Space / Space Inventory (Transactional)

Sharing Rooms with Workspace Transactions

In today's environment on telecommuting with workers only in their offices part time, many sites have employees share offices. These sites may want to extend their room inventory to specify how rooms are shared by multiple departments or employees by working with workspace transactions.

A room's space can be shared as a percentage of physical space used, a percentage of time that a room is used, or as both a space percentage and time percentage. For example:

• Space percentage: Multiple departments share a room’s physical area; for example, three departments each occupy 33.3 percent of the room's area.
• Space and time percentages: Multiple departments can share a room over time. For example, for the past year, three departments used a room; each department used 100 percent of the room's area for four months.
• Space and time percentages: Multiple departments can use a portion of the room for a portion of the year. For example, for six months, three departments evenly split the room area and for the next six months, two departments evenly split the room area.

The above examples all depict a room evenly split between multiple departments; however, you can record any percentage that represents the portion that a department used. For example, three departments could use a room such that one department uses 50 percent of the room, and the other two use 25 percent each.

Once you set the percentages, you can run the Update Area Totals task for a specific date range. The system will then generate the allocated room area for each instance of space use. See Allocated Room Area (Concept).

Space Percentage Example

One option is to share a room according to the space that you physically use. For example, suppose that Room 110 is an office in which half of its space is used by the Finance department and the other half is used by the Administrative department. One way to handle this scenario is to draw two polylines, exactly the same size, which divide the total office area in two. You can then identify one polyline as 110-A and the other as 110-B.

Alternatively, with Workspace Transactions, you can outline the room with a single polyline, the way it appears on the floor plan. Then, in the Workspace Transactions table, you can create two records for room 110; one for the Finance department and one for the Administrative department, specifying 50% of the space for each. These two Workspace Transaction records are assigned to room 110.

In this example, you would set the Time Percentage field to 100 percent.

Time Percentage Example

The above example specified that 50 percent of the space of room 110 was used by the Finance department, and the remaining 50 percent was used by the Administrative department. Suppose that this was only true for the first quarter of the year, and that for the remainder of the year, 75% of the space was used by Finance, and 25% was used by Administration.

Use the time fields of the Workspace Transactions table to document this room's time percentages. You can either enter a time percentage or a date range during which the room is being used. If you enter a date range, when you run the Update Area Totals task, you will be prompted to specify another date range. The system will compare these two date ranges and determine a value for the Percentage of Time field.

For example, suppose your Workspace Transaction record has a value of Jan 1 to March 31, and you specify Jan 1 to December 31 as the date range for the Update Area Totals action. The system will compare these two date ranges and complete the Time Percentage field with 25 percent.

Attribute Values for Workspace Transaction Records

When the system generates Workspace Transaction records for each room, it automatically completes the Workspace Transaction record with the same Room Type, Room Category, Division, Department, Employee, and Prorate of the owning Room record. You can then edit these generated values to reflect exactly how a room is shared. For example, if a room is shared between two employees, you will create a second Workspace Transaction record that will have a different value for Employee Name, and possibly a different value for Division and Department.

However, in editing these values you must be careful not to create conflicts. For example, if a workspace transaction is assigned to a department, it should not have a Prorate value that indicates it is shared. Similarly, all workspace transactions should be designated either as common area or belonging to a department.

You can run the Workspace Transaction Exception report to find conflicts such as these.