Optimising hybrid workspaces with Microsoft Places

With the rise of hybrid work environments, organisations are on the lookout for innovative solutions to optimise their workspace usage. Enter Microsoft Places, an AI-powered workplace app, that’s becoming a game-changer in space management. It offers comprehensive workspace analytics on desks, rooms, and buildings.

This powerful tool helps organisations make smart decisions about their physical spaces, enhances the overall employee experience by ensuring effective workspace utilisation, and highlights operational cost savings through detailed space usage analytics.

In this blog, we'll dive into how Microsoft Places tackles the challenges of modern workspace management and the benefits it can bring to your hybrid working environments.

How Microsoft Places enhances building management

Microsoft Places can augment building management by offering deep insights into how workspaces are used. It can help you:

• Know who’s in the office and when so you can coordinate visits with your team, keep track of office day policies, and boost collaboration.

• Track employee numbers in each building on specific days, highlighting busy and quiet periods to help employees pick the best days to come in.

• Optimise office space with smart scheduling features that suggest the best times for meetings and office visits based on occupancy data.

• Gain detailed insights into how office spaces are being used, helping organisations make informed decisions about space allocation and usage patterns.

• Identify underutilised buildings, allowing organizations to consider downsizing or repurposing these spaces, leading to operational cost savings.

How can Microsoft Places optimise room usage?

When it comes to room usage, Microsoft Places provides smart insights and recommendations. It can:

• Spot trends in room utilisation, showing which rooms are the most popular and why.

• Recommend the best rooms to book based on your needs and preferences.

• Highlight features in popular rooms, like meeting room equipment or comfy seating, that make them a hit.

• Pinpoint the best times/days to book meeting rooms, making it easier to find available spaces.

• Automate the booking process, integrating with Microsoft Teams and Outlook, and sending notifications for upcoming bookings.

How can Microsoft Places optimise desk utilisation?

Microsoft Places offers smart insights and recommendations:

• Create bookable desks, ensuring employees have a workspace when they come in.

• Highlight popular desk areas and why they're a hit.

• Track desk occupancy to reveal usage patterns.

• Provide real-time data to compare intended use with actual occupancy if real-time sensors are deployed.

• Suggest desks based on preferences and past usage.

Unlocking the benefits of Microsoft Places

Microsoft Places offers different feature levels to cater to various needs, each with its own set of capabilities and licensing requirements.

Core features

This is included with your M365 subscription. It allows individual users to set their work location schedule ahead of time. This means coworkers can be informed whether you’re in the office or working from home. When sending out a Teams invite for a meeting, Microsoft Places allows invitees to choose whether to attend in person or remotely, helping you plan ahead for in-person attendees.

Premium features

Available with Teams Premium, these features enable you to book rooms and desks and allows users to check-in to these spaces. If a booked space remains unoccupied, it gets released automatically. The Quick Book feature can recommend rooms for some or all of your meetings that day. For managers and leaders, Places helps define work patterns, set office expectations, and adjust the rhythm to meet team needs.

Premium + Copilot features

Coming soon, these features will offer recommendations on the best day to come into the office based on your scheduled meetings and coworkers' plans. Additionally, Copilot will help analyse and explain trends in your space using graphs. It will compare current usage metrics against previous time periods, highlighting important changes and trends.

Conclusion

Microsoft Places is a powerful tool that is set to revolutionise how organisations manage their workspaces. From enhancing building management and optimising room usage to making desk utilisation smarter and more efficient, Microsoft Places offers a comprehensive solution for modern workspace challenges. By leveraging its core, premium, and upcoming Premium + Copilot features, businesses can make informed decisions, improve employee experiences, and achieve significant cost savings.

If your organisation is ready to transform its workspace with Microsoft Places, please reach out to your Softcat Account Manager, and they can connect you with the right resources. Alternatively, you can reach out to our Sales team by clicking here.