Archibus: From Space Inventory to Action

MIKE ZIMMER: Hello there. My name is Mike Zimmer and I'm a senior solutions engineer in the Archibus Solution for the SpaceIQ organization. Today we're going to be taking a look at how organizations leverage the AutoCAD tool in order to create and maintain their space inventory. Additionally, we'll also be looking at how they can then leverage the Archibus for AutoCAD extension in order to take the information that's residing within AutoCAD and translate and/or publish it over into the Archibus solution.

And then finally we'll explore how organizations leverage this data to support organizational initiatives or better yet, just take action against the information once it's been published within the IWMS solution. Let's go ahead and get started.

All right, we're going to take a look at how our customers organizations get their space inventory into a solution like AutoCAD and then publish it into the system of activity, let's say, that is the Archibus IWMS solution.

So I'm not going to go through how polylinings occur here in AutoCAD, I'm sure everybody that's in the audience today is probably more familiar with those various activities than I am. But suffice it to say, of course you're going to want to capture all the key architectural details of the drawings, as well as the interior and exterior gross areas, things along those lines.

But a space manager is also going to need to capture things like the areas of various rooms and/or workstations, desks that are positioned there on the floor plan. And all that information needs to be polylined. And that's not necessarily a struggle. That's not a challenge. Folks that are professionals with the AutoCAD solution don't have any issue in doing that.

The interesting thing is with Archibus, you have the ability of leveraging an extension onto AutoCAD where you associate your drawing, in this case with a particular building and floor, as it's identified in the IWMS solution. So in this case, it's the NC05 building and the fifth floor of that building.

You can also configure some additional attributes there. What it also allows you to do, this Archibus extension for AutoCAD, is as you're making changes to the space it's going to write all the corresponding values to that layer on the Archibus side of things as well. So we set the asset layer that we're going to be working with. In this case, it's the room layer here in AutoCAD.

And we'll see how this translates over into Archibus here in just a moment. But as you can see there's all the different layers that we are going to be including information about this floor plan on. And you can very easily sort down to the specific layer that you're needing to use.

So we set the room layer there. We're also going to tell Archibus, hey, yeah, so keep track of these changes as I'm making them within this tool and make sure that translates over into the more data based type of information, not so much the visualization. We'll get to that in just a moment.

I'm going to do that by editing or using the Edit Data command. And that's going to be leveraging something called the smart client for Autodesk, or excuse me, for Archibus. And that effectively acts as a little bit of middleware where it's going to publish the various row and column based information back and forth between the solutions. With this integration, this capability, this collaboration is bi-directional.

So as you're updating organizational attributes of this space, it's also going to keep track of that here in AutoCAD on your drawing as well. But once everything is polylined in the way that it's needing to be and it's time to take the visualization here and have that translate over into Archibus, you simply publish enterprise graphics.

And what this is going to do is provide Archibus with all the different layers of information from Autodesk in a visual format. So your SVG file, your Scalar Vector Graphic image files. We're going to see how that articulates itself or visualize or presents itself within the Archibus solution and the next step of our demo. So let's go ahead and jump over into Archibus now.

All right, so now that we've got all that more architectural information consumed into Archibus and available to use, we can bring up the space console, which is where we're going to be doing the majority of our more space management activities and start layering on some additional information. But just something to note is that all the different layers that are coming over from AutoCAD are going to be available to use in Archibus as well.

I like to call this increasing and decreasing the resolution of the floor plan that you happen to be working with within the Archibus solution. So as I turn these layers on and off, you can see that the amount of detail included is going to be adjusted. But let's go ahead and put some additional organizational type information over the top of our floor plan or space here.

So in this case, maybe we wanted to highlight the space based on something like departments. So I simply open up the highlights menu and navigate down into the departments highlight. Select it, and it's going to give me a really easy to consume or visualize indication of what space is being used by which departments.

I could also have a secondary highlight on this space if I'm wanting to. Maybe we want to go ahead and occupy or rather highlight the space by occupancy. This way I can see which space is available to use versus which ones are not.

And here we can see a helpful key that's going to help us understand what the different color codes mean. So let's say that I wanted to go ahead and start taking some action against this space now that it's in the space console, and we can start making some changes to it.

So one good example is maybe changing or adjusting the allocation of the space from one division and department to another. So I simply select the different desks in this case that I'm wanting to adjust, hit view/edit selected rooms, and I'll go ahead and select the spaces here. And what I'm going to do now is adjust any variety of characteristics that I might want. You can see that there's quite a few indicated here on screen.

And it's going to make a bulk edit to the different spaces that we had selected, but in this case, what I'm going to want to do is come up and do to the division, select a different division. So we'll do administration and then a different department. Delete this out. OK, we'll reallocate this spaces to the plant department. I hit Save. It's going to make those adjustments to the spaces so that when we drop back down onto the floor plan, you're going to see that the color coatings have been adjusted for those particular desks that we were working with there.

Additionally, if I wanted to take some other activities or actions against the space, I can just as easily change up who's sitting where on this floor plan for my organization. And that's as easy as navigating to the occupancy menu, highlighting the different individuals that maybe I want to position onto a different desk or in a different office, place them in a waiting room. And then it's really easy to use, simple to use drag and drop exercise. So I know which spaces are vacant and available to be occupied. So I'll simply drag and drop some of these folks down under the space.

Now this isn't going to make a real time adjustment or commit these changes to the seating arrangement for organization. It's going to create them as pending assignments. I can commit these changes directly from this view. Alternatively, what I can also do is select view pending assignments.

I can commit the assignments from here, as well. Alternatively, because Archibus is an IWMS, it also has very robust move management capabilities. So I can issue these changes as a move order. An additional advantage there is that each of the individuals that are part of this move project are going to be made aware of the fact that they've got a move coming up to them.

So just a couple of examples around how we can leverage this data now that it's in the Archibus tool, but what we're really wanting to focus in on for today's presentation is how do we leverage the fact that we've got this space information and organizational information married in a singular application to a safe return to the office for our employees.

So luckily, Archibus has a really great solution constructed for managing that or technologically supporting whatever strategy it is that an organization might have in place for what we affectionately call RTO. So if I'm a space manager and I'm in charge of making sure that my organization's space inventory is ready for a safe return to the office, what I'm going to want to do is first prepare the space.

So I'm going to do that via a couple of different ways. So I can set an occupancy target for the floor plan that I'm working with here, for the space inventory that I'm working with here. And easily able to accomplish that by selecting the set occupancy targets button in the upper right hand corner of the screen here.

And what that's going to allow me to do is one, filter down to the specific space that we're talking about. So we'll stick with our fifth floor in the NC05 building. And I can set up an occupancy target percentage as a percentage of the overall occupiable or where work gets done space on our floor plan. In this case, it's 50%.

Alternatively, I can also hit a safe distancing target and square feet or square meter that depended upon your locality. And in this case, let's say that I want it to be a diameter of six feet. We'll see how this plays out on the floor plan itself, but that's going to ensure that I've got appropriate spacing between the different workspaces on this particular floor plan.

So I click Save. It's going to make the adjustment to the occupancy targets for that particular building. I'll go and close out and drop me back down onto the floor plan. So if I'm wanting to see the safe distancing target visualized on the floor plan, I simply click the button here.

And what that's going to do is draw a circle around the center of each of the spaces that we've got identified as like a workspace. We can see some, well one, there's a ton of different circles around the different workstations that we've got on the space console here. Let me go ahead and exit out of this tool really quickly.

Just a moment. You're going to see that the majority of the circles are currently red. And what that's telling me as the space manager is that these spaces are currently violating the safe distancing guideline that I have set up for this particular floor.

So what I'm going to do is go in and adjust the overall usability of these desks to ensure that they don't violate the safe distancing guideline that we have in place. So I'm going to again select the two desks in question that we're working with here.

Let me just get into the appropriate mode so to speak. Select those two desks and we're going to edit the characteristics of them by clicking the button here. And navigating back to the menu that we already saw a little peek at before, but in this case, what I'm going to adjust is not how or what department these spaces are allocated to. Maybe I want to adjust the employee capacity to zero.

But I'm also going to flag this space as a do not use. So I'll navigate down to the room status dropdown here. And I'm also going to turn off the hotelable field. So what does that mean.

So when I flag these is not being able to be a hotel, it means that when, let's go ahead and drop back down on the floor plan here. It means that when a user is looking to book a hotelable desk, you know those desks that we make a reservation for a particular day part when we are one of those hybrid employees and we pull up into the parking spot and we check in and things along those lines.

It means that those won't be available for us to book. And that is really great because what it's doing is it's enforcing the safe distancing guideline that you have in place for that particular space. And you're making it easy to adhere to on the part of the end user.

So if I come into the workplace services portal, pull up that particular floor, if we can see that the two desks that we've turned off are no longer available to be booked. Nor are they going to be until we turn that back on.

All right, so that is a really good walkthrough of how you would prepare the space for a safe return to the office. The next part of the process, or the next step in the process is how do we prepare the various people for their return to the office. And thankfully, Archibus also has a tool for that.

So there is a mark employees for return to work feature set within the solution. So let me go and search for that here quickly. And jump right in.

All right, so up on screen we've got an entire listing of the various employees that work for our fictitious demo organization. Now, this information can come from a variety of different sources. That could be active directory or your human capital management, your HR systems, et cetera. Or it could be a manual upload or things along those lines.

What this allows us to do, though, is to filter through our entire list of employees to whatever grouping of employees that you've identified to come back into the office on a schedule of your organization's choosing.

So let's just say for the sake of our demonstration, our class today that I've identified the accounting team as needing to come into the office during what we've identified as phase one. And let's say that phase one begins in Q4 this year. So it's really important that we make sure that they know that they've been identified as crucial team members to come back into the office for a particular set of days during the week, possibly.

So what I do is select those employees, hit set return to work info, I update their status, their return to work info is phase one as we've indicated here. And then if we need to, we can identify which days of the week they can expect to be in the office.

You don't have to do that. In fact, Archibus isn't prescriptive in how you bring employees back to the office. It is, in fact, quite adaptable and will adjust to whichever method or strategy you choose to implement. But I hit Save and what it's going to do here is going to make the changes to the different employee records and bulk really easily.

Let's say that we also wanted to send an email out to these individuals. I simply select them all again. And now I'm going to hit the Send Email button.

What that's going to do is go through the list of employees and identify or send an email out to each one of the email addresses associated to the record here within Archibus. Now the content of those email notifications can be easily adjusted or made organizationally specific.

So if you're wanting links to training that they need to undertake prior to coming back into the office, whatever the case might be, you're going to have the capability of personalizing that. Making sure that everybody is equipped with the correct information.

OK, so now let's assume that we've got some hybrid employees. What if it is a more traditional fixed seating assignment for these people that are coming back into the office. We actually already took a little bit of a peek at this before, but it wasn't through the lens of return to work. But assigning individuals desks or offices is really, really straightforward.

And what you're going to do is not look at your space through the lens of the allocation and et cetera kind of information. We're going to come back into this occupancy view. And what this is going to allow us to do is filter down based on the different attributes that you see me indicated here, or indicating here, excuse me.

So when I'm wanting to do something like filter down to the phase one employees that happen to be part of the accounting organization, I can very easily do so. And from there what I'll do is go ahead and select those individuals and take action against their records. Just needed to adjust the filter settings on the View that we have in front of us.

All right, so again, I'm going to filter down based on the phase and maybe the department that the individuals are going to be brought back into the office based on. But I'm going to select all those that are going to have the fixed seating assignments and very easily place them into a waiting room.

And then it's the process that we were taking a look at before. And again, keep in mind that you can highlight the space in a variety of different ways so you can make sure that you're bringing them into the correct desk, the correct office, whatever the case might be.

You simply drag and drop them onto the space and then Archibus is going to be configured to allow for that increase in communication to those individuals. So they know what the changes are that are going to be taking place against them when they come back into the tool or come back into the office. What desk are they going to be able to leverage when they arrive on the scene, so to speak, things along those lines.

And there's just a ton of advantages to making sure everybody has a clear line of sight with what to expect in their return to work. Let's quickly review what we've covered so far today. So we took a look at the Archibus extension for AutoCAD, which hopefully the audience agrees is going to allow for seamless sharing of data between the two solutions being AutoCAD and Archibus. Then we transitioned over into the Archibus tool to see how organizations can take action against that information once it's made available to them within a solution like Archibus.

We took a look at a couple of the different use cases around how they can manage that space from a overall space allocation perspective, as well as positioning people differently on the floor plan where they're going to reside moving forward, things along those lines. We didn't really touch on it, but do know that if there's any sort of curiosities around space chargeback, occupancy reporting using that information, of course, Archibus is very capable in that regard as well.

More than happy to have a follow up conversation about its capabilities in that particular arena. And then finally, we also took a look at how you can leverage the Archibus solution equipped or enriched with the information from AutoCAD to plan for that safe return to the office. How best you prepare the space for safe occupancy that's adhering to the social distancing guidelines in your region.

And then how do you prepare the people. How do you initiate that communication loop that's going to lead to just a great experience on the part of those that are coming back into the office in either kind of a traditional fixed seating perspective or from a hybrid perspective as well.

All right, so from here we're going to go ahead and wrap today's session. I hope you found that the time that you spent viewing this material with me, walking through Archibus and AutoCAD capabilities in these areas was a good use of your time. Thank you so much for taking the time to explore these capabilities with me, and from here we're going to go ahead and transition over into the Q&A session for today's class.