Support time-period (schedule-aware) allocation — persistent, distinct from Workspace Reservations

AndrewNabors — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 04:21:36 GMT

Use case: Many organizations use the same room for different people and purposes across a repeating daily schedule. A K-12 classroom is Math/Ms. Smith in Period 1 and Science/Mr. Jones in Period 3; clinics rotate exam rooms by shift; labs and shared offices rotate by block. We need the standing plan of record to capture who + what-use per time slot — not a one-off booking.

What exists today: Occupant-to-unit assignment and unit-to-organization-area allocation are single-state (one current allocation per unit). Workspace Reservations / office hoteling handle time, but as transient bookings and a separate capability tier.

Gap: There's no way to express "this unit holds several persistent, concurrent allocations across named periods/shifts" as the durable plan — so neither operations nor reporting can ask "what is the state of this space during Period 4?"

Why it matters — two K-12 scenarios:

A. Real-time safety & security. When an incident occurs on campus — lockdown, evacuation, medical, intruder — responders need to know who is where, right now. With period/shift-aware allocation, staff and responders can filter the campus to the currently active period and instantly see which rooms are occupied, by whom, and for what use — focusing efforts on occupied spaces, accounting for people, and not wasting time on rooms that are empty this period. Single-state allocation can't answer "who is in this room at 10:15 on a Tuesday."

B. Utilization vs. new construction. A principal reports the school is out of classrooms and needs additional facilities. With utilization reported by period, Facility Services can show that rooms run 98% utilized in Period 1 but only 73% in Period 4 — revealing that the real constraint is master-schedule balance, not building capacity. The resolution becomes rebalancing the bell schedule rather than a capital project.

Requested capability:

An optional time-period / slot dimension on unit allocation and occupant assignment, so one unit can hold multiple persistent allocations keyed to named periods or shifts.
Period-aware symbology, filtering, and reporting — view/allocate one period at a time, filter the live map to the active period (Scenario A), and roll up utilization by period (Scenario B).
Kept explicitly distinct from transient Workspace Reservations.

Beyond K-12: shift-based workplaces, shared clinical/exam rooms, labs, multi-tenant/time-shared space, and university room timetabling share the same repeating-schedule need — and the same two payoffs: emergency situational awareness by shift, and utilization analysis that separates a scheduling problem from a capacity problem.

idea Support time-period (schedule-aware) allocation — persistent, distinct from Workspace Reservations in ArcGIS Indoors Ideas

Support time-period (schedule-aware) allocation — persistent, distinct from Workspace Reservations