Desks: Professional add-ons

Desks Professional and above

Desks Professional and Desks Enterprise add features on top of the basic setup: closures with an end date, check-in by geolocation, priority access to areas, workplace ticketing and the Public API. This guide explains what each one does and when it helps, and links to the article with the detailed instructions. At the end, you find more Professional features that fewer companies use.

1. Before you start
2. Close spaces for a set period
3. Turn on auto check-in via geolocation
4. Give teams priority access to areas
5. Connect your tools with the Public API
6. Set up workplace ticketing
7. More options
8. FAQs

1. Before you start

The steps in this guide build on an existing office setup. If you haven't created your offices, floors and areas yet, start with Desks: Basic setup.

• Plan: Desks Professional or Desks Enterprise. See Feature Availability.
• Role: you need the Global Admin role to complete every step. Office Admins can manage closures and ticketing for the offices they manage. Only Global Admins can generate API keys and create custom roles. See System roles and permissions.
• Check-in: auto check-in via geolocation only works in offices that use a check-in method. See Check-in and auto-cancellation settings.
• Developer: for the Public API, someone in your team who builds and maintains the integration.

💡 Tip: You don't need to set up everything at once. Each step stands on its own, so pick the ones that solve a problem your team has today.

2. Close spaces for a set period

Close a desk, area, floor or whole office for a defined period, for example during a renovation, a company holiday or an event. Unlike an indefinite closure, the space stays visible to users but can't be booked, and it opens again automatically after the end date. You can add several closures to the same space.

1. Go to Admin > Workplace > Floors & spaces and select the office, floor, area or resource.
2. Click Manage, then Add closure.
3. Set a Start date and an End date. Optionally, add a Reason: users see it on the closed space.
4. Click Confirm, then Save.

Future bookings in the closed period are canceled automatically, and users get an email about the cancellation if they have email notifications turned on. Bookings for the current day are kept. Closing a floor or office also closes everything on it.

⚠️ Important: Meeting rooms are not part of closures. They keep their Active/Inactive toggle, and their bookings are not canceled when the floor or office they belong to is closed.

Full instructions: Closing spaces.

3. Turn on auto check-in via geolocation

If your offices use check-in, desks and parking spots are released when nobody checks in. Auto check-in via geolocation checks users in automatically when they arrive within 200 m of the office, so people who forget to check in keep their booking. It works in the deskbird mobile app on iOS and Android.

1. Make sure the office uses Check-in with click and/or QR Codes or Check-in with QR Codes only. Auto check-in does not work with No check-in.
2. Go to Admin > Desks, parking & others: Booking settings, select the office and turn on Auto check-in via geolocation with the deskbird mobile app.
3. Ask your users to turn it on in the app under Profile > Auto check-in and to set location access for the deskbird app to Always allow. Share Enable automatic check-in with them.

Full instructions, including tips for users whose check-in doesn't trigger: Auto check-in via geolocation.

4. Give teams priority access to areas

Priority access lets selected users or groups book an area before everyone else, for example a team zone that other colleagues can still use when it isn't full. Users without priority can only book from a lead time you set (between 1 and 365 days in advance, 1 day by default), and only if spaces are still free.

1. Go to Admin > Workplace > Floors & spaces, select the floor and click the pencil icon next to the area.
2. Open the Access section and select Priority access.
3. Add the users or groups that get priority.
4. Under Allow users without priority access to book in advance, set the number of days, then save.

💡 Tip: If a user's own booking timeframe is shorter than the priority lead time, their own limit applies. For example, with a booking timeframe of 10 days and a priority lead time of 20 days, that user can book 10 days ahead.

Full instructions: Floors and spaces: Manage access.

5. Connect your tools with the Public API

The Public API lets your developers connect deskbird with the tools you already use. Common examples are BI tools such as Power BI or Looker for occupancy reports, "who's in the office today" views on your intranet, and parking check-ins triggered by badge scans.

1. Go to Admin > Company settings > API keys and click Generate key.
2. Enter a Name for the integration, select API and choose an Expiration period.
3. Click Generate key. The key appears in the list of API keys.
4. Hand the key to the person who builds the integration. Endpoints, authentication and examples are on the deskbird Developer Hub.

💡 Tip: Create one key per integration and give it a recognizable name. You can then delete a single key without breaking your other integrations. There is no limit on the number of keys.

Full instructions: Public API.

6. Set up workplace ticketing

With Ticketing, employees report workplace issues such as broken equipment, cleaning needs or safety concerns in the web or mobile app, from the floor plan or by scanning a QR code. The people you authorize follow each ticket from submission to resolution in one dashboard. Set it up per office:

1. Go to Admin > Workplace > Ticketing and select the office.
2. Under Authorized users, add the colleagues who handle tickets for this office, for example your facility manager. Global Admins and Office Admins can be assigned to tickets without this step.
3. Create at least one ticket category. Employees can't submit tickets until the office has an active category.
4. Optionally, generate QR codes and place them around the office, so employees can report an issue where they spot it.

Full instructions: Ticketing. If your IT team works in ServiceNow, connect it so tickets and their updates sync in both directions. See Ticketing: ServiceNow integration. To show employees how to report an issue, share How to submit tickets to office management.

7. More options

Desks Professional includes more features that fewer companies need. Set them up when they fit your workplace:

• Custom roles and permissions: give users extra permissions, such as managing visits or exporting analytics, without changing their system role.
• Weekday-based access rules: choose the Allowed weekdays on which a user or group can book an area, for example Engineering on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
• License plate management: require a license plate for selected parking areas and find out who a vehicle belongs to.
• Digital signage: show a live floor plan with who's in and which desks are free on a lobby or floor screen.
• Rooms overview signage: show the meeting rooms of an office and whether they are free on a shared screen.
• Hybrid work policies: create more than one policy and use approval flows, so managers approve schedules that don't follow the policy.
• Office functions: assign as many office functions, such as first aiders, as you need.
• deskbird Intelligence: see how your offices are actually used in the Overview dashboard, build Custom dashboards by asking a question in plain language, and measure real presence with deskbird Dock.
• deskbird MCP server: let an AI assistant answer questions about your deskbird workspace, with Claude or ChatGPT.

8. FAQs