Available for an ArcGIS organization licensed with the Indoors extension.
Managing available spaces efficiently allows organizations to reduce costs and promote productivity by allowing employees to have a flexible schedule and encouraging them to work collaboratively when needed. For example, your organization may want to allocate certain areas for shared use that employees can reserve for a few hours, like meeting rooms to collaborate with others, or a few days, like office hotels for personal use while visiting an office or for specific tasks. Indoors allows users to interactively find available rooms based on their needs and book them. Administrators can also make certain spaces unreservable meet social distancing guidelines set by the organization. For example, you can make every other unit unreservable and avoid crowding if spaces are in close proximity.
You can configure office hotels and meeting rooms based on your organization's needs and allow users to book them in the app. In Indoor Viewer or the Indoors mobile apps, users can interactively find available workspaces on the map or search for them based on time, duration, capacity, and location.
Indoor Viewer supports configuring workspace reservations using Microsoft 365 (for office hotels) or the Reservations layer in the ArcGIS Indoors Information Model (for meeting rooms or office hotels). Choose the configuration that best suits your organization's needs.
Configure using Microsoft 365
Indoors apps support integration with Microsoft 365 to configure workspace reservations. If your organization manages rooms through resource mailboxes and allows users to book rooms using apps like Microsoft Outlook, then you can provide them with the ability to book rooms using the Indoors web and mobile apps. The Indoors apps also integrate with the calendar so that when a booking request is confirmed, an event is added to the calendar and the room location can be visualized in the indoor map.
Note:
Only integration with Microsoft 365 is supported. Microsoft Exchange Server is not supported.
Configuring reservations using Microsoft 365 is only supported for office hotels in Viewer. You can configure them by adding the resource mailbox email address to your indoor data.
Configure using the Reservations layer in Indoors
Indoors apps support managing reservations in a Reservations layer in your Viewer web map.
Note:
You can configure workspace reservations using the Reservations layer at ArcGIS Online 9.3 and later. This capability will be available at Enterprise 10.9.1 and later.
This method provides the following benefits:
- Visualize room availability on the map by creating color-coded symbology for the Reservations layer
- Perform analytics on reservation data to make informed space management decisions
- Check-in and check-out of office hotels for real-time status of reservations
- Remove dependency on external systems for managing reservations
- Integrate with third-party calendar apps such as Apple, Outlook, and Google
The Reservations feature layer can also be added to maps other than your Indoors map and shared with groups in an organization for use in apps such as ArcGIS Dashboards.
To configure workspace reservations using the Reservations layer, you need to first create and configure the hosted feature layer.
Create layer
The Reservations layer is a feature layer that needs to be included in your indoor map and shared with your ArcGIS organization members. There are a few settings required on the Reservations layer to enable users to book workspaces.
Note:
The Reservations feature class is created by the Create Indoors Database tool at ArcGIS Pro 2.9and later.
Complete the following steps to create the Reservations layer:
- Download the Reservations layer by completing the following:
- Open the item details page for the Reservations layer.
- Click Download.
- Click Save to save the zip (.zip) file.
The zip file contains a file geodatabase with the Reservations feature class.
Tip:
The following steps demonstrate how to create a web feature layer directly from the zip file. Alternatively, you can extract and copy it to your Indoors geodatabase and share it as a web feature layer from ArcGIS Pro. If you are using an enterprise geodatabase to manage your data, the Reservations feature class does not need to be versioned.
- Sign in to your ArcGIS organization with an administrator account or an account that has privileges associated with the Publisher role.
- Click Contents, click My Contents tab, and click the New item button.
- Add or drag the downloaded zip file to the New item panel.
- Choose File geodatabase from the Item type drop-down list.
- Click Add and create a hosted feature layer.
- Click Next.
You can name the layer Reservations or specify a different name.
- Click Save.
A hosted feature layer is created.
Share layer
The Reservations layer must be shared with organization users who need to use the workspace reservation capability in the Indoors apps. Once the Reservations layer is shared to your organization, users can get the latest room availability and book workspaces. Complete the following steps to share the layer:
- Click My Contents and click the hosted feature layer.
- Click the Share button and choose an option.
Organization
Share the layer with all members of your organization
Edit Group Sharing
Add the groups that should have access to the layer
- Click Save.
Editing settings
The Indoors apps require editing capabilities set on the Reservations layer to create or update features associated to the reservation made by users. Complete the following steps to set the required editing settings for the layer:
- Click My Contents and click the hosted feature layer.
- Click the Settings tab.
- In the Feature Layer (hosted) section, under Editing, check the Enable editing check box.
- In the What kind of editing is allowed? section, configure editing options as follows:
- Check the Add check box.
- Check the Delete check box.
- Check the Update check box.
- Choose the Attributes and geometry option.
- Click Save.
Security settings
ArcGIS provides advanced editing settings for feature layers to keep track of edits, protect the data from unwanted changes, and prevent users from accidentally editing features that they did not create. Complete the following steps for added security:
- Click My Contents and click the hosted feature layer.
- Click the Settings tab.
- In the Feature Layer (hosted) section, under Editing, configure the following:
- Check the Keep track of created and updated features check box.
- Check the Keep track of who created and last updated features check box.
- For the What features can editors edit? option, choose Editors can only edit their own features (requires tracking).
Tip:
Check the Prevent this item from being accidentally deleted check box in the Delete Protection section for added protection.
You can now add this layer to your indoor map to enable workspace reservations and manage them in the Indoors apps.
Note:
The Reservations layer must be sourced from the same web layer in the web map for the Viewer app and mobile map package for the Indoors mobile apps so they access the same underlying data and can show up-to-date booking and occupancy information in all apps simultaneously.
Time settings
You can optionally configure time properties for the Reservations layer. Making it a temporal layer allows you to visualize reservations over time.
The Viewer app supports displaying the time-enabled Reservations layer in real time. If the meeting rooms list is open and you have a duration filter set for a future date and time, the Viewer app will display the reservations during the specified duration. This allows you to visualize meeting room availability and find rooms that are available to book.
Complete the following to configure time properties for the Reservations layer:
- Click My Contents and click the hosted feature layer.
- In the Layers section, click the Reservations polygon layer.
- Click the Edit icon under Time Settings.
The Time Settings window opens.
- Check the Enable time check box.
- Choose the time ranges with a start and end time option and set the Start time field to Start Time and the End time field to End Time.
- Click OK.
The Reservations layer is now time enabled. In the Map Viewer, set the Reservations layer to refresh periodically so that it displays up-to-date information in the app.