[00:09:36] Finally, I’m going to talk about how Robin helps you make the best data-driven decisions. Within our analytics, you have a lot of insights. Right now, we’re looking at desk insights, specifically your office density. You can see this filtered on different buildings, so you can compare and contrast.

[00:09:57] You can also get into more detail with specific booking rates in different offices. You can also create entirely custom reports to your liking. Similar with space insights, you can see the different booking rates week by week across different buildings. You can see bookings by department and actual usage.

[00:10:22] Something I want to mention here is that we track presence in real time. This applies to desks, or even if someone doesn’t have reservations. There are many ways to check into Robin. You can use QR codes, you can set up Wi-Fi check-ins.

[00:10:48] Let’s go over to workplace presence. You can have Wi-Fi check-ins, and you can also integrate with your badge system. We connect out of the box with five or 10 of the most common badge systems, and what that does is let us know when a person swipes in that they are here at the office, regardless of their bookings.

[00:11:09] So you have really accurate insights into what is actually taking place at your office. So how does this all add up? You can export any of those insights in great detail, but one thing that I find to be really useful in space planning is the workplace occupancy calculator. This shows a really accurate view of how much space you have and how much space you actually need based on all of this data that Robin is collecting.

[00:11:42] With this calculator, you can enter your cost per square foot and how many floors or square feet you have to understand what kind of savings you could benefit from if you make these changes in your office. So if you’re planning a move, this can be really important to understanding the right size of office, so you can save money and also have a really collaborative and vibrant environment.

[00:12:10] So that covers our main space management features. Hope you enjoy. Thank you for watching.

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