Product Updates Blog

We're launching some new improvements to improve your Calven visitor management experience:

• Expedited sign-in for pre-registered guests: you'll no longer need to re-enter your visitor type or host as a visitor who has already been invited
• Manual sign-out: we’ve added the ability for visitors to sign-out via the kiosk, to streamline the process and ensure you have a complete audit trail of visits
• Set visitor type order: the visitors kiosk app now has a setting to re-order the list of visitor types to put your most popular visitor types at the top and make sign-ins easier
  
• Improved security for visitor kiosk configuration changes: a pin code (located in Backoffice) is now required to change configuration settings in the kiosk app
• Automated kiosk refresh: the kiosk app will now refresh nightly at 1:00AM to apply any updated settings from Backoffice
• Visitor log filters: you'll now be able to filter the dates of your visit log to see visits across a wider range of dates at once
• Export visitor log: we've added an export button to the visitor log, allowing you to quickly export visits across a date range for your records

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Neighborhood booking order is a new setting for your Calven office - it allows you to control the order in which neighborhoods are filled when Calven auto-books desks.

Once groups with specific neighborhood allocations have been auto-booked, Calven will follow the neighborhood booking order to auto-book all groups that do not have allocations.

If you don't want to allocate space to any groups, neighborhood booking order is a great way to let Calven auto-book your office based on best fit.

To learn more, visit our knowledgebase.

We're excited to launch some new updates to help you manage space planning easier than ever before:

The group blocks table is a new view within each office that allows you more configuration around which groups are auto-booked together and where they're allocated space.

Use the blocks table to:

• Configure group hierarchy and choose whether to book sub-groups within their parent groups
• See attendance metrics such as peak weekly attendance, and space planning insights like Calven recommended size for each group
• Quickly change which neighborhoods your groups are allocated to

Learn more about group blocks in our knowledgebase or start using it in Calven today!

Introducing the Calven Presence Agent—your new, precision-engineered solution to capturing attendance data seamlessly across all your offices and coworking spaces. By addressing common challenges in attendance tracking, the Presence Agent empowers you to make informed decisions about office utilization and team dynamics.

Why Attendance Tracking Matters

Accurate attendance data is essential for understanding how your workspace is used and ensuring efficient operations. Traditional methods often fall short due to several challenges:

• Tailgating Risks: Badge systems can be compromised when employees tailgate.
• Inconsistent Access Controls: Multiple systems across locations make global integration a headache.
• Coworking Complexities: Areas where you don't have infrastructure to capture badges or WiFi are a gap in your data. The presence agent can help provide data with zero infra requirements.
• Limited Sensor Insights: Occupancy sensors indicate space usage but can’t differentiate usage by team or group.
• Resource-Intensive Integrations: Custom-built solutions are difficult and costly to maintain.

How the Calven Presence Agent Solves These Challenges

The Presence Agent is designed with a robust feature set to overcome these issues:

• Privacy-Focused:

Shares only the minimal data needed to measure attendance, ensuring employee privacy remains intact.

• Zero Infrastructure Requirements:

Utilizes a unique network fingerprinting capability to accurately identify each office or coworking space—without additional hardware or network control.

• Seamless MDM Integration:

Tailored for deployment at scale, it easily integrates with your existing mobile device management tools for effortless rollout and management.

Getting Started

1. Log in to the Backoffice administration section.

2. Navigate to Integrations → Presence Agent. Or visit the Presence Agent integration directly to explore the feature further.

For a deeper dive into setup, configuration, and advanced use cases, please check out our detailed Knowledge Base article or get our comprehensive Whitepaper by contacting your sales representative.

Elevate the accuracy and efficiency of your attendance tracking with the Calven Presence Agent—ensuring your office data is precise, actionable, and ready to drive smarter workspace decisions.

Introducing an enhanced Room Finder feature in Calven that makes it effortless for your team to locate available phone booths, huddle rooms, and meeting spaces—even at the last minute.

What’s New

• Comprehensive Availability: The updated “Find a Room” tool now displays both bookable spaces with open calendars and unbookable yet unoccupied areas such as phone booths and huddle rooms.
• Real-Time Occupancy Data: Leveraging occupancy sensors, people counters, or any device connected via our Occupancy API, the feature provides current insights into room usage.
• Advanced Filters: Quickly narrow your search by room type and amenities. Whether you need a space with a digital whiteboard or multiple screens, filtering options let you find the perfect environment.

How It Works

1. Seamless Integration:

• Ensure your occupancy sensing data is connected to Calven through our Occupancy API.
• Confirm that you are using Calven mobile app version x.xx or later.

2. Using the Feature:

• Open the Calven mobile app and tap on the menu button.
• Select Find a Room to view available spaces within your office.
• Filter results as needed to pinpoint the ideal phone booth or meeting room.

Further Information

For a complete walkthrough of the Room Finder feature and its capabilities, please refer to our detailed Room Booking Knowledge Base article.

Elevate your workspace experience with Calven’s new Room Finder, ensuring that your employees can quickly and easily locate the spaces they need, whenever they need them.

Introducing the Calven Presence Log—a robust new feature that gives workplace administrators complete transparency and control over attendance data. Designed with your needs in mind, the Presence Log consolidates detailed records from badge readers, WiFi networks, and manual uploads into one comprehensive audit trail.

Key Benefits:

• Granular Insights: Review every attendance event with full context. Each entry is accompanied by data on the source system, helping you quickly verify accuracy and resolve any questions.
• Enhanced Data Confidence: With a complete history of presence events, you can trust the integrity of your attendance data and rely on it for automation and reporting.
• Efficient Troubleshooting: The detailed log makes it easier to troubleshoot anomalies, ensuring that your system remains both reliable and compliant with workplace policies.

How to Access the Presence Log:

• For Global Admins: Log into the administration section of Backoffice.
• Direct Access: Visit the Presence Log directly.
• Additional Resources: For a deeper dive, explore our detailed Knowledge Base article.

Elevate your attendance management process with the new Presence Log in Calven Backoffice—your trusted tool for accurate and insightful data analysis.

Calven is a great source of information on how your offices operate, which helps in planning your business. Our analytics feature enables you to have detailed views of attendance information, desk usage, and more. We realize that sometimes you need to go further than the tools available in Backoffice. 

Calven’s Warehouse APIs enable you to take advantage of the data in Calven and use it across the rest of your business. Here are some of the things you can do with our new warehouse APIs:

• See detailed information on which employees are planned to be in the office and what desks are booked, historically and forward-looking
• Check the current office desk setup
• See which users are provisioned and onboarded
• See presence event details for users

To see the full details go to https://apidocs.calven.com

We’ve now added an option in our Microsoft 365 and Google Calendar integrations so that rooms will be booked as the User instead of by the service account.

Room booking in Calven allows you to find available rooms from the floor plan and book them. It’s a great way to quickly get a space when you need it.  Room bookings have been made historically by a service account, so the user didn’t have the rights to edit or cancel the meeting from their own calendar.

New functionality to 'Book as User' allows users to modify the meeting as they see fit, such as adding a video conference link, adding invitees, or moving the meeting from their own tools. 

Learn more in our Microsoft 365 or Google Rooms knowledgebase article.

We've revamped our entire Knowledgebase with a new library of articles plus an improved helpdesk ticketing system.

Access has never been easier for Administrators - look for the new Help button in the top right corner of Backoffice - or access directly via https://knowledgebase.calven.com/

As a workplace admin running shared desks, you have to handle questions from employees about desk reservations, especially when something doesn’t look right. Maybe it was a case of another administrator changing the desk booking, or the user forgot that they switched desks. 

Introducing the Activity Log within Backoffice - a powerful way to see the history of how user plans and desk bookings have changed. Every time a user’s plan or desk changes, the event is recorded and made available to administrators to review the history. It’s a great way to immediately get answers to any booking related questions (historically there’s been reliance on Calven’s Support Team to investigate on your behalf).  

Additional types of event logs will be added to this feature in future.

How is the Activity Log accessed?

• Accessible for global admins in the administration section of Backoffice
• Go there directly: https://backoffice.calven.com/activity-log 

Learn more in our knowledgebase article.

Changes have been made to Location states, allowing Administrators to easily prepare for and manage old/temporary offices.

When a location is in disabled state:

• Users can't see the location or book into it
• Administrators can see it in Backoffice and perform various actions including floorplan editing, and changing location settings and configuration options

When a location is in archived state:

• Users can't see the location or book into it
• The location will appear in Backoffice with an archived designation, and the position will change to be below other active locations; Administrators will not be able to edit floorplan or perform other changes

There are various considerations to be made prior to disabling or archiving a location - learn more in our knowledgebase article.