How To Save Time and Money With a Meeting Room Scheduler

What Is a Meeting Room Scheduler System?

Meeting room scheduling systems provide simple tools for reserving meeting rooms in an office or shared workspace. They maintain a centralized database containing information about all rooms that can be booked, including the number of available rooms, current status (free or occupied), and future availability slots. Meeting room schedulers bring structure to the workplace by facilitating the booking process.

By keeping a real-time schedule of room availability, schedulers help avoid unfortunate events such as no rooms available or overlapping bookings. The software provides a shared view of all available rooms, showing whether they are in use or claimed for specific times, and is often paired with additional hardware — such as display screens placed in front of rooms showing current and future usage.

Thanks to integration with calendaring and email software, organizers and participants can see or manage details such as time and location, and send electronic invitations. Office managers can get an accurate and up-to-date view of company resource utilization at any time. Using permission settings, they can restrict access to scheduling tools to avoid confusion and ensure appropriate resource use.

In summary, meeting room schedulers provide: an overview of available meeting rooms, synchronization with employees’ calendar and email tools, the ability to book available meeting rooms and invite participants, and tools for office managers to modify user permissions. Since the average US employee attends “62 meetings per month,” improving meeting culture in organizations is essential for workplace productivity.

Meeting Room Types

Organizations continue to be incredibly information-intensive and collaborative, and the need for meeting rooms keeps growing. Different room types can be used for meetings:

The traditional conference room features a large rectangular table with at least 10 formal-looking chairs. This setup tends to create distance between participants. Such rooms work well for monthly board meetings but not for common meetings with just a few participants. Yet it’s not uncommon for 1-2 people to sit in a room suited for more than 10 people.

The huddle room (or huddle space) consists of small, private spaces that seat only a handful of people. They’re great for quick, impromptu meetings and collaborative work. Multiple small rooms are more space efficient than a few large conference rooms . Employees can choose the ones they prefer — contributing to overall job satisfaction.

The phone booth/contact pod is a small space that keeps noise out, making it ideal for phone calls and video conferencing. One can talk privately without disturbing colleagues in open-plan offices — no wonder they’re so popular .

How It Works

An efficient meeting room scheduler software helps employees easily access needed rooms while maximizing office space use. It connects the office system (such as G Suite, Microsoft Exchange, or Office 365) with a physical device (a meeting room display). The process involves:

Find a room. Meeting room displays are screens outside meeting rooms that indicate availability (often through different colors) and prevent disruptions in ongoing meetings. They can also show the duration of ongoing and upcoming meetings.

Check in. Avoid no-shows or “ghost meetings” (empty booked rooms where no one showed up) by enabling the check-in function. If a meeting isn’t “checked in” within a certain amount of time, the booking will be cancelled and the room will be made available.

Free up space. If a meeting ends earlier, you can release the room and free up space for others on the room display. You can also extend your booking if a meeting takes more time than expected (as long as there isn’t one booked right after).

Rely on an overview screen. Overview screens show several meeting rooms on one single screen, giving everyone an instant overview of booked rooms and saving time since they don’t have to physically search for one.

Why Should I Invest in a Meeting Room Scheduler?

When meeting frequency increases, so does competition for meeting rooms. Time spent in meetings has increased around “10% every year since 2000.” With a meeting room scheduler, you can easily eliminate room hoarding and wasted meetings, and improve meeting culture.

Make Meetings Easy to Find, Book and Schedule

Arriving at your booked room that’s already being used by someone else or having people lingering outside can negatively impact productivity. Such situations lead to unhealthy competition over meeting rooms, resulting in overbooking, setting recurring meetings, and rooms booked far in advance. The solution is to reduce friction and ensure that meetings focus on collaboration, not competition.

Infinitely Customizable

Room displays help employees see room availability, search for rooms on a visual floor plan , and even book directly on the display. They can be integrated with the calendar of the existing email client — so if you book a room on your calendar, it will also show up on room displays and vice versa. Some offer a phone app to complement room displays, so users can book a room anytime, from anywhere.

Implement Quickly

New technology can feel challenging, but a meeting room scheduler is usually very easy to implement . To ensure successful digital transformation, create an implementation plan to familiarize employees with it. Have them ask questions about the new scheduling system and show them how it can improve their workday.

Focus On What Matters, Not Room Logistics

Email clients such as Outlook or Google Calendar are not designed for physical meeting bookings. An email client cannot automatically handle last-minute cancellations and no-shows; the meeting organizer must return to their computer to cancel the reservation. A scheduler bridges the gap between the digital and physical worlds, allowing employees to focus on work, not on searching for and managing rooms.

Make Decisions Based on Data, Not Just Instinct

A workplace analytics tool (included in a meeting room scheduling software package or offered as an add-on) helps identify patterns based on data such as room utilization, number of meetings per month, average meeting duration, number of attendees, and no-show rates. Such insights can help optimize existing spaces and guide future office design , taking the guesswork out of planning.

Discover More Space

Competition over meeting rooms can be a problem. Contributing factors include rooms that are available (due to no-shows) but occupied on the calendar because people forget to cancel reservations. Other factors include recurring meetings where the room reservation stays on the calendar, and double-booking in shared office spaces where employees use different calendar systems. A scheduler can help solve these issues.

How to Choose a Meeting Room Scheduler

When comparing meeting room scheduling solutions, consider key characteristics split into software and hardware:

Software

The user interface. The usability of a meeting room scheduler is very important. Check if your chosen scheduler is intuitive and whether you can see future bookings. Pay close attention to how information is displayed on screen — is it easy to understand?

The check-in feature. This is an easy way to increase room availability and avoid unused rooms. All you need is for participants to check in when they arrive. Otherwise, they lose their reservation after a certain number of minutes and another employee can book the room.

The extend/end early functions. Sometimes you need a few extra minutes to wrap up. An extend meeting feature (on room displays and the app) should let you add extra time to the booking. An end early feature should make the room available to others if you finish early.

Floor plan maps. Interactive maps of office floor plans are great for companies with many office buildings and meeting rooms, as they offer an overview of entire spaces. They can be used to find and book available meeting rooms and help visitors or employees from other offices navigate by themselves.

Hardware

Digital signage. Digital signage is a screen of any size that displays any type of content. It’s connected to a content management system or software that sends data to be displayed. A common digital signage product is the meeting room display placed outside a meeting room to indicate availability.

RFID/NFC reader. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and NFC (Near Field Communication) are two wireless technologies for user authentication — usually with cards or tags. Both work with radio signals and can be used to book meeting rooms and manage room bookings. NFC is a newer version of RFID.

Touch or traditional screen. A display without a touchscreen can only show information, but you can’t interact with it. With a touchscreen, you can book a meeting room on the spot and make changes to an existing booking. Talk about the full potential of a room management system!

Connectivity. While many room tablets are battery-powered and connect to WiFi, some room displays also support PoE (Power over Ethernet), where the network cable doubles as a power source. No more charging batteries, and the internet connection tends to be more reliable! Plus, PoE is usually faster and more secure.

Meeting rooms can be a source of workplace frustration, but it doesn’t have to be that way. With YAROOMS you can begin to make the most out of your meeting spaces. The Outlook integration makes it easy for employees to use the Microsoft suite to book rooms in seconds, and the meeting room display shows a calendar grid for all rooms — easy to see what rooms are available at a glance! You won’t have to search for times and locations and hope you find space ever again.