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The meeting Management Blog

Workplace analytics
for meeting rooms,
services and visitors

See how your meeting rooms and desks are booked, for how many people, and what your reception and service teams handle. AskCody Insights builds it from the Microsoft Exchange data your organization already creates, refreshed every week.
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Data, not gut feeling

A full calendar does not mean full rooms

Every meeting room looks busy in Outlook. Then you walk the floor and find a room for 12 holding a meeting of two, while the small rooms are booked out all week. Decisions about rooms, desks and services are too often made on a feeling or a single walk around the office.

AskCody Insights turns the bookings already in your Microsoft Exchange calendars into workplace analytics: how much of its open hours each room is booked, how many of its seats the meetings are booked for, and what your reception, catering and facilities teams deliver. You see it per location, room type and period, and you can take the raw data with you to Excel.

Bookings

How do you measure meeting room utilization in Microsoft 365?

Insights reads the meetings in your room and desk calendars in Microsoft Exchange and compares them with what each room offers: its seats and its opening hours. The Bookings dashboard shows your resources and their capacity, bookings and attendees, bookings outside opening hours, time utilization and capacity utilization.

View the numbers by resource, location, room type, purpose, or equipment and services, and filter by period, to see which rooms are in demand and which are rarely used.

See how Insights for Bookings is set up

AskCody Insights Bookings dashboard with a utilization graph per desk over twelve months, filters for period, location, room type and purpose, and a table of bookings, attendees and utilization per resource
Scheduling intent

Insights measures scheduling intent, not occupancy

Workplace data comes in two kinds, and they answer different questions.

  • Scheduling intent is what people planned: which room or desk they booked, when, for how long, for how many people, and who accepted or declined. It shows what your organization needs from its spaces, and why.
  • Occupancy is what physically happened: whether anyone was in the room, and how many. It comes from sensors, badge readers or network data, and shows that a space was used, not what it was used for.

AskCody Insights is built on scheduling intent, by design. It reads the bookings in your room and desk calendars in Microsoft Exchange, with personal data removed before processing. There are no sensors to install and no movements to track.

Occupancy alone misses the context

A sensor can tell you that a room for 12 held two people at 10:00. It cannot tell you that the meeting was booked for ten, that eight of them declined, or that every smaller room nearby was already taken. Without intent, occupancy shows the symptom but not the cause, and a decision to cut, split or add rooms rests on half the story.

Compare both for the full picture

Already collecting occupancy data? Put it next to Insights. Export the booking data to Excel or CSV and compare it with your sensor or badge data per room and period. Where the two match, your rooms work as planned. Where they differ, you see where to act: rooms booked but left empty, meetings that outgrow their room, and spaces used without a booking.

Release rooms nobody shows up for

Utilization explained

Time utilization and capacity utilization, side by side

A room can look busy all day in the calendar and still hold meetings far smaller than its seats. That is why Insights measures utilization in two ways.

  • Time utilization compares the hours a room is booked with the hours it is open.
  • Capacity utilization compares the attendees of each meeting with the seats in the room.
  • Opening hours and seat counts come from each room's setup in AskCody, so set them for every room.

Room types that match how you meet

Give each room a type, such as huddle room, video conference room, conference room or auditorium, and compare utilization across room types and locations.

History that follows your setup

Change a room's seat count, and Insights recalculates its history with the new number, so you always compare like with like.

Read about Insights room types

How AskCody Insights measures meeting room utilization. A conference room with 10 seats is open from 08:00 to 17:00. It is booked for a review from 09:00 to 10:00 with 4 people, a one-to-one from 11:00 to 12:30 with 2 people, and a client workshop from 14:00 to 16:00 with 8 people. Time utilization compares booked hours with open hours: 4.5 of 9 hours, or 50 percent. Capacity utilization compares the people in each meeting with the seats in the room: 14 of 30 seats, or 47 percent. Half the open hours are booked, but most meetings use fewer than half the seats, which across many rooms is the case for more small rooms or for combining large ones. If a room's seat count changes, Insights recalculates its history. Both numbers come from the meeting data in Microsoft Exchange.

Services

How much catering, setup and AV do your teams deliver?

Insights for Services shows every request made through AskCody, per provider: completed, canceled by the organizer or rejected by the provider, requested in the Outlook add-in or created by the team, requests over time and the most requested items, for meeting catering and facilities services alike.

Filter by period, weekday and provider across up to the last 13 months, to plan the team around busy weeks and to see where requests are often rejected.

How Insights for Services works

AskCody Insights for Services showing service requests per provider for catering and facility management in each office, split by completed and rejected, next to an overview of canceled and rejected requests
Visitors

When is your reception busiest?

Insights for Visitors shows how guests arrive with AskCody Visitor Management: registered by the host in Outlook or by the reception, pre-registered guests compared with actual check-ins, registrations per reception, and check-ins by weekday and time of day.

See your busiest days and hours, plan reception staffing around real visitor traffic, and spot the pre-registered guests who never arrive.

How Insights for Visitors works

AskCody Insights for Visitors showing check-ins per month for four receptions, guests registered in the Outlook add-in compared with the reception, and pre-registered guests compared with check-ins
Your data

What data does AskCody Insights use?

Insights is built on the meeting data your organization already creates in Microsoft Exchange, combined with the room details in AskCody. There is nothing to export from Outlook and nothing new for employees to do.

  • From Exchange: start and end times, the type of resource, and the number of attendees, internal and external, required and optional, accepted and declined.
  • From AskCody: each resource's name, location, room type, opening hours, purpose, equipment, services and capacity.
  • Only room and desk calendars are included, and personal data is removed before the data is processed.

Up to 13 months back, from day one

Insights also collects up to 13 months of Exchange data from before you started with AskCody, so you have a baseline from the first week. New data is collected every Sunday at 00:00 UTC and is ready on Monday.

Built on Microsoft Power BI

The dashboards run on Power BI Embedded, so no separate Power BI subscription is needed. Export any table to Excel or CSV and combine it with your other data. Owners and Insights Administrators have access.

How Insights collects workplace data

Henry Chace, CIO
Henry ChaceCIO

The hidden cost of a process that works

“When you come up with an internal process that works, the cost of time savings is often hidden. There was not a cost to the budget, so in terms of dollars, it seemed ‘free’. AskCody quickly showed us through various calculations and analyses with our team that this was not the case.”

Henry Chace, CIO
Henry ChaceCIO

Try it, and the time savings speak for themselves

“The pilot helped us understand just how much time we could give back to the attorneys and assistants and the price of that time... My best advice is to try it. You will see quickly that the ease of use, ease of management, and overall time savings are worth it.”

Susann Holloway, Conference Services Manager
Susann HollowayConference Services Manager

More attorneys supported, from one spot

“We’re finding that our secretaries may have been managing two or three attorneys and partners before. Now they’re managing maybe five or six. It’s only possible to manage that increased workload because they can handle everything in one spot with AskCody.”

Sondre Andersen, IT Manager
Sondre AndersenIT Manager

One platform across 150 locations

“Our vision was to tailor the entire workflow for the individual employee. We now plan everything in AskCody. It is extremely easy for the individual employee to book meetings... In this way, we make the most of all resources across our 150 locations.”

Manager of Workplace Services
Manager of Workplace Services

Catering saves one to two hours a day

“We definitely know for catering that their job has been extremely streamlined with AskCody. They were originally apprehensive because they couldn’t believe all the things they didn’t have to do anymore... They estimate that they save on average 1 to 2 hours per day with AskCody.”

Ben Ashdown, Head of Technology Support and Operations
Ben AshdownHead of Technology Support and Operations

80 percent of reception time given back

“In general, the AskCody benefit is the time savings and removing the daily frustrations around meeting planning. The biggest benefit until now is that we have saved 80 percent of the reception time, which was taken up with dealing with visitors coming and going.”

Common questions about
workplace analytics

What is workplace analytics?

Workplace analytics is data about how your office is used: how often meeting rooms and desks are booked, for how many people, and which services and visitors your teams handle. AskCody Insights builds it from your Microsoft Exchange calendars and the AskCody platform, so decisions about space, rooms and services rest on data instead of gut feeling.
How does AskCody measure meeting room utilization?

In two ways. Time utilization compares the hours a room is booked with the hours it is open: a room open from 08:00 to 17:00 and booked for 4.5 hours has a time utilization of 50%. Capacity utilization compares the attendees of each meeting with the seats in the room: three meetings with 4, 2 and 8 people in a room for 10 use 14 of 30 seats, or 47%. Both use the opening hours and capacity you set for each room in AskCody.
Does AskCody Insights show whether a booked room was actually used?

Insights measures bookings: the meetings in your Exchange calendars, their duration and their attendees. It does not use occupancy sensors. To make sure a booked room is actually used, AskCody meeting room displays can ask people to confirm the meeting when it starts, and release the room when nobody does. See how room confirmation is set up.
What is the difference between scheduling intent and occupancy data?

Scheduling intent is what people planned: the room or desk they booked, when, for how long, for how many people, and who accepted or declined. Occupancy data is what physically happened, measured by sensors, badge readers or network data. AskCody Insights is built on scheduling intent, by design, so it shows what your organization needs from its spaces and why. If you also collect occupancy data, export Insights to Excel or CSV and compare the two per room and period to see where bookings and real use differ.
Which data does AskCody Insights use?

Meeting data from Microsoft Exchange, such as start and end times, the type of resource and the number of attendees, combined with each resource's details in AskCody, such as location, room type, opening hours and capacity. Only room and desk calendars are included, and personal data is removed before the data is processed. Read how Insights collects data.
How far back can you track data?

Insights shows up to 13 months of data, including Exchange data from before you started with AskCody. Customers with Premium Services can also get a full data dump of up to 3 years through Azure Blob Storage.
How often is the data updated?

Insights collects new data once a week, on Sunday at 00:00 UTC, and the data is ready on Monday. After Insights is switched on, the first data appears once a weekend has passed.
Can I export workplace analytics data to Excel?

Yes. Set your filters, then export any table in Insights as raw data in CSV or Excel format, and combine it with your other data. See how to export Insights data.
Who can see Insights, and how is it set up?

Users with the Owner or Insights Administrator role have access. An Insights Administrator switches Insights on for your room and desk calendars in the Admin Center, under Integrations and MS Exchange Calendars, and sets opening hours on every resource. Follow the setup guide.
Do I need a Power BI license?

No. The Insights dashboards are built on Microsoft Power BI, and Power BI Embedded is built into AskCody, so no separate Power BI subscription is needed.
Is workplace analytics included in the AskCody Platform?

Yes. Workplace analytics is included in the AskCody Platform together with room and desk booking, meeting services and visitor management, from $5,149 per year. See pricing.

See workplace analytics on your own rooms

Talk to a consultant and see how Insights turns your Outlook bookings into utilization data for every room, desk, service and reception. Workplace analytics is included in the AskCody Platform, from $5,149 per year.
Talk to a consultant