Viewing future office hotel workspace reservations on the map (Indoor Viewer app)

[MappyIan]

I've been looking at the Workspace Reservations functionality recently, configuring our office building so that hybrid workers can book Office Hotels when they're coming in to the office.

By adding the Reservations layer to the web map used by the Indoor Viewer app it nicely displays which other hybrid workers are in the office on any given day when searching for available office hotels on specific days (pink desks in the image below are those that have been reserved already; blue desks are available).  Using a bit of custom ARCADE on the labels shows the hours that each person has booked:

This works great as users are able to see who else is planning to be in the office on a future date, where they'll be sitting and what time they expect to be there.  But this information is only visible when you go through the process of making a new booking at the point you press the Find Hotels button.

It would be really handy if it was possible to browse some sort of calendar to see which Office Hotels are booked on future days without having to go through the booking process as it's time consuming to check multiple days.

Does anyone know if there is any way of achieving this without significant customisation?  Or if anyone from ESRI is on here, do you know if there are any plans to add this functionality in the future as I feel it would be very useful?

[Jinho_Kang]

Hey there.

Suppose you're looking for a holistic view of the entire organization's hybrid office booking history and future reservations. In that case, I'm wondering if you can leverage ArcGIS Insights to bring the Reservations layer and start to analyze and visualize the date, unit location, and other attributes.

Once you load the reservation layer's attribute data through the Heat Chart, you can filter them based on year - month - week and see all the future reservation locations, staff, and times.

[MappyIan]

Hi @Jinho_Kang, thanks for getting back to me.  That's not quite what I'm after at this stage but it looks like it might be useful in the future once we have a reasonable quantity of reservations in the system.  I'm interested in a more simple solution to view future reservations.  More details on my reply to @GauravJobanputra below.

[GauravJobanputra]

Hello @MappyIan from what you have described, it looks like the Reservations layer is toggled OFF by default in the web map. Can you confirm? If yes, then simply do the following to achieve what you are looking for:

- Move the Reservation layer above the Units layer in the draw order

- Toggle the Reservations layer ON and save the web map

- Make the Reservation layer time-aware by enabling time setting

With this, anytime you open Indoor Viewer, the map will reflect the 'ongoing' reservations at that point in time and show the symbology and labels per your configuration without being in the Hotel booking experience.

Let me know how it goes.

[MappyIan]

Hi @GauravJobanputra, thanks for getting back to me.  Apologies, I've not explained my question very well.  The reservations layer is turned on and is time-aware.  Every time I open up the Indoor Viewer it shows the current reservations (i.e. the reservations that are active at that point in time), which is all good.  What I'm interested in is having the option to easily browse future reservations via some sort of calendar control or function.  It is possible to see future reservations when searching for desks on a future date, but it's clunky and time-consuming to look at multiple future days to see what the reservations are.  A nice simple time/date control on the Indoor Viewer app that allowed you to view future reservations would be a massive improvement.  Is there any way this can be achieved in the current configuration?

Thanks in advance - Ian

[GauravJobanputra]

@MappyIan as of now you can view the booking schedule of individual office hotels. It appears when you select the Book button on the info card. Your suggestion to be able to conveniently view the booked office hotels across the floor at once for a future time is noted.

[MappyIan · Accepted solution]

Thanks @GauravJobanputra, I was aware about the ability to view the reservations schedule of individual office hotels, but it's the ability to view future reservations across whole areas/floors that would be really useful.  I'm surprised it's not already in the roadmap.

I've added this to the ArcGIS Indoors Ideas channel, feel free to upvote everyone else who thinks this would be a useful addition: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-indoors-ideas/add-ability-to-easily-view-future-reservations-fo... 

[GauravJobanputra]

Thanks @MappyIan .. I've changed the status of the idea.

[Leo_GTRI]

This should be possible by adding the reservations layer again and naming it "future reservations" with an arcade function START TIME > Now? or something similar?  The problem is you are going to be looking at multiple days and lots of data that will become illegible. 

[MappyIan]

Hi @Leo_GTRI, thanks for the suggestion.  However:

The problem is you are going to be looking at multiple days and lots of data that will become illegible. 

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..this is the exact problem with that approach.  As soon as you have just a few reservations in the future it becomes impossible to tell which date/time the reservations are for without some sort of easy to use time/date control.  I'm hopeful the Indoors Team at ESRI will look at this as I can see it being really useful for everyone implementing ArcGIS Indoors.  Certainly every other workspace management system I've seen has an easy to use interface where you can look ahead to see who has reserved which workstation on future days.