Space / Space Inventory / Room Inventory - Set Up & Manage (Transactional)

Room Inventory: Set Up & Manage (Process Overview)

Note:The transaction-based space inventory method is not available in Archibus SaaS deployments.

In this process you represent your facility's rooms with a room list or floor plan drawing, and you associate each room with its purpose and the department using it. Once your basic rooms are developed, you can use the workspace transactions to document shared rooms, rooms that are occupied on a temporary basis, and how room attributes change over time.

You can document your rooms using one of the following methods:

• If you require only a room list (an alphanumeric listing of your rooms), you can simply enter the room data by completing Web Central forms. With this method, you can develop basic room inventory information and manually enter your area data.
• If you want a CAD-based room inventory, you can have a CAD Specialist develop floor plan drawings and add room polylines to the CAD drawings. The CAD Specialist will use the Archibus asset symbol features to connect these graphical representations to records in the Rooms table. With this method, the area information comes from the drawing. This method also provides a graphical representation of your rooms for reporting purposes.

Typically, you will want to associate your rooms with departments. There are a few options:

1. If your site manages all department assignments through space requests, you can leave the Division Code and Department Code fields blank when creating the room. When a space request is approved and a room is assigned to a division and department, the system will complete the Division Code and Department Code fields. For more information, see Space Requests.
2. If your site is using the space request features, you may wish to complete the division and department now, and use space requests to manage changes to the original assignment.
1. If this room is used by a single department and you are not managing department assignments with space requests, complete the Division Code and Department Code fields with the department using this room.
1. If a room does not belong to any specific department and is considered to be common area, you can leave the Division Code and Department Code fields blank. These common areas can then be proportionately assessed to the department occupying rooms on the floor, within the building, or within the site by running a chargeback routine. See Space Chargeback / Designating Common Room Areas.

Note: Once you develop your room inventory, you can charge departments for the space that they use. See Chargeback Overview.

Note: This topic, and topics that link from it, document Space features that are based on workspace transactions and which were introduced beginning with Archibus V20.1. To use these features, you must enable workspace transactions.

Procedure to Develop a Room Inventory

The basic procedure is:

1. Pre-requisite: A business process owner defines the space hierarchy and organization hierarchy using the Define Locations task and the Define Organizations task.
2. Pre-requisite: A facilities or space manager gets started with a CAD-based space inventory by developing each floor's gross areas, service areas, and vertical penetration areas, which generates building performance data.
3. A space manager or facility manager defines the room standards used in your facility.
4. A space manager or facility manager defines the room categories and types used in your facility.
5. If you plan to query your floor plan drawings by highlighting rooms by their standard, category, or type, you can run the Set Hatches tasks.
6. You now develop the room inventory, using these methods:

• For a CAD-based inventory, a CAD Specialist uses the CAD environment to outline rooms on a floor plan drawing by creating room area asset symbols. This step generates a Room record for each polyline. For information on representing rooms areas in CAD drawings, see Draw Room Areas.
• A CAD specialist saves the floor plan drawing as an enterprise graphic. This step enables the floor plan drawings to be included in Web Central reports.
• For a room list only, a space manager or facility manager enters the rooms into the database using the Define Locations task. To include areas entered from this task in the area calculations, you must run the Update Room Area from Manual Area.

7. A space manager or facility manager reviews the Room records and edits rooms as necessary using the Define Locations task. Or, if the rooms exist in CAD drawings, users can edit them using the following Assign to Rooms tasks:

• Assign Categories and Types to Rooms
• Assign Room Standards to Rooms
• Assign Divisions and Departments to Rooms

8. With the basic room inventory defined, you can now document shared workspaces and document room ownership for particular time periods by Defining Workspace Transactions. Working with workspace transactions may require the following:

• Workspace Transaction Exceptions report
• Reconcile Workspace Transactions

9. A space manager or facility manager runs the Update Area Totals action which totals departmental areas and generates other statistics from the rooms and workspace transactions.
10. A facility manager or space manager reviews the room inventory reports.
11. With a room inventory now defined, you must maintain it as needs change and departments grow and contract. Others in your company, such as department managers and space managers, may be involved in requesting space, releasing space, and approving space requests.

• Since rooms can be assigned to departments, department managers can analyze the space their departments are using and can also claim and release space for their department by using the tasks of the Department Manager process.
• A space manager analyzes remaining area and other and other departmental analyses and approve space requests by running the tasks of the Space Manager process.
• In order to implement the features for department managers and space managers to claim and release space, a service desk manager must first set up the workflow and approval processes by defining service level agreements (SLAs).
• Periodically survey the facility using Archibus mobile apps to verify that real-life conditions match the electronic inventory, and update the electronic inventory as necessary. See Space Surveys and Mobile Apps (Concept).

Exporting Tasks

For your convenience, the tables that classify rooms (Room Categories, Room Types, and Room Standards) as well as the Workspace Transactions table are listed on the Navigator with tasks convenient for exporting to Excel or Word, or for using the Archibus Data Transfer feature.

See Also

Comparing Room Lists and Room Plans

Including Both Groups and Rooms in a Space Inventory

Open Plans and Workstations