Available with the ArcGIS Indoors Spaces extension.
Meeting rooms are conference spaces that occupants can reserve for temporary use when they need to collaborate. With the Viewer app, users can access meeting room schedules and filter nearby meeting rooms based on real-time availability and capacity. This allows them to quickly find available meeting rooms based on their needs and book them. Meeting rooms can be assigned to workspace areas, which can be configured to organize the occupants and bookable spaces managed by your organization.
Viewer supports managing meeting room reservations using the Reservations layer in the ArcGIS Indoors Information Model and Microsoft 365.
The workflows below explain how to configure meeting room reservations and enable them in the Viewer app.
Prerequisites
ArcGIS Indoors includes Indoor Space Planner, which allows you to plan the activity of occupants, including assigning occupants to workspace areas with reservable meeting rooms. Meeting rooms can be booked through Indoor Viewer or the Indoors mobile app and are managed through the Reservations layer in the Indoors Information Model or through Microsoft 365.
You can also create restricted workspace areas in Space Planner to restrict bookings in an area to specific users. To book a meeting room in a restricted workspace area, an occupant must be assigned to the workspace area in Space Planner. For unrestricted workspace areas, no occupant assignment is required and anyone from your ArcGIS organization can book a meeting room in the workspace area.
Note:
If a workspace area is configured as restricted, the user signed in to Indoor Viewer or the Indoors mobile apps must have an associated email address that matches the EMAIL field value of their record in the Occupants layer to book meeting rooms in that area.
Configure meeting rooms using the Reservations layer
This workspace reservation method requires the Reservations layer to be added to the web map. Meeting room bookings are managed in the Indoors model and enable real-time visualization of meeting room availability.
Add layers
Your organization must have the web map that was prepared and shared for use in Space Planner and the editable Reservations layer.
To prepare a map for workspace areas, complete the following steps:
- Open the Indoors project in ArcGIS Pro.
- Add the shared Space Planner web map to the project.
- Open the map prepared for Indoor Viewer.
- Add or update the source for the Occupants layer in the map from the occupants feature layer that is associated with the Space Planner web map.
- Add or update the source for the Units layer from the units feature layer that is associated with the same Space Planner web map.
- Add or update the source for the Reservations layer.
This editable layer is used for managing space reservations and visualizing reservations in a map.
Note:
You must include the RECURRENCE_ID and RECURRENCE_CONFIG fields in the Reservations layer to make recurring bookings.
You can configure the Reservations layer as time aware and symbolize the available meeting rooms so they can be visually identified for booking.
- Configure the Floors property for these layers to enable the floor filter in the app.
Set the layer's LEVEL_ID field for the Floors property. You can then use the floor filter to visualize real-time occupancy of the rooms per floor for a facility in the floor-aware map.
- Add the Areas table from the feature layer that is associated with the same Space Planner web map.
- Optionally, add the Area Roles table from the feature layer that is associated with the same Space Planner web map to enable reservation managers.
Reservation managers can book and manage meeting room bookings for other people in the workspace areas for which they are configured as reservation managers.
The following is required to configure reservation managers:
- Include the Area Roles table when preparing a map for Space Planner. If the Space Planner map has already been shared to the ArcGIS organization, add the Area Roles table to the map and overwrite the existing layer that contains the Occupants and Units layers and Areas table.
- Set one or more reservation managers for workspace areas in Space Planner and merge the plan.
- Include the Area Roles table when you prepare a map for Viewer.
If you created the Reservations feature class using a previous version of ArcGIS Pro, it is recommended that you review the Indoors workspace for any potential updates to the Indoors model. You can use the Upgrade Indoors Database tool to update an Indoors workspace to the current version of the Indoors model schema available for the installed version of ArcGIS Pro, to enable additional functionality in the Indoors apps.
You do not need to update the Indoors workspace to use workspace areas if only the workspace area domains are missing.
- Save the project.
- Share the web map.
If you added the layers to an existing web map that is shared to your organization, you can save the web map without having to share it again. This allows you to preserve the web map ID, and apps configured with the existing web map will continue to work.
Enable meeting rooms in Viewer
After preparing the map to support meeting rooms with the Reservations layer and configuring workspace areas in Space Planner, you can enable meeting rooms in Viewer by completing the following steps:
- Create a web app for Indoor Viewer or configure an existing Viewer app.
- Browse to the Workspace Reservation section in the Configure App panel and turn on the Meeting Rooms toggle button.
The app automatically detects the Reservations layer in the web map and sets the Reservation method option to Reservations layer. If all prerequisites are met in the web map, the Reservations layer is automatically selected. If all prerequisites are not met in the web map, a list of missing items appears when the Reservations layer is selected.
- Optionally, check the Use a Different Name check box to specify a custom name for meeting rooms in the app.
- Choose Reservations layer for the Reservation method option.
- Optionally, check the Allow Check In check box to enable check in and check out for meeting room bookings.
- Check the check boxes to enable launching Outlook or Google calendar to add reservation reminders when booking an office hotel or meeting room.
- Click Save.
A confirmation message appears, notifying you that your configuration changes have been saved.
Configure meeting rooms using Microsoft 365
Using this workspace reservation method requires that your organization define resource mailboxes in Microsoft 365. The Indoors app sends a booking request through the Microsoft Graph API. The following permissions are required:
- Sign in and read user profile—To confirm whether a user has access to resource mailboxes
- Read user calendars—To get available times for rooms
- Full access to user calendars—To create an event for the new bookings
- Read user mailbox settings—To get mailbox settings such as time zone and locale
Depending on how your organization has set policies in Microsoft Azure, you may require administrator consent for the requested permissions before the organization starts using Indoors to book rooms. Availability of this feature may be limited if your organization restricts access to company-managed devices through Microsoft Intune.
Add layers
Your organization must have the web map that was prepared and shared for use in Space Planner and the editable Reservations layer.
To prepare a map for workspace areas, complete the following steps:
- Open the Indoors project in ArcGIS Pro.
- Add the shared Space Planner web map to the project.
- Open the map prepared for Indoor Viewer.
- Add or update the source for the Occupants layer in the map from the occupants feature layer that is associated with the Space Planner web map.
- Add or update the source for the Units layer from the units feature layer that is associated with the same Space Planner web map.
- Configure the Floors property for these layers to enable the floor filter in the app.
Set the layer's LEVEL_ID field for the Floors property. You can then use the floor filter to visualize real-time occupancy of the rooms per floor for a facility in the floor-aware map.
- Add the Areas table from the feature layer that is associated with the same Space Planner web map.
- Save the project.
- Share the web map.
If you added the layers to an existing web map that is shared to your organization, you can save the web map without having to share it again. This allows you to preserve the web map ID, and apps configured with the existing web map will continue to work.
Add email IDs
Your organization must have resource mailboxes in Microsoft 365 for each space that can be reserved so that a unique email address is associated with the space. Resource mailboxes can be room mailboxes or workspaces.
Note:
Ensure that the scheduling options, in particular the maximum duration, are set based on the requirements of your organization.
To associate units with email IDs, complete the following steps:
- Right-click the Units layer and click Attribute Table.
- Update the SCHEDULE_EMAIL field with the unique email IDs for each meeting room unit.
- Click the Edit tab.
- In the Manage Edits group, click Save.
Note:
Ensure that the USE_TYPE column has appropriate values for each meeting room unit. These values are presented as options when booking workspaces.
- Save the project.
Tip:
If you manage meeting rooms using workspace areas, meeting rooms assigned to a workspace area will be assigned a value of "Meeting Room" for the ASSIGNMENT_TYPE field.
Enable meeting rooms in Viewer
After preparing the map to support meeting rooms with Microsoft 365 and configuring workspace areas in Space Planner, you can enable meeting rooms in Viewer by completing the following steps:
- Share the web map.
- Create a web app for Indoor Viewer or configure an existing Viewer app.
- Browse to the Workspace Reservation section in the Configure App panel and turn on the Meeting rooms toggle button.
- Optionally, check the Use a Different Name check box to specify a custom name for the meeting option in Viewer.
- Choose Microsoft 365 for the Reservation method option.
If all prerequisites are not met in the web map, a list of missing items appears when Microsoft 365 is selected.
- Click Save.
A confirmation message appears, notifying you that your configuration changes have been saved.
- Register the web app as a single-page app with Microsoft Azure.
Note:
Keep the following in mind when registering a web app with Microsoft Azure:
- This is different than configuring workspace areas with mobile apps. You can use a preexisting organizational account with administrative privileges or create one to register the Viewer app URL.
- Register the Viewer app URL as the Redirect URI. The app URL has the following structure: https://<yourorganization>.maps.arcgis.com/apps/indoors/index.html.
- Ensure that implicit flow is enabled and both ID tokens and Access tokens are configured.
- Provide your client ID in the Microsoft Azure Portal Application (client) ID text box.
- If the app is a single-tenant Microsoft Office app, check the My application is single-tenant check box and provide the tenant ID in the Microsoft Azure Portal Tenant ID text box.
If you have created workspace areas using Space Planner, assigned units as meeting rooms to a workspace area, and configured your app with the Microsoft 365 method, a meeting option appears in the Viewer app for any workspace areas with meeting rooms assigned. If a custom name was specified for the meeting option, it is displayed instead. Additionally, the Book option appears in the info panel of a selected meeting room and can be used to complete the booking process.
Note:
- You need to sign in to your Microsoft 365 account in the Viewer app to book meeting rooms.
- If you're using Firefox or Safari to open the Viewer app, ensure that your browser allows pop-ups from the host site before signing in.
Book a meeting room
The meeting option appears on the quick access menu for maps that have workspace reservations configured for meeting room booking. If a custom name was configured for the meeting option, it will be displayed instead. The panel displays a list of available meeting rooms based on location and duration. You can filter the list based on workspace area, location, site, building, floor, and duration, and choose daily or weekly recurring meeting room bookings. If you have an equipment filter configured, you can filter the listed meeting rooms by available equipment. You can book any available meeting room that suits your needs.
When a meeting room associated with a workspace area that you are able to book is selected on the map, the Book option appears on the info card. Click Book to display a schedule of meetings for that room. To schedule a meeting, click an available time slot to preset the start and end times, or use the start and end time options to set the times. You can turn on the Repeat booking option to create recurring bookings.
Note:
The Indoors mobile apps enforce scheduling limits configured in Space Planner when you attempt to book a meeting room. Only meeting rooms managed inside workspace areas can have scheduling limits applied.
If meeting rooms were configured with the Reservations layer in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 or earlier by setting RESERVATION_METHOD to Reservable, the meeting rooms will continue to be bookable at 11.3 or later. If you do not want the meeting rooms to be bookable at 11.3 or later, set RESERVATION_METHOD to Null or create a restricted workspace area and assign the meeting rooms to it. The value set for RESERVATION_METHOD is not relevant for spaces assigned to workspace areas.
Note:
Indoor Viewer enforces scheduling limits configured in Space Planner when you attempt to book a meeting room. Only meeting rooms managed inside of workspace areas can have scheduling limits applied.
If meeting rooms were configured with the Reservations layer by setting RESERVATION_METHOD to Reservable, the meeting rooms will continue to be bookable. If you do not want the meeting rooms to be bookable, set RESERVATION_METHOD to Null or create a restricted workspace area and assign the meeting rooms to it. The value set for RESERVATION_METHOD is not relevant for spaces assigned to workspace areas.
If meeting rooms are configured using the Reservations layer, users that are assigned the Indoors User user type or higher in your ArcGIS organization on ArcGIS Online can book a meeting room.
If meeting rooms are configured using the Reservations layer, users that are assigned the Indoors User user type or higher in your ArcGIS organization on ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise can book a meeting room.
If meeting rooms are configured using Microsoft 365, you must sign in to your Microsoft 365 account in the Viewer app to book meeting rooms.
If meeting rooms are configured using Microsoft 365, you must sign in to your Microsoft 365 account in the Indoors mobile app to book meeting rooms.
Note:
If you are using Firefox or Safari to open the Viewer app, ensure that your browser allows pop-ups from the host site before signing in.
Book a meeting room for someone else (reservations layer)
Reservation managers can be configured in Space Planner to create and manage meeting room bookings for other occupants, including recurring bookings, when using the Reservations layer. If you are configured as a reservation manager for a workspace area, the Reserve for someone else toggle button appears in the Meeting panel to enable booking a meeting room for someone else in Indoor Viewer. If a workspace area is configured as restricted, reservation managers can only book units in the workspace area for people who are assigned to it.
If feature editing for the Reservations layer is set to Editors can only edit their own features when reservations are made by a reservation manager, the options to check in, check out, or cancel a reservation are only available to the reservation manager who made the booking.
View a meeting room booking
You can view your booked rooms on the Booked tab in the Meeting panel. You can select your reservations to open the info card, and perform various actions. Actions include editing or canceling the reservation, and adding a reminder to your preferred calendar app if meeting room booking is configured using the Reservations layer. An indicator appears for all bookings that are part of a recurring series.
Reservation managers have two views on the Booked tab. The For you button lists your own meeting room bookings and the For others button lists meeting rooms booked by you for other occupants. As a reservation manager, you can view, check in, check out, edit, or cancel meeting room bookings for yourself and other occupants.
If the map was configured for meeting rooms using Microsoft 365, the Indoors app sends a request using the Microsoft account that the user signed in with in Indoors. Users receive an automated email specifying whether the request was accepted or declined, and an event is added to their calendar. You can also remove the booking from your Google or Outlook calendar. This experience is similar to using Microsoft apps such as Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Teams when reserving rooms. You can also view, edit, and cancel the acceptance status of meeting room bookings on the Booked tab.