Book a meeting room

Booking a room in Offision is one form. It opens knowing who you are and what you are allowed to book, and it answers as you fill it in — so by the time you reach Book, the room is either yours or the form has already told you why it is not.

1. Open the booking form

On the app home, the row of quick actions across the top is where every booking starts. Choose Booking, then the kind of thing you want — Room, Desk, Equipment, Parking or Other resources.

On a phone the same door is the + button in the bar along the bottom.

The form opens titled Book a room, with the day already set to today. Nothing is reserved yet — nothing is held until you choose Book in step 8.

2. Choose your room

Open the room field — it reads Find rooms until you pick one — and search by name, or scroll the list. The filter beside the search narrows it by Location, by category, by how many people it seats, and by what is in the room; Available only hides everything already taken, Favourites only shows just the rooms you have starred, and Clear all filters puts it back. The button at the bottom counts what you are about to get before you close the filter.

Each row carries how many people the room seats, and then the conditions on it. Two are worth reading before you choose:

• Require approval — booking it sends a request rather than taking the room. Step 8 explains what that looks like.
• Require check in — somebody has to confirm they turned up, or the room is released again. See How check-in and no-show work.

Hover a mark to see which it is. The star sets a room as a favourite, so it comes back to the top of this list next time.

You can select more than one room, and add a desk, a parking space or equipment alongside the room in the same booking.

3. Set the day and time

From and To set the period; All day covers the whole working day and Time zone matters when you are booking a room in another office.

The panel down the right-hand side is the part worth watching: it is the room’s own day, with everything already on it, and your booking drawn in as you move it. Drag the block to shift the time, or drag its edge to make the meeting longer.

How much freedom that panel gives you depends on the room:

• Most rooms show the whole day and let you take any gap in it.
• Some are only bookable in fixed slots, and the panel offers those and nothing else. Those rooms need choosing first — until one is picked the panel has no slots to offer and asks you to Pick what to book.
• Others suggest times but let you overrule them: choose Custom time to set your own, and Suggested times to go back to their list.

You can also work the other way round. Leave the room empty and Offision suggests rooms under the field — the chips marked Suggestion, each of which picks that room when you choose it.

4. Say what the meeting is

Add title is what everyone else will see on the room’s schedule and on the panel outside the door, so write it for them rather than for yourself.

Turn on Private if it should not be: “Other users cannot see the details, except attendees and system admin.” The booking still shows as busy — the room is visibly taken, just not by a named subject.

Meeting notes is the agenda, and it travels with the invitation.

5. Invite the people

Search people finds colleagues, Search groups invites a whole team at once, and typing an email address invites somebody from outside. Check availability shows you who is already busy before you commit.

Two things happen automatically here:

• Invite more people than the room seats and the form warns you — “The number of attendees exceeds the room capacity”. It is a warning, not a refusal.
• Invite somebody from outside your company and a switch appears under the list — Invite external attendee as visitor. Turn it on and the same booking also books them into the building. See Invite a visitor while booking a room.

6. Answer whatever else the form asks

Below the attendees, the rest of the form is whatever your company has decided a booking needs — a cost item, a project ID, a booking purpose, Number of room users, or a catering and equipment request under Request service.

These appear only once a room is chosen, because they are attached to the room and not to the form. If you were expecting a field and cannot see it, pick the room first. Which fields exist is set by your administrator — see the Booking form reference.

7. Repeat it, if it repeats

The control at the top of the form offers three shapes, and the difference matters more than it looks:

Reach for Series when the sessions genuinely differ — a training course running in three different rooms, or dates that are not on a pattern. It books each one separately, so Book all may come back offering to skip the conflicts and book the rest — taking the dates that were free and leaving the others for you to fix.

8. Book it

Choose Book. Before you do, read the bottom of the form — it is where the answer already is.

If the room needs approving, Approval Required appears there — “Needs approval before it’s confirmed.” — and where your company has named the approvers, Reviewed by lists who will decide. You still choose Book; it sends the request. See Require approval before a room is booked.

Book stays greyed out until the form is both complete and allowed, so it being unavailable means one of two things: something required is still empty, or Offision is refusing the booking and has said why just above. The refusals you are most likely to meet:

9. Check it worked

Offision confirms with one of three messages, and they are not the same thing:

Choose OK, then find the booking on your own schedule — that is the real confirmation. Open it there to change the time, add someone, or cancel it.

When you just need a room right now

Find now beside the Booking button skips the form entirely: pick a duration, and Offision lists the rooms free for it. Each row has its own Book button, and one tap takes the room.

If nothing comes back — “No available resource found, you may change the filters to check the other time slots” — widen the filters or move the time. More options hands the same booking over to the full form, with everything you have chosen so far carried across.