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. Manage requests on the Requests page
5. Approve or reject service requests
6. Exporting service data
7. FAQs and known limitations

1. Set up services in the Admin

Go to Admin > Meeting rooms > Catering & Services and select the office at the top of the page.

Here, you can:

• 👤 Under Access, click the pen icon next to Authorized users to choose who can see and manage service requests for this office on the Requests page
• ✅ Under Approvals, turn on Enable approvals for service requests if requests should be reviewed before they are fulfilled (see Approve or reject service requests)
• ➕ 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. These values apply only when this category is requested for a booking (only respected within deskbird – not synced with Outlook/Google). See Enable Catering & Services for meeting rooms for how category buffers interact with the room's default buffer times.

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
5. Set the Default buffer times before and after meetings. Available options are 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes

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

How default buffer times work

Default buffer times block the room before and after a meeting so catering teams have dedicated time to prepare the room, deliver booked items, and make sure everything is ready before the meeting begins.

Buffer times can be set in two places, and both control the same kind of room-blocking time—only at different scopes:

• Room level (Floors & spaces): the minimum, default buffer applied to every booking in that room
• Category level (Catering & Services): applied only when that specific category is requested

If both apply, the longer value wins for each side of the meeting—the times are never added together. There is no fixed "room beats category" priority: the effective buffer is calculated independently for before and after, using the highest applicable value. The same maximum logic applies when several requested categories have different buffer times.

Example:

💡 Recommended setup: use the room-level values for the cleaning or preparation time that must always be reserved, and set category-level values only where a specific service needs more time.

⚠️ 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.

If approvals are turned on, the request is sent for approval first. The organizer receives an email confirming that the request was submitted, and another one once it is approved or rejected.

4. Manage requests on the Requests page

Authorized users and users with the Service request manager role for an office see Requests in the main menu. Open the Services tab to see the service requests for the office selected at the top of the page.

On the Services tab, you can:

• Switch between Upcoming and Completed requests
• Narrow the list with Filter and change the order with Sort: Meeting date
• See each request at a glance in the columns Date & time, Request, Room, Requested by, Buffer time and Status. Hover over the number of categories or items in the Request column to see each category, its status and the items ordered.
• Select several requests with the checkboxes to apply bulk actions to them
• Click a request to open Request details:
  • Overview: the requested categories and items, including additional notes
  • Request details: status, meeting room, date and time, who requested it and when
  • Copy link: share a direct link to the request with a colleague

The Status column and the request status only appear when approvals are turned on. Coordinators and facility managers use this page to make sure every service is prepared on time and, with approvals turned on, to approve or reject requests.

⚠️ Note: Global admins don't see service requests automatically. Only authorized users and service request managers of an office can open them; everyone else sees No access to service requests in this office. To work with requests yourself, add yourself under Access in Admin > Meeting rooms > Catering & Services.

⚠️ 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. With approvals turned on, this email is sent once the request is approved. Providers can be external and may not have access to deskbird.

5. Approve or reject service requests

With approvals turned on, new service requests stay Pending until an authorized user or a service request manager of the office reviews them. Approvals are off by default.

Turn on approvals

1. Go to Admin > Meeting rooms > Catering & Services and select the office at the top of the page.
2. Under Approvals, turn on Enable approvals for service requests.

The setting applies to all categories of the selected office. It isn't possible to require approval for some categories only. If you turn approvals off again, new requests are approved automatically, and the Requests page stays available without approval actions or statuses.

Review a request

1. Go to Requests > Services > Upcoming.
2. Click a request to open Request details.
3. In Overview, approve or reject each category with the check mark or the cross. Each category is decided on its own, so you can approve the catering and reject the equipment in the same request.
4. To decide on all pending categories at once, use Quick actions > Approve all or Reject all. Approving all asks you to confirm, and the action can't be undone.
5. When you reject a category, enter a Reason (up to 100 characters) and click Reject. The reason is shown on the request.

You can also approve or reject a request directly in the list with the check mark or the cross in the Status column.

The organizer receives an email when a request is approved or rejected.

💡 Tip: If the meeting room itself requires booking approval, the room booking must be approved first. The service request only appears for approval after that.

Request statuses

⚠️ Important: A request that isn't approved by the start of the meeting is canceled automatically, the same way as room booking approvals. If only some categories were approved by then, only the pending categories are canceled and the request shows Partially approved.

6. 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)

7. FAQs 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