Meeting rooms getting reassigned to Assignment_Type 'none'

MollyE

I am having an issue in the Space Planner app where all of our conference rooms, which are given 'meeting room' for the ASSIGNMENT_TYPE in our root data (which the map for the Space Planner was made from) keep getting changed to 'none' (Office (unoccupied)) any time I merge. I have tried merging our default data (which is correct) to the current plan, but it does not change the assignment type. I have tried calculating the assignment_type field in the current plan WFL, which will show the correct data in the Space Planner until I have to merge the data, then both sets of data become incorrect, even though they were BOTH correct before the merge, and no changes were made within the Space Planner app.

These images show the Space Planner app, the Units table for the plan's WFL, and the Units table for the Root data WFL. The first image is before I merge, the second is after I merge current plan into default plan without making any changes in the plan. Note that "None" and "Office (unoccupied)" are both domain code 'none'.

Before Merging:

After Merging (current plan into default plan):

If I start with the data correct for both layers (assignment type set to 'meeting room') and then merge the default plan into the current plan, the root data will stay correct but the plan data will change and the Assignment_Type changes to 'none', as shown below.

After Merging (default plan into current plan):

I do not have Workspace Areas enabled in the Space Planner, but we (hopefully) will use that functionality in the future and I would like still like the meeting rooms to be attributed and symbolized correctly in the mean time. Even though I haven't had this issue with the units assigned as Hotels or Hot Desks, I have tried enabling Workspaces and that did not change anything. Is this a bug or is there something incorrect about how I am managing this? Has anyone else run into an issue like this?

AaronKoelker

Hi @MollyE,

I was confused by this for a while, too. What we eventually learned was that the "Meeting Room" code for Assignment Type is really only meant to be used with the Reservations layer and when the rooms are assigned to a workspace area. The Space Planner is setting them back to "none" because it sees they are not actually assigned to anything (in this case, a workspace area), and so it's trying to clean up your data for you during the merge. It doesn't look at that field as a room type attribute at all, it is only concerned with whether it is actively assigned or not to a person or workspace area. Personally, I think it should be called Assignment Status rather than Assignment Type, and the codes can be thought of as:

Default	More Like
Office	Assigned Office
None	Unassigned Office/Desk/Hotel/Meeting Room
Hot Desk	Assigned Hot Desk
Hotel	Assigned Hotel
Meeting Room	Assigned Meeting Room
Not Assignable	Not Assignable

Related (because we had similar confusion around it), the Reservation Method field only applies when using the built-in Reservations layer as well, and has no purpose if you are integrating with Office 365 for reservations.

Initially we wanted to do that same thing as you and tried to make the Assignment Type field multi-purpose and use it as an attribute field for room type, but I would recommend relying on the USE_TYPE field instead and letting the Assignment Type field be handled entirely by the Space Planner app (apart from your initial floor set-up, anyway). Trying to manually calculate any value there other than 'none' or 'not assignable' will lead to conflicts with Space Planner.

In our case, our meeting rooms are not restricted to reservation by specific teams, so we just have them all set to "not assignable" for now. In terms of symbolization—in the Space Planner app we have Units symbolized based on Assignment Type because we only wanted to highlight desk/office availability, and so the meeting rooms are just white along with all the other common areas (corridors, bathrooms, etc.). In the Viewer app, where our folks do want to see the meeting rooms more easily so they can book, we're symbolizing based on the USE_TYPE, and we have a couple of different values for meeting rooms types (conference, enclave) that are then merged together in the Map Viewer Style options as one "Meeting Room" type, so that they only show up as one listing in the legend.

Hope that helps

-Aaron

View solution in original post

AaronKoelker

Hi @MollyE,

I was confused by this for a while, too. What we eventually learned was that the "Meeting Room" code for Assignment Type is really only meant to be used with the Reservations layer and when the rooms are assigned to a workspace area. The Space Planner is setting them back to "none" because it sees they are not actually assigned to anything (in this case, a workspace area), and so it's trying to clean up your data for you during the merge. It doesn't look at that field as a room type attribute at all, it is only concerned with whether it is actively assigned or not to a person or workspace area. Personally, I think it should be called Assignment Status rather than Assignment Type, and the codes can be thought of as:

Default	More Like
Office	Assigned Office
None	Unassigned Office/Desk/Hotel/Meeting Room
Hot Desk	Assigned Hot Desk
Hotel	Assigned Hotel
Meeting Room	Assigned Meeting Room
Not Assignable	Not Assignable

Related (because we had similar confusion around it), the Reservation Method field only applies when using the built-in Reservations layer as well, and has no purpose if you are integrating with Office 365 for reservations.

Initially we wanted to do that same thing as you and tried to make the Assignment Type field multi-purpose and use it as an attribute field for room type, but I would recommend relying on the USE_TYPE field instead and letting the Assignment Type field be handled entirely by the Space Planner app (apart from your initial floor set-up, anyway). Trying to manually calculate any value there other than 'none' or 'not assignable' will lead to conflicts with Space Planner.

In our case, our meeting rooms are not restricted to reservation by specific teams, so we just have them all set to "not assignable" for now. In terms of symbolization—in the Space Planner app we have Units symbolized based on Assignment Type because we only wanted to highlight desk/office availability, and so the meeting rooms are just white along with all the other common areas (corridors, bathrooms, etc.). In the Viewer app, where our folks do want to see the meeting rooms more easily so they can book, we're symbolizing based on the USE_TYPE, and we have a couple of different values for meeting rooms types (conference, enclave) that are then merged together in the Map Viewer Style options as one "Meeting Room" type, so that they only show up as one listing in the legend.

Hope that helps

-Aaron

MollyE

Thank you for that thorough explanation, Aaron. I was driving myself crazy with that. I will do as you recommend and just have them set as not assignable for now.

We have been hesitant to dive into the workspace areas/reservations because we've ran into so many issues just setting it up for occupant assignment and organization area allotment, but I'm starting to learn that it is because there is so much happening on the backend that isn't really explained or well documented so it is difficult to figure out how it all functions. I really appreciate your insight!