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Orphaned booking
What is an orphaned booking?
An orphaned booking is a reservation, catering order or visitor registration that has lost its link to the meeting it was made for. The meeting moves or is cancelled, but the order stays behind: lunch is delivered to an empty room, or a room stays blocked for a meeting that no longer exists.
Why orphaned bookings happen
They appear when the parts of a meeting live in different places: the room in one system, the catering in an email thread, the guest list with reception. They also appear when a tool lets people order before the meeting exists in Exchange, stores the booking in its own database and syncs it later. When the sync misses a change, the order is cut loose from the meeting.
What they cost
Orphaned bookings waste food, staff time and rooms, and they erode trust in the booking system. Workplace teams end up checking every order by hand, which is exactly the work the system was meant to remove.
How AskCody avoids orphaned bookings
In AskCody, the meeting invite is sent and the room is accepted by Microsoft Exchange before services or visitors are added, so every order is attached to a meeting that really exists. When the meeting moves or is cancelled in Outlook, the room, the catering order and the guest list follow it. If a catering provider's preparation deadline has already passed, the order is detached and both the organizer and the provider are told. See add-ins for Outlook.
Frequently asked questions
Is an orphaned booking the same as a no-show meeting?
No. A no-show meeting is a booking nobody attends. An orphaned booking is an order or reservation that no longer matches any meeting.
How do you find orphaned bookings?
Compare orders and registrations with the calendar. The better fix is a setup where orders are attached to the meeting in Exchange, so they cannot drift apart.
Related terms