How deskbird Dock detects presence and runs booking automations

Early Beta

Once deskbird Dock is installed and your office networks and monitors are configured, everything else happens without user input. This article explains exactly what Dock does when a device connects, when a Dock-created booking starts and ends, what a desk swap changes, and how automatic check-in interacts with your office's check-in grace period — so you can predict the result instead of guessing at it.

1. What happens when a device connects
2. When a Dock-created booking starts and ends
3. Desk swaps
4. Timing and syncing
5. Grace period and auto check-in

1. What happens when a device connects

Once installed and activated — either through manual sign-in or through a managed deployment — deskbird Dock runs silently in the background. When a user's device connects to a recognized office network, the app:

1. Detects the office automatically based on the network
2. Checks the user into any existing desk and parking bookings for that day
3. Sets the user's status for that day to "Office", or to "other office" when the detected office is not their primary office

When a user's device connects to a recognized monitor while on the office network, the app additionally:

1. Transmits monitor data to detect the specific desk within the already-detected office
2. Creates a desk booking for that day if none exists
3. Swaps the existing booking to the desk where the monitor is mapped, if the booking was for a different desk

The office is always determined by the network, never by the monitor. Off-network, monitor identifiers never leave the device.

💡 Note: booking automations require the User authenticated privacy mode. Presence detection and occupancy analytics keep working in every mode. See Privacy modes and data handling.

The Dock dashboard displays the current network status and connected monitors.

2. When a Dock-created booking starts and ends

For any desk booking deskbird Dock creates:

• Start time: the moment the monitor is plugged in
• End time: the end of the user's personal booking hours. If those are not configured, the end of the office's opening hours

⚠️ Important: desk bookings created by Dock must fall within the office's opening hours. If a user plugs in a monitor before the office opens, Dock still detects the office and checks them into any existing booking, but it cannot create a new desk booking until opening time.

Dock also does not create or swap desk bookings after the office's closing time for that day has passed. Office presence is still detected.

3. Desk swaps

When a user with an existing booking plugs into a monitor mapped to a different desk, Dock moves the booking to match where they are actually sitting.

⚠️ Important: when Dock swaps a desk, the existing booking for that day is cancelled — or released early if it has already started — and a new booking is created for the desk where the monitor is mapped. This happens even if the user has already checked in, and it replaces half-day and partial-day bookings with one running from now until the end of the user's booking hours. Swaps only cover desks in the office Dock has detected, and never apply to parking.

4. Timing and syncing

Dock refreshes its copy of your office's network rules every hour and sends a presence heartbeat every 15 minutes, so a change to a network rule can take up to an hour to reach a device that is already running. Activity > Sync now applies it immediately.

Automations never fire retroactively. After an admin maps a monitor to a desk, nothing happens for detections that already took place — the user needs to trigger a fresh detection.

💡 Tip: if a change made by Dock is not visible in the deskbird web app right away, open deskbird Dock > Activity > Sync now. Dock re-checks the network and connected monitors and re-runs the automations. Then refresh the deskbird web app. Unplugging and replugging the monitor has the same effect for monitor-based automations.

5. Grace period and auto check-in

deskbird Dock's automatic check-in works together with your office's check-in grace period. The check-in deadline is the booking start time plus the grace period (15 minutes by default). If a user has not been checked in by that deadline, the desk booking is automatically released.

Two settings can move that deadline:

• If your office sets a time before which bookings are never auto-cancelled, that time wins. An 08:00 booking with a 15-minute grace period is not cancelled at 08:15 if that setting is 09:00.
• A booking created after its own start time gets the full grace period counted from the moment it was created.

Because Dock checks users in the moment their presence is detected, arriving within the grace period keeps the booking. Arriving after it means the original booking has already been released and cannot be recovered.

The example below assumes a desk booked from 09:00, with the office's grace period applied:

💡 Note: auto check-in also has an earliest time. Dock can check users in from the booking start time minus the office's maximum booking lead time. When no maximum lead time is set, auto check-in works from the start of the booking day — which is why arriving at 08:30 for a 09:00 booking works. If the office sets a maximum lead time shorter than the early arrival, the check-in is skipped.

💡 Note: only monitor detection creates a booking. Network detection on its own marks users as present but does not book a desk, so a user without a recognized monitor needs to make the booking themselves. Dock then checks them in automatically.

⚠️ Important: this table applies only when check-in is enabled for the office and for the resource type. With check-in turned off, bookings are never auto-cancelled and Dock checks nobody in, but it still sets the office status.