The floor plan that can say it was empty.
Zenith Workplace is space reservation software for Canadian organisations — desks, rooms and every other space held in one register, booked from the drawing. A booking system tells you what was taken. What decides whether you still need the floor is what was never used — the desk held at nine and empty at ten, the room booked every Tuesday by a meeting that stopped happening in March. In Zenith the drawing, the booking and the utilisation report read the same space record, and the percentage is counted from the bookings at the moment the screen draws. Two things are stored, because nothing else in the building knows them: what the space is, and what the house rules allow.
Five space states · Check-in & automatic release · House rules per space type · Derived utilisation · Bilingual EN / FRReceipt
132 + 78 + 38 = 248
12 + 4 + 6 = 22, of which 16 can be booked
The plan is the register
You upload the PDF or CAD and draw the spaces onto it.
Teal is bookable · grey is somebody's assigned desk.
Every change is an event Seven states from booked to released, appended not overwritten
Never "invalid" Two blockers, both named, both clearable
Receipt 46 + 69 + 63 + 38 + 19 = 235, over five weekdays = 47%
Why Friday is the useful number
19% on a Friday is the evidence for right-sizing a floor —
and it only means something with the exclusions named.
A booking is a window over a space, not a copy of it
The failure that ruins most workplace tools is a second copy of the building: a reservation engine sitting on a spreadsheet of desks, which disagrees with the floor within a quarter. Zenith stores the register and the rule, and counts everything else off the bookings when you ask.
What a person has to assert, and nothing more
A space exists, it is of a type, it sits somewhere, it holds a number of people and it has amenities. A house rule says what may be done with it. Neither of those can be counted from anything, so both are stored. Everything else on this page is arithmetic.
- The register comes before the booking engine. Site, building, floor, space — one hierarchy, and a booking that cannot name a space cannot exist.
- A drawing is a layer over the register, not a second inventory. Each shape links to a space record, so colour on the plan is state rather than a legend somebody maintains.
- Bookings reference spaces and people. Nothing is copied in, so a space renamed at four o’clock is renamed on every booking, past and future.
- An undrawn floor is a known unknown. It is named and excluded from every figure rather than counted as an empty floor.
What a register can say without being told
Four cards and a location tree. Every figure below is a question about the spaces and the bookings, answered on read. Nothing on this screen is a number somebody remembered to update.
The four decisions behind the numbers
- Utilisation divides by bookable space-days, not by every space you own. 22 working days × 16 bookable spaces is 352 space-days; 165 bookings against that is 47%. Dividing by 248 would make every floor look busy and no floor look cuttable.
- An assigned desk is not a booking and not free. It is somebody’s seat, reported on separately, and excluded from the count so it cannot inflate the figure in either direction.
- A floor that has not been drawn is named, not zeroed. Nine of twelve floors carry spaces; the other three would each read as a completely empty floor, which is the most damaging kind of wrong number in a right-sizing conversation.
- A figure with no basis is refused, not approximated. Cost per desk needs floor area and a lease cost. Neither is in the product, so the card says it is not computed instead of quietly dividing by something.
Five states, because “available” would be a lie
Most plans colour a desk green or grey. Green and grey cannot separate a desk nobody wants, a desk somebody is sitting at, and a desk booked this morning by a person who never came in. Those three need three different decisions, so they get three different words.
Free
Nothing holds it, and no house rule blocks it for the time you are asking about. The only state that means “take it”.
bookable & unheldReserved
Held for a window that has not started, or started without a check-in yet. Held is not occupied, and the plan says which.
grace period runningIn use
Somebody confirmed they are there. This is the only state on the plan that means a person is in the building.
checked inAssigned
A long-term occupancy with a start date. Not free, not a booking — a person’s seat, and reported on as its own question.
44 of 248 spacesNot bookable
Drawn because it exists, excluded because nobody should take it. Plant rooms, corridors, the space being refitted.
18 of 248 spaces248 = 186 bookable + 44 assigned + 18 not bookable. Those three numbers are the reason the utilisation figure on the next screen can be argued with rather than believed.
A refusal that names itself
“This booking could not be created” is not an answer anybody can act on. It sends the person to the facilities inbox and teaches everyone that the system is arbitrary. A refusal in Zenith carries the rule, the number and the date that failed — and the earliest thing you could do instead.
Set per space type, per site
A board room and a hot desk are not the same promise, and a rule that treats them alike gets switched off within a month. Every rule below is configured against the space type at a site, so a desk can run all day while the room upstairs caps at four hours.
- Maximum duration — how long one booking may run, per space type.
- Advance window — how far ahead anyone may book, which is what stops the desk taken for next March.
- Approval — required only where you actually want it, and only for the space types where it earns the friction.
- Buffers — time between bookings, so the room is not handed over while it is still occupied.
- Capacity — a booking cannot exceed the seats in the space, because capacity is the record’s and not a copy.
- Check-in and grace — the rule that releases a no-show, covered on its own below.
An empty desk is not a free desk
Ten o’clock on a Tuesday: the floor is visibly half empty and the booking screen says there is nothing left. People stop trusting the screen, then they stop booking, and within two months the floor is being run out of a group chat. Check-in is the fix, and it only works if the release is automatic.
Two measures, and the gap between them
A booking that is not confirmed inside its grace period is released, and the space goes back on the plan by itself. The release is recorded, so the no-show rate stops being a complaint in a meeting and becomes a figure with jobs behind it.
- Released, not cancelled. The booking keeps its history and its owner; the space simply becomes takeable again.
- The grace period is a house rule, so a room that needs setting up can hold longer than a hot desk.
- A released space is offered to whoever is standing there — on the plan, in the day view, in the search. It does not require anyone to be told.
- The no-show rate is per floor and per space type, because the desks and the rooms usually behave differently and the average hides it.
Replaced by the true thing standing closest to it
Workplace analytics is usually sold with instruments attached — a sensor estate to install, a seating chart to maintain, an annual survey to run. Each is a second thing to keep alive before the first number appears. So none of them is a prerequisite here: each was replaced by something the work already keeps current, and where the hardware already exists it feeds in on top rather than being the thing you buy first.
Check-in and release
The question a sensor answers is “did anyone actually use it”. Check-in answers it from the person rather than the furniture, costs nothing to install, and produces the one thing a sensor cannot: a freed space that somebody else can take immediately. Already have sensors? They connect through the same integration layer as the CMMS package and read alongside the bookings.
9% released · 15 of 165 bookingsOccupancy records
Who holds a desk, and since when. It is a dated fact on the space rather than a tab in a workbook, so a move is reportable two years later instead of reconstructed from memory by whoever was there.
44 assigned · each with a start dateBooking history
A survey is a sample taken in the week people knew they were being counted. The booking history is every day, already written, by the people using the building — and it can be re-cut by floor, by team or by space type without anybody walking anywhere.
165 bookings · 22 working daysThese are not placeholders — they are better than the things they replace, for one reason: nobody has to remember to update them. They are also not the only signal available: where occupancy sensors, badge lines or a building management system already exist, they integrate the same way they do in the CMMS package. What the product will never do is estimate the people it never saw — see where this build stops.
One estate, read twelve ways
The plan answers “where can I sit”. Every tab below is the same register and the same bookings asked a different question.
Floor plan
Your own PDF, image or CAD drawing with the spaces drawn on it in the browser, each linked to its record. Colour is state, not a legend.
List
The same spaces as rows, filtered by type, zone, capacity or amenity — for the people who would rather search than look.
Day & week
Time rather than geography. Draw a range on the grid and the booking form fills itself from what you drew.
House rules
Duration, advance window, approval, buffers, capacity and grace, per space type and per site, each with the sentence it refuses in.
Occupancy
Who holds an assigned desk and since when. Moves are dated, so the seating history survives the person who arranged it.
Visitors
Invited, approved, checked in at the kiosk or the desk, checked out and logged — against the room they came for, not a clipboard.
Utilisation
Bookings over bookable space-days, by site, floor, team and space type, with the divisor printed beside the percentage.
Peak & quiet
The busiest weekday and the one that pays for the floor. An average of 47% hides a Tuesday at 69% and a Friday at 19%.
No-shows
Every booking released by the grace period, with the space, the day and the rule that released it. Nine per cent, not an impression.
Exports
Excel from any view, and scheduled reports to an inbox on the day the estate meeting happens.
Terminology
Desk, workstation or poste de travail — rename what people read without touching what the register holds. English and French both first-class.
Access & audit
Per-site groups and scope down to menu, tab, button and field, single sign-on through SAML or Microsoft Entra ID, and a full history of every booking and change.
The front desk, on the same record as the room
Visitor management is part of the platform rather than a product standing beside it. A visit belongs to a meeting, a room, a floor and a building — the same records your bookings already use. It runs on a desk screen, a lobby tablet and the visitor’s own phone, in English and in French, hosted in Canada on Microsoft Azure.
01Invite in seconds
A host picks the visitor, the site and the destination — building, floor and room, straight from the floor plan. Returning guests are found by e-mail, or by name and company, with their history beside them: previous visitor, three visits, last on 2 September. One occasion with many guests becomes many visits, each with its own link.
02The visitor’s own link
Every invitation carries a secure personal link. Before the day, the visitor confirms their details and ticks whatever the site requires — safety rules, an NDA, consent to a photo — in English or in French. On the day they check themselves in and out from their own phone, with nothing to install.
03Approval, where the site wants it
Each site decides: no approval at all, every visit, certain kinds only, or anything outside opening hours. Approvers accept or reject with a reason, and the host hears either way. A visit that is pending or rejected cannot be checked in — not at the desk, not at the kiosk, not by link.
04The lobby kiosk
A tablet at reception. The visitor types a name or a reference, or scans their code, and checks in or out. Someone who arrives without an invitation registers themselves, and the site’s rule decides whether they walk through or wait for an approver.
05The reception desk
A keyboard-first screen, built for somebody who does this eighty times a day. One search box takes a name, a reference or a scanned code; Enter checks in, B prints the badge, O checks out, W starts a walk-in. Arriving and On site sit side by side with host, destination, group, approval, late and overstay in view — and the host or the destination can be changed while the visitor is still in the building.
06Everyone is told, without asking
Registered for you. Awaiting your approval. Approved, or not approved. Your visitor has arrived, has left, is overstaying, was checked out by the clock. The notices run through the platform’s own queue, which removes duplicates and retries what fails.
07Site rules, set by the administrator
Opening hours, and how early somebody may check in. When late and overstay appear, when a no-show is called, and the hour the system checks everyone out. Whether the desk may override with a reason, badges on or off and on which template, required fields, required acknowledgements, and the number of days a record is kept. Each site keeps its own.
08The roster, and who may see it
A dashboard shows expected today, on site now, pending approval, checked out, late and overstaying — per site and across sites, with a floor view of where people are heading. Every visit keeps a complete event log, and records clear at the end of the retention period you set. Hosts see their own guests, the front desk sees only the sites it is scoped to, and approvers hold a separate permission: a Toronto desk never sees Vancouver.
Two weeks on your own trial site, with your own floor plan. Register a visit, send yourself the link, and check in from your phone standing at your own reception desk.
Start a trial siteWhere this build stops
Everything above is in the product and demonstrable today. Everything below is not, and we would rather lose the deal on this section than in month four of an implementation.
Out of the box, this measures bookings
Zenith Workplace knows what was booked and what was checked into. On its own it does not know that four people sat in a six-seat room, or that somebody worked at a desk they never booked. Sensors, badge lines and building systems can supply that, through the same integration layer the CMMS package uses — but it is integration work scoped with you, not a switch that is already on. Treat it as a line in the project, not a box already ticked.
- No sensor hardware is bundled, and nothing is counted from badge lines or Wi-Fi by default. Check-in is the built-in occupancy signal — a person confirming rather than a device observing. Sensor and badge feeds are supported as scoped integration work.
- No cost per desk, per seat or per square foot. Floor area and lease cost are not held in the product, so the figure would have nothing behind it. The screen says “not computed” rather than showing a dash.
- No room panels and no wayfinding displays. Booking from a tablet outside a room is a browser page today, not a dedicated panel application.
- Undrawn floors are excluded, never estimated. Nine of twelve floors in the demo carry spaces; the other three appear as names on a list of what the figure does not cover.
Two to five sites, one system, bilingual
The fit is an organisation running a handful of buildings that wants desks and rooms booked from the drawing, every space held in one register, and a utilisation figure it can defend at budget — from a Canadian company, hosted in Canada, priced by administrator seats rather than by desk or by employee.
- Good fit — a hybrid head office where nobody can say whether the third floor is still needed.
- Good fit — a public-sector or broader-public-sector body that needs data residency, bilingual screens and a pricing model that does not count employees.
- Poor fit — a real-estate team whose primary output is cost per seat and lease-cost modelling. Floor area and lease cost are not held in the product, so that figure would have nothing behind it. We will say so on the call.
One fact, one place, every screen
Workplace is the thirteenth module on the same platform as work orders, assets and preventive maintenance. That is not a cross-sell — it is why a broken desk becomes a work order against the same space record, and why a room you cannot book on Thursday can tell you it is out of service for a repair.
Referenced, never retyped
A booking points at a space and a person; a drawing points at the register. Nothing is copied, so nothing can go stale inside a copy.
Canadian, and hosted here
Microsoft Azure in Canada, with on-premises deployment where it is required. Encrypted in transit and at rest, single sign-on through your identity provider, a full audit history, and a privacy posture aligned to PIPEDA.
Refusals in sentences
Every gate returns a typed reason, and every reason has a sentence in English and in French. A blocked booking names the rule, the number and the earliest alternative.
Accessible to everyone
WCAG 2.2 AA as a build rule: the floor plan has a list view carrying the same information, states are announced in words rather than colour alone, and focus lands where an error refers.
Space reservation software: straight answers, including the unflattering ones
What is space reservation software?
Can staff book a desk straight from the floor plan?
What happens if someone books a desk and does not turn up?
Can we set different rules for a meeting room and a desk?
Can we run assigned seating and hot desking at the same time?
Do you charge per desk, per site or per employee?
Do we have to send you our floor plans to be drawn for us?
Does it use desk sensors to measure occupancy?
Can it tell us the cost per desk?
What can it tell us about whether we still need a floor?
Is it bilingual, and can we use our own words?
Where is the data hosted, and what is in scope?
Where do we start?
If you are still working out what you need
Nine guides on the questions that come up before a space reservation purchase — what to buy, how to measure it afterwards, and the Canadian rules that land on it.
Best workplace software in Canada
The category split into three. A buyer’s guide to which one you are actually shopping for.
IWMS, CAFM or a booking tool
Four labels used interchangeably, and the single question that separates them.
How to calculate space utilisation
The divisor is the whole argument. How to produce a figure that survives a council report.
Meeting room no-shows
Where the capacity went, and how much of it check-in and automatic release hand back.
Occupancy sensors vs booking data
Five instruments that get called the same thing, and what the booking record already answers.
Hot desking policy template
Thirteen clauses to adapt, including the one that keeps accommodated desks out of the pool.
Accessible booking systems
What the AODA requires, why a floor plan is the hard case, and the eight checks to run.
The BPS Procurement Directive
Thresholds, the classification trap, and the seven questions a public sector evaluation asks.
Municipal space booking
From 1 January 2027, MFIPPA institutions need a privacy impact assessment before they collect.
Bring the floor nobody can account for.
One plan, one week of real bookings and your actual house rules. We will draw the floor in front of you, load the rules, and show you the utilisation percentage with its divisor still attached — then try to book a room for six hours where the rule caps it at four, so you can read the refusal for yourself.