19. 02. 2023 Gabriele Cecco Asset Management

An Easy Way to Manage a Shared Office

The ongoing evolution of the world of work also carries through to the areas where this work is carried out. Never before have so many people and companies finally understood that smart working is a reality, and that the productivity of employees who work partly at home rather than the office does not decrease but increases.

Just as our homes have transformed to accommodate the equipment that allows us to work from home, our offices have also been transformed.

Offices have turned more and more to the open space paradigm, and now workstations permanently assigned to individuals are increasingly transformed into shared spaces. And because they’re no longer full all the time, this allows for enormous savings in management costs (rent, heating and cooling, cleaning).

However, the transformation of office furniture and the preparation of spaces is only one of the necessary components for a shared workspace.

One component that should not be overlooked, in addition to a set of rules that allows everyone to use these spaces with serenity, is the choice of desk-booking software.

When we too needed to make this decision, we looked for software that was closest to our needs, but that at the same time would allow us to achieve a satisfactory result with very little effort.

There are many products on the market and many are certainly quite valid, but our initial choice was to search for an Add-On in the Atlassian Marketplace that would allow us to “hit the ground running”.

The Atlassian marketplace has the advantage of letting you easily install an add-on based on an already known and familiar system (Jira or Confluence), and thus be able to use an existing single-sign-on authentication mechanism. In addition, by starting from an already productive environment, the users who need to use it already have access and are familiar with it.

The Atlassian Marketplace also has another great strength: the add-on can be installed and then tried out for a month before deciding whether to pay for it.

So we jumped straight into the deep end… we installed a few add-ons and tested them out, but right away we saw that one of the ones we were testing was head and shoulders above the rest. The add-on in question is called Buuky – Desk Booking for Confluence and was designed by the company Viadee Unternehmensberatung AG.

The software is very intuitive, and allows you to load a map of the shared-space office or offices, which can be divided by location and floor. You can then achieve a clear, visual arrangement of desks and occupants as you can see here:

Whenever I need to work collaboratively with a colleague, I can see where they are sitting and then decide to find an adjacent seat for that day so that I can collaborate more effectively.

If the colleague I have to work with hasn’t yet reserved a workstation, I can grab a seat for them as well.

With just a few clicks it’s possible to book and cancel reservations, even via smartphone, either by viewing the map of the office or by choosing the seat you want from the list of available ones.

It’s also possible to book a seat using the Recurring functionality to reserve that seat for the whole week:

and you can even view the calendar of your reservations:

Finally, with an administrative user, in addition to adding any new offices with a map and workstations, it is possible to make occupancy reports and it is possible to cancel any reservations if necessary.

For now we are very satisfied with the solution and we trust that future updates will bring new features.

These Solutions are Engineered by Humans

Did you find this article interesting? Does it match your skill set? Our customers often present us with problems that need customized solutions. In fact, we’re currently hiring for roles just like this and other roles here at Würth Phoenix.

Gabriele Cecco

Gabriele Cecco

Technical Consultant at Würth Phoenix
For several years I have been managing processes with trouble ticket systems. After having worked with some of those, EriZone impressed me for its features and flexibility, so I moved with my wife from Piedmont to South Tyrol to become part of the Würth Phoenix System Integration team as Technical Consultant. I spend my free time travelling, exploring my new neighborhood, or if I have to stay at home I binge-watch tv series.

Author

Gabriele Cecco

For several years I have been managing processes with trouble ticket systems. After having worked with some of those, EriZone impressed me for its features and flexibility, so I moved with my wife from Piedmont to South Tyrol to become part of the Würth Phoenix System Integration team as Technical Consultant. I spend my free time travelling, exploring my new neighborhood, or if I have to stay at home I binge-watch tv series.

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