Desk Sharing - 2026 Pricing, Features, Reviews & Alternatives

Summary and Relevance for Covid-19

Desk Sharing is a solution for desk reservations. It has become more and more relevant during the Covid-19 pandemic with its regulations like safety distances. Office administrators can comply with latest policies by increasing or decreasing the number of available desks.

Some companies expanded during the pandemic, hiring home office workers. The new workers didn’t get a dedicated desk and there is simply not enough space for everybody. Plus, everybody says: “Home office is here to stay”. Why bother about creating more office space? Just make sure to avoid overbooking on popular days and monitor desk utilization.

Another case for many companies around the globe is: 2020-2021 did not go as planned. If you need to downsize the office space due to cost reduction, desk sharing is the perfect solution to support hybrid work.

With the Desk Sharing solution, users easily see available desks in real time on the browser or via dedicated displays on site. The booking covers the walk-in situation for the next hours and supports those users who like to plan the next weeks from home. The latter can do convenient multi-bookings for the days they’re planning to visit the office.

The solution can be deployed based on programs like O635, Microsoft Exchange or Google Workspace (formerly GSuite). But it’s capable of running without calendar integrations.

Functionality

The main view gives a visual orientation on the floor plan including custom orientation objects like doors, walls, copy machines. This view shows red and green elements, giving the reservation status of desks or workstations.

On each floor, customers can choose to operate big overview displays or tablets. All users can access the floor plans also on their PCs/smartphones. Users are in the situation of asking “Which desk is free for how many hours?” or “Where is the desk I booked yesterday?”. In a walk-in booking, users can check for availability based on time slots or check the layout plan. This is a visual search for free space. Another use case supported here is: “26 of 40 desks are free but I want to sit close to my team leader whom I can see over there”. The booking is done by pressing on the desk.

The booking for future days usually works in a way that users specify the location and day. The free tables can be recognized by their green coloring. Through additional color coding, it is apparent whether a desk is occupied for the full day, booked only for the morning or for the afternoon. The bookings of the colleagues are listed with their names. Select and confirm - done. If there are special requirements for the workplace, these can be called up via additional information (e.g. two monitors or specific equipment). Pictures can also be stored. Accepted reservations are confirmed by email and include links to import calendar entries for Outlook, Google calendar or other client programs.

Advanced Upgrade Options

If one has arrived at the last meters, there are further concepts to support wayfinding or to display the status. Optional mini-displays showing the booking status on each desk - similar to a digital meeting room door sign. Some customers prefer to have one tablet display for a group of desks inside the open office. To save hardware costs for tablets, android boxes could be implemented as well. Those are connected to the existing monitors as a 2nd HDMI input source. Another option is to integrate 3rd party standalone programmable LEDs to give visibility from distance. Depending on the customer’s requirements, occupancy can be processed using sensors. The solution can be deployed within a day. In big office environments with hundreds of desks it needs a project approach to satisfy individual requirements like advanced integrations.