Let somebody take a free room at the panel

A free room offers Walk in. Whoever presses it gets the room from now until the length they pick, without opening anything — and because they are standing at the door, a walk-in never needs checking into afterwards.

1. Turn the button on

Show walk in button is on the panel configuration’s Function page. It is per configuration, so it lands on every panel sharing it — see How a panel gets its settings.

Two more appear underneath it once it is on:

• Require confirmation for walk-in — a last screen where the person can name the meeting and say how many are coming. Turning it off makes the whole thing one tap plus identity.
• Allow visitor walk-in booking — lets somebody who is not a member of staff take the room, by identifying as a visitor rather than a user. Needs the Visitor management licence.

2. Decide how long a walk-in may hold the room

This is not a panel setting — it is the resource’s policy, and it is worth doing before anyone finds the button. Three rows there shape a walk-in:

• Limit the booking time length for walk-in booking — a separate, usually shorter pair of limits than the room’s normal ones.
• Disable booking approval for walk-in booking — so somebody at the door is not left waiting for an approver.
• Walk-in Only, as a booking type — the room cannot be booked in advance at all. Right for touchdown desks and phone booths.

All three are documented in Resource policy settings.

3. What the person at the door sees

Tapping Walk in opens the duration picker: a column of lengths, each showing the time it would end at, with a Duration / Time switch above them. It only ever offers what the room can actually give — the list stops at the next booking, and the row underneath says when that is.

The panel then asks who they are. What it asks for is its own subject — How somebody proves who they are at the panel — and it is also where the option of asking for nothing at all lives.

Last comes the confirmation screen, if you left Require confirmation for walk-in on. Anything not filled in here is left alone: the booking is titled Walk in booking and counted as one attendee.

Rooms that ask for terms and conditions put that screen before the identification step, and a walk-in cannot skip it.

4. Try it

Stand at a free room, tap Walk in, take fifteen minutes. The panel should go straight to in-use — no check-in step — and the booking should appear in the room’s calendar under your name, or with no organiser if you identified as nobody.

When the Walk in button is not there

Five different things remove it, and only the first is a panel setting:

• Show walk in button is off on that panel’s configuration. So is Touch screen mode, which hides every button on the panel at once.
• The resource policy has Allow booking from booking panel and signage off.
• The resource policy requires booking at least a day ahead. A room nobody may book for today cannot be walked into today.
• The next booking starts within five minutes. The button disappears rather than offering a room somebody is about to walk into.
• The room is not free. Walk in exists only in the free state; a room in use shows End now and Extend, and a room waiting for somebody shows Check in.