Imagine walking into a meeting room, ready to brainstorm, but the projector doesn’t work, or the Wi-Fi is down. Frustrating, right? Meeting room challenges are more common than we'd like to admit, and they can derail productivity in seconds.
The reasons behind these challenges are varied. Sometimes it's outdated technology that hasn't kept up with our fast-paced work environments. Other times, it's a simple case of poor planning—like not booking a room in advance or not checking if the equipment is functional before the meeting starts. And let’s not forget the human factor: people double-booking rooms, forgetting to clean up, or hogging the space beyond their allotted time.
Let’s have a look at these four all-too-common meeting room booking challenges and how to solve them.
1. Double bookings
Double bookings occur when more than one user reserves the room for the same timeslot and a battle ensues… Or, at least, a panicked debate. This problem is commonly caused by a reservation setup that doesn’t sync across the company calendar — usually in the form of a piece of paper taped to the wall or an Excel sheet in some corner of your cloud.
Imagine this: you send a meeting invitation to your team members — to be hosted in the Green room. You arrive on time, ready to begin your meeting. But, Jane’s there too with her team. In fact, she arrived before you did and has already settled in.
While no one plans a double booking, they stunt productivity by wasting time and unsettling team members. The Joan app solves this issue in three ways:
- Room schedules sync seamlessly across in-house calendars so everyone knows when a room is available and when it’s reserved
- Joan e-paper meeting room displays show the room’s availability in real-time, preventing ad-hoc meetings from settling in when the room is booked
- The mobile Joan app makes it easy to find an available space and reserve it without overlapping other meetings
Not only does Joan eliminate double bookings, but the digital display also helps minimize interruptions, room squatters, and ghost meetings — stay tuned.
2. Interruptions
“Oh, I apologize, I didn’t know you were having a meeting” and “sorry to bother you, but when does this meeting end?” are both phrases we’ve all heard in the middle of a meeting.
While good meeting room solutions sync across the company calendar, not many of them have a trusty display to show the room’s up-to-date availability.
For example, George and Tony might be hankering for an ad-hoc meeting. Rather than spend the time signing into their laptops, opening their calendar app, and locating the meeting room to check its schedule, George figures it’s easier to peek in and ask, “sorry to bother you, but when does this meeting end?”
Now, if Joan solution was in the picture…
George’s hand freezes on the door handle as his eye catches on the splendidly simple wall-mounted e-paper display. He reads “Marketing team meeting 2:00-3:00 p.m.” He checks his watch: 2:15 p.m. George calls to Toni over his shoulder, “we’ll come back in 45 minutes.”
In the end, the Marketing team worked “happily ever after.”
3. Room squatters
Now, imagine if, on the way back to their desks, George and Tony stumble upon an empty meeting room. They settle in, preparing for a long hour of project planning.
Unfortunately, Amy shows up 15 minutes later for her 2:30 p.m. reservation. Not only has she interrupted George and Tony’s brainstorming, but the conflict scatters her presentation prep right out the window.
With Joan e-paper wireless meeting room displays, George and Tony would have known the room was reserved.
In a perfect world,
- George would have carried on until he found a room marked as “available” on the Joan meeting room display
- He’d have tapped the “book” icon on the touchscreen, which would update across the company calendar marking the room as “booked“
- Tony would arrive and they’d have the most uninterrupted, productive meeting ever
In fact, George and Tony would chat for an hour. Then, realizing their booking was over, George would tap the Joan touchscreen again to extend his reservation. Voila! Room squatters have been vanquished.
4. Ghost meetings
Ghost meetings, or no-shows, don’t ruin meetings — they delay them and, therefore, waste time.
As we all know, time is money. Each square foot of office real estate is valuable. Unfortunately, most teams have recurring meetings they don’t consistently show up for. People looking for ad-hoc spaces are out of luck because all the rooms are reserved.
Joan’s check-in and check-out features solve ghost meetings. If a user doesn’t check into their meeting within a set period of time — ten minutes, fifteen minutes, etc. — the room is marked as “available.” This way, people can use the room for ad-hoc meetings, quiet spaces to work, or other impromptu purposes.
Joan Analytics
Let’s talk about office managers for a minute. It’s their job to make sure the workspace runs smoothly. This task requires a ton of guesswork: the paper supply will run out in one week, visitors usually arrive between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m., and the Sales team will work best beside the Product Development team.
Joan takes the guesswork out of meeting room management. Office managers can check the Joan platform to see analytics, including
- Which rooms are used the most
- Weekly meeting patterns
- Which rooms are underperforming
- Who books the most meetings
Transform your workplace
Much more than a meeting room reservation system, Joan uses a holistic approach to support the workspace as a whole. If there’s a need, Joan finds a way to support employees where it counts so they can perform their best work.
Beyond meeting rooms, Joan solutions include
- Desk booking — perfect for hybrid workspaces
- Parking and Asset booking - pre-book every resource in advance
- Visitor management — complete with check-in and check-out tools
- Digital signage — great for real-time company information and wayfinding
Contact our Sales representatives to find out how Joan can solve your office pain points.
