We’ve all been there in one way or another—the struggle to find an available space, double-booked rooms, workspaces occupied by ‘ghost’ meetings, and clunky room calendars. Fortunately, smart workplace technology comes to the rescue to make these workplace frustrations a thing of the past. The combined deployment of Cisco Room Navigator touch panels, the Cisco Scheduler app, and Cisco Spaces provides a compound workplace experience fabric to help your users remove these frictions and make the office worth the commute.
In this article, we’ve brought you six innovations from Cisco to help you streamline the room booking and hot desking experience while making the workplace journey more efficient.
1. Deploy Cisco Room Navigator in stylish carbon black
Today organizations are looking at technology that seamlessly supports their workplace interior design choices. At Cisco, we design collaboration devices that not only promote sustainability through circular design and low energy modes but also provide flexibility with color options.
We are thrilled to share that the Cisco Room Navigator touch panel will be available in a new stylish, carbon black finish starting from May 2025. The new color option is perfect to bring sleek elegance to any modern workspace decor and complements the existing first light variant of the touch device. By doing so, it allows you to equip spaces with meeting room touch controllers and scheduling displays, either mounted on the wall or used as a tabletop device, that best suit your workplace environment.
2. Automatically release unused spaces
With the most recent updates to the native Cisco Scheduler application, you can allow users to check into or out of a meeting room they previously booked with a single tap on the Room Navigator. Beyond a new, intuitive visual experience and custom branding options, the app features a native automation to increase booking efficiency by preventing wasted real estate caused by ‘ghost’ meetings.
Rooms booked but left empty are no longer a problem. You no longer need third-party sensors or cumbersome configuration to solve that, as the solution natively uses sensor data from the Cisco video device deployed to detect if the room is unoccupied within a predefined time window and automatically release it so it’s free to be used by your team – thus optimizing space usage and booking efficiency.
3. Pre-book a hot desk with Cisco Spaces
For a seamless workplace journey, employees expect to control their experience at every step of the way. Coming soon, users will be able to find and pre-book a hot desking space using Cisco Spaces–either through the Cisco Spaces mobile app or the Cisco Spaces 3D interactive map once they arrive at the office. With Cisco Spaces, finding your desk is a breeze and allows the user to confirm the booking on the Cisco desk video collaboration device or the Cisco desk phone, such as the new Cisco Desk Phone 9800 Series.
The combination of Cisco devices and Cisco Spaces removes the stress of employees wondering if hot desks are available in the area they want to sit and provides a personalized space and collaboration capabilities in one device. IT doesn’t need to buy and piece together multiple devices to do this.
4. Book a meeting room in advance
Cisco Scheduler can also remove friction through advanced booking functionality throughout the day. Your employees may want to book a room on the go but there are occasions where the need is to reserve the space ahead of time. Available now, Cisco Scheduler allows you to book a meeting room ahead by displaying available slots and providing the option to schedule meetings in advance for designated time intervals.
5. Check into an ad-hoc space
But not all your meeting rooms may be bookable spaces. Focus rooms and quiet rooms are mostly ad-hoc, shared workspaces for focused work or spontaneous collaboration that your team can use without ahead booking required for more convenience and a more efficient use of the environment. Using the Cisco Room Navigator, you can now run the Cisco Scheduler for ad-hoc rooms, even spaces with a device configured for hot desking, without Webex calendar setup required–allowing your team to reserve these spaces for impromptu collaboration.
6. Run the Microsoft Teams panel experience
In case you have standardized on other workplace apps, Room Navigator has been offering an open approach to integration to support your go-to workplace apps. In addition to the Microsoft Teams Rooms Console app for meeting controls, late last year the Room Navigator obtained certification for the native Microsoft Teams panel experience as well to support your Microsoft Teams rooms with seamless reservation functionality.
Alternatively, you can seamlessly run the Cisco Scheduler app paired with an MTR-enabled workspace to enjoy a combination of advanced Cisco room booking outside of the space while bringing elevated Microsoft Teams conferencing in the room.
These innovations are more than just tech upgrades already enjoyed by thousands of organizations across the globe —they’re about creating a future-proofed workplace. Allowing your teams to see room availability from a distance, reserve the meeting room on the go or in advance, or pre-book a hot desk for the day, alongside automatically releasing unused spaces can help your users make the most of their time and stay productive while they’re in the office.
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