Catering & Services

Rooms Plus

Set up and manage service items for meeting rooms—and track all requests in one place! deskbird's Catering & Services feature helps you streamline office operations and ensures everything your teams need is available when and where it matters.

Catering & Services lets you define and assign items (like drinks, snacks, or services) to your meeting rooms. Employees can request these services when booking a room—and selected admins can manage all incoming requests from a dedicated dashboard.

1. Set up services in the Admin
2. Enable Catering & Services for meeting rooms
3. Book services during a meeting room reservation
4. Monitor requests via the Service Requests dashboard
5. Exporting service data
6. FAQ and known limitations

1. Set up services in the Admin

Go to Admin > Meeting rooms > Catering & services.

Here, you can:

• 👤 Add users who can access the service requests dashboard
   
• ➕ Add categories and items, like workshop material, catering or special items
• ✏️ Edit or 🗑️ delete existing categories using the pen or trash icons
• 📤 Export data (see bottom of article)

When creating or editing a category, you can configure:

• Category name
   
• Provider email (who will receive the requests, can be an external provider)
• Public notes (visible to requesters)
• Cost center code: None, Optional, or Required

• Items: Click "+ Click here to add an item" to add an item to the category. For each item, you can set:

  • Item name (required)
  • Item type: Free text, Quantity, or Selection
  • Mark as required — toggle to make the item mandatory when requesting

  Use the drag handle to reorder items, the copy icon to duplicate an item, or the trash icon to delete it. Click "Preview form" (top right of the Items panel) to see how the request form will look to employees before saving the category.

• Buffer times: Set time before/after meetings (only respected within deskbird – not synced with Outlook/Google)

2. Enable Catering & Services for meeting rooms

To activate services for specific rooms:

1. Go to Admin > Workplace > Floors & spaces
2. Select a meeting room
3. Enable the "Enable catering & services" toggle
4. Assign the appropriate Service categories to the room

This ensures employees can request services when booking this specific room.

⚠️ Note: Removing a category from a room does not automatically delete existing requests. Admins can manually choose to cancel these if necessary.

3. Book services during a meeting room reservation

When an employee books a room with services enabled:

• They will see a "Request services" option

• Clicking this opens the items configured for that category by the admin. The items shown depend on how the admin set them up, and may include:

  • Free text items (e.g. for special requests or notes)
  • Quantity items (e.g. to specify how many drinks or snacks)
  • Selection items (e.g. to choose from predefined options)

  Items marked as required by the admin must be filled in before the request can be submitted.

Bookings for meeting rooms with corresponding service requests are shown with a cup icon in the Book > Meeting rooms tab. The requester is also notified in their booking confirmation.

4. Monitor requests via the Service Requests dashboard

Users added under "Add users who can access catering and services" now see a new tab in the main menu: Requests.

This dashboard allows them to:

• View pending and past service requests
   
• Use filters like meeting room, requester, or category
   
• Click on a request to see:
  • Items requested
  • Meeting details
  • Notes
  • Cost center
  • Buffer time settings

This dashboard is read-only and helps coordinators or facility managers ensure every service is adequately prepared.

⚠️ Note: After a booking has been made, an email notification is always sent to the address defined in the Provider email when setting up the category. Providers can be external and may not have access to deskbird.

5. Exporting service data

In the Catering & services admin panel, you can export all category and item data by clicking "Export data". This is helpful for reporting or sharing with external service providers.

Your CSV export will include:

• Requester’s email
• Provider’s email
• Meeting dates and times
• Categories and items requested
• Custom entries (such as free text notes or cost centers)

6. FAQ and known limitations

• ❌ It’s currently not possible to export service requests directly from the dashboard (coming soon!)
• ❌ For recurring events, catering requests are currently not available