Tag: occupancy planning

Export historical OP assignments

Export past assignments with a click of a button , directly from the ‘Site’ within the OP module

Release Date: 26 January 2023

What is Saltmine Occupancy Planning?

Occupancy Planning (OP) is the first among the Saltmine Occupancy Planning & Management Initiative and includes the following functionality:

  • Seat Usage Types
  • Capacity Assignments & Management
  • Employee Seat Assignments
  • Seat Org Unit Allocation
  • A Robust Employee Search
  • Occupancy Audit
  • Floorplan Highlights
  • Space Attributes 
  • Reporting

OP is built for space planners & workplace strategists that are focused on optimizing their space, planning for the future of work, and providing the data needed to support strategic decisions. 

Using the as-built environment created within a Saltmine project, the new Occupancy Planning (OP) module will provide space planners with the ability to manage the day-to-day occupancy within their real estate portfolio. Leveraging the new OP functionality within Saltmine, paired with employee data from the HR integration, OP will enable space planners to manage space using the above mentioned functionalities; increasing visibility and control of data by understanding their space usage, performance, and current needs.

Accessing the Occupancy Planning (OP) Module

Saltmine’s new Occupancy Module can be accessed by licensed customers. 

Once a ‘Site’ has been created on Saltmine based on a final design/construction drawing/as built, the new Site Overview page will display the locations’ details with all of its buildings and floors.

Click on a floor to open the occupancy plan of a floorplan.

Seating Employees & Allocating Org Units

Seating Employees

There are two different ways that an employee can be seating on a floor plan.

  1. The first way is to use the ‘Search’ function within the OP editor. Simply search for the employee and click and drag the employee onto the floorplan in the desired location.
  1. The second way would be within the block room properties panel upon clicking on a specific space. Selecting the Assign Employee button will open up the search dialog box where the employee can be searched for and selected to add them to the space.

Allocating an Org Unit to the space

When an employee is assigned to a seat the org for the employee is also assigned to the space. Due to the way that space is often managed the ability to allocate an org unit to a space has also been added for when there are no employee assignments.

Selecting the Search to Allocate Org. Unit space in the block rooms panel will automatically open a search panel with a list of all of the org units added to Saltmine. Selecting the desire org unit will assign that org unit to the space. This process can be repeated for each available capacity at the seat.

Seat Usage Types & Capacity

Seat Usage Types

The ability to assign a Seat Usage Type has been added as part of the OP module. Each of the seat usage types allow flexibility in how the space is managed and how each space can be assigned. The below image shows the breakdown of each seat type currently in Saltmine.

The three seat properties are:

  1. Seat-able: Open seat that can be used as hotel/ hot desking. 
  2. Assignable: Seats that can be assigned to an employee
  3. Ratio-ed: More than 1 person can be assigned to this seat

Default Saltmine seat types are:

  1. Primary
  2. Secondary
  3. Shared
  4. Hotel Desk
  5. Reserved
  6. Hoteling

Seat Capacity

For ‘Shared’ Seat Type: Users can set the capacity within the block rooms pane. The capacity can be set to as many employees and/or org units that are sharing the space. 

For all other Seat Types (Primary, Secondary, Hotel Desk, Reserved & Hoteling): the capacity is set to one if it is seat-able and zero if it is not. 

For each capacity there is the ability to add an org or employee to the space.

Pane showcasing Shared Seat Usage Type capacity editor:

Occupancy Planning (OP) Editor Overview

OP Editor Screen Layout

The below image calls out the major functionality of the tools that are available in the OP editor.

OP Editor Block Panel

The OP editor block panel on the right hand side is where the Seat Usage Types, Capacity, Employee Seat Assignments, and Org Allocations are able to be assigned to each space in the floorplan.

OP Editor Audit Panel

The audit panel provides an org unit wide breakdown of occupancy for a building based on Headcount, Seat count, allocation status (Vacant/Allocated) and Assignment status (Assigned/ Unassigned). 

Employee Search

We now support portfolio-wide (across sites) employee location search on the platform. This feature makes it extremely convenient for our users to search for an employee’s location across the database via a single query. 

On a successful search, we guide the user to the employee’s exact location on a floor plan.

Release Notes: Saltmine v3.9 Occupancy Planning

Date: April 4th, 2022

What’s new?

Occupancy Planning (OP): Provides the day-to-day ability to manage occupancy – “butts in seats”-  on site with seat assignments and support for seat usage types leveraging employee data with HR integration. It allows users to manage seat allocation & assignments with support for occupancy audits, increasing visibility and control of data by understanding  space performance and needs.

OP  is built for occupancy planners & workplace strategists, as well as real estate professionals that are focused on optimizing their space and planning for the future of work. Occupancy planning is great for power users of the design and strategy modules. 

The introduction of OP module brings the following new key capabilities to the platform: 

Updates to Employee Location Data 

  • To enable easy and powerful employee to location mapping, customers can quickly upload their existing employee mapping to Saltmine via the Employee page or directly edit the employee location via a dialog or access the OP editor to engage more interactively with their data. 

Support for Seat Usage Types

  • We simplified  seat usage types on the platform based on a combination of parameters (seat-able, assignable and ratio-ed) to enable flexibility in updating seat usage type behavior in the long-term while providing  support for the following Seat Usage Types out of the box with this release: Primary, Secondary, Shared, Hot Desking, Hotelling, and Reserved.

Powerful Employee Search Feature

  • We now support portfolio-wide (across sites) employee location search on the platform. This feature makes search for an employee’s location across the database quick via a single query. 

Updates to Sites

  • We now support a license based access on Sites i.e only if a user has an OP license would they be able to launch the new OP editor, if not we would re-route them back their finalised project design. This means the occupancy plan can be launched directly from the Site Overview page for easy access. 

A New OP Editor!

  • We’re rolling out a new, shiny OP editor. It comes with focused features optimized to do OP with support for employee & block Room search, Highlights, Allocation & Assignment changes for Block Rooms, Group selection and much more!  

Do Everything In One Place with the New BlockRoom Panel

  • We’ve introduced a new Block Room panel to provide users a single place to update their occupancy preferences per Block Room allowing selection between Seat Usage Types, allot capacity, allocate capacity to Org Units and assign employees — all via a single interface! 

Audit Occupancy for an entire building in one place

  • To aid continuous, real-time reporting, we’ve created an easy to use occupancy audit panel which  provides an org unit wide breakdown of occupancy for a building based on Headcount, seat count, allocation status (Vacant/Allocated) and Assignment status (Assigned/ Unassigned). 

Check for Available Capacity & Org Unit Allocations

  • The Highlights feature from the navigation panel allows users to view Block-Rooms with available capacity or availability based on org unit allocation with ease.


Pre-requisites to setup OP

We’ve introduced many new exciting capabilities on the platform to support occupancy planning. Though to ensure data consistency and integrity — transitioning from project design to occupancy planning —  the user needs to fulfill the following preconditions before they start with OP on Saltmine: 

Get a new OP license! 

  • We’ve introduced a new license for Occupancy Planning on the platform. Our system admins can enable the OP license in consultation with our Sales/CS teams.  
  • HR integration is a prerequisite for the occupancy planning license to sync employee data to Saltmine for Occupancy Planning.

Block Rooms, not Blocks for OP

  • For OP, we use Block Rooms as proxies for seats/rooms as the  module is configured to work ONLY with Block Rooms and not Blocks. Each Block Room has an ID to ensure data integrity.

“Finalised” Designs, “Built” Project

  • Floor designs “Finalised” in the strategy and transitioned to “Built” project status proceeds for Occupancy Planning to ensure latest designs are used for the Occupancy Planning.. In case of any design changes, a  user can go back into projects, make edits, and then continue with Occupancy Planning.

Get the required user permissions for OP!

  • We have introduced permissions – “Edit Occupancy”, “Manage Sites” & “Edit Occupancy” to accommodate your needs on the platform.