2013 September Release Notes

Flexible Working Support

Most of our customers are progressing from fixed to flexible seating, with staff working at higher ratios (more staff than desks) and teams having broader allocations that they share with other teams. The general progression of space management is as follows:

• Teams have fixed allocations, and people are assigned to desks. This is fairly traditional, and the implementation of the Portal is used to drive higher utilization of space by ensuring that all the desks that are allocated to a team are also assigned to occupants.
• Teams have fixed allocations, but people practice flexible seating within the team's allocation. Most of our customers have a certain percentage of their staff who are already working this way. Here, a person's individual ownership of space is broken down. In this case, the Portal is used to ensure that the allocation of people to teams meets a certain ratio (e.g. 12 people for every 10 desks) so that space is used more efficiently. The system has certain integrations that allow us to track the utilization of the team based on either Speedstiles or SVLive.
• Teams are allocated to home zones/neighborhoods that they share with other teams. This is the most flexible option that our customers are moving to. Here the concept of a team's ownership of space is being broken down and this encourages more open communication and collaboration. Once again, the Portal is used to manage the allocation of people to teams and track the ratios that they are working at. However, as the space in which the teams work is greater (and the peak utilization times of each team generally do not coincide) higher utilizations are generally achieved.

Within the VBS you can now allocate space to a Neighborhood (Hood') and then add teams to that Hood. Teams can still be mapped if desired, but there is no longer a requirement to map teams.

So, when do you use a Hood? If two or more teams are sharing the same space, create a Hood, and then move the teams into it. If your teams have their own allocations of space, there is no need to create Hoods. If the teams are working flexibly, create a team and make it flexible. Flexible teams support both fixed and flexible seating.

In addition to the Hoods feature, desks now have default working styles: A desk that is unallocated is fixed. If it is allocated to a team, it takes on the default behavior of the team (either fixed or flexible). If it is allocated to a Hood, it is flexible by default. Within a flexible team, all the desks are flexible unless someone is assigned or anchored to them and they become fixed desks. When anchors are removed, the desk reverts back to flexible. Within a Hood, if a person is assigned to a desk, the desk is also allocated to that person's team. Within a Hood, only fixed desks are allocated to teams, all flexible desks are just part of the Hood.

Revamped Reports

Reports 22, 36, 46, 78, 132 have all been revamped to use common language (which is also used within the VBS).

• Allocated/Unallocated: Either the desk is allocated to a team/hood or unallocated.
• Occupied/Unoccupied: Either the desk is occupied or not. Does the desk have someone assigned to it? Does the team have people for all their desks? Unoccupied at a desk level means there is no one assigned to it (only applies to fixed desks). Unoccupied at a team level is the number of desks that exceed the number of people.
• Utilised/Underutilized: These terms will only refer to automatic data collections from either speedstiles (for team and building metrics) or Serraview Live (for desk, person, team, floor and building metrics).

Reports 1,2,3,4,5 have been created which focus on Building, Floor, Allocation, Workpoint/Occupancy & Lockers/Storage. These highlight the key metrics that are available.

Easy Emailer

The system now supports configurable email templates in the following areas:

• BOS - sending emails to migration managers or occupants
• Teams - Portal admins
• Access Profiles - People
• Service Requests - Assignees
• Lockers - Locker owners

Sample emails have been created in all these areas which can easily be cloned to add workflow to each of these areas. The emails that can be created can include attachments and can be configured to automatically include customized reports.

Access Profiles & Administrators

Multiple administrators can now be managed for Teams. They are all fully configurable. Create as many as you need. Common administrators that our customers use are: Portal Administrators, Relocation Coordinators, Storage Administrators and Managers.  These administrators can be used to control access to the Portal, BOS and used for reporting and escalation.
Access Profiles can also be created where access is granted at a level much higher than an individual team. Over time we see that much access will be controlled at an org hierarchy and region/state/building/floor level. For example, we can quickly grant someone access to the Portal where they can update the details for all teams within Victoria that report to the Finance area.