How workspace access rights work

Workspace access in UnSpot is made up of several independent settings: Access Groups, the owner department and the assignment of resources to employees. They do not cancel each other out and are not arranged in a priority order — they add up. A resource is available to an employee if at least one of the settings applicable to that resource type has fired. This article explains how they add up, how desks, parking spaces, meeting rooms and lockers differ, and how to pick the right setting for your task.

The main rule: settings add up

When an employee opens the office map, UnSpot collects the list of objects available to them from several independent sources and merges them. This is an “or” merge: one source that fires is enough.

• the employee belongs to an Access Group the resource is linked to, — or
• the resource belongs to the employee’s department or to a subordinate department, — or
• the resource is assigned to this employee.

Three consequences follow, and they are the ones that surprise people most often.

• Choosing an Access Group is not mandatory. If the resource has an owner or is assigned to an employee, access appears even with an empty list of groups.
• The settings do not override each other. A resource is available at the same time to the members of the selected Access Group, to the employees of the owner department and to the assigned employee.
• The “No one” option is not a ban. It only removes the group setting; the owner and the assignment keep granting access. This holds for desks and parking spaces: offices, floors, meeting rooms and lockers have no other sources, so “No one” there makes the object unavailable to everyone. The only way to take a resource out of booking completely is the type of use “Unavailable”.

One more thing worth remembering: access is not inherited down the space tree. If an Access Group is linked to an office or a floor but not to the resource itself, the employee will have no access to that resource — the link is needed on the object that is being booked. The reverse is also true: if the office is unavailable to the employee, its resources will not appear on the map at all.

The resource card: type of use and booking type

All access settings for a specific resource live in its card: open “Manage → Office management → Workspaces”, click “Change map” on the floor you need and double-click the resource.

The card holds three groups of settings that are easy to mix up:

• “Owner” — the department from the organisational structure the resource belongs to;
• “Available for bookings for” — the group setting with the options “No one”, “Selected Groups” and “All users”;
• “Type of use” and the “Booking type” that follows it — how exactly the resource is booked.

The list of options under “Booking type” depends on the selected type of use — and this is the main source of confusion, because the “Priority” option exists in both branches and means different things in each.

Type of use	Booking type	What it means
Bookable	On any days	A regular resource: booked on any date within the office horizon
Bookable	Day to day	The resource is only booked for the current day, never in advance
Bookable	Priority	Priority belongs to an Access Group on the selected weekdays: group members book the resource on those days even with no other access sources; everybody else books it day to day on those days, and on the other days the resource behaves as a regular one
Assigned	By weekday	The resource is assigned to an employee on the selected days; bookings are created automatically
Assigned	Priority	Priority belongs to several employees; no automatic bookings are created, everybody else books day to day
Assigned	For period	The resource is assigned to an employee for a date range no longer than three months; bookings are created automatically for the whole period at once
Unavailable	—	The resource is booked by nobody, whatever the access settings are

The “Booking type” options are mutually exclusive: you cannot configure assignment by weekday, for a period and priority on the same resource at once.

Which setting works for which resource

The set of settings depends on the object type. Desks and parking spaces have the widest choice — which is exactly why questions usually arise around them.

Object	Access Groups	Owner department	Assignment	Booking horizon
Office, building, floor	yes	no	no	—
Desk	yes	yes	all options	yes
Parking space	yes	yes	all but “For period”	yes
Meeting room	groups only	no	no	no
Locker	groups only	no	no	no
Locker cell	yes	no	to an employee, with a caveat	no

Practical consequences of the table:

• Meeting room access is configured by groups only. A meeting room has no “Owner” field and cannot be assigned to an employee. If you need to restrict who books a meeting room, that is done with an Access Group and nothing else.
• A locker has two levels. The groups of the locker decide whether the employee sees the locker, and the right to take a specific cell is set separately — by the groups of the cell itself. The caveat: assigning a cell to a person only works if the cell has at least one Access Group; with the “No one” option the cell assignment grants no access.
• The booking horizon applies to desks and parking spaces only. It does not extend to meeting rooms and lockers.

Sources of access

Access Groups

An Access Group ties a list of employees to a list of objects. Groups are managed in “Manage → People management → Groups & Teams”, and an object is linked to a group in the card of the object itself — the “Available for bookings for” block.

Option	What it means	When it fits
All users	The object is linked to the built-in group that covers every employee in the company	Open desks, shared meeting rooms
Selected Groups	The object is available to the members of the listed groups	Department desks, a specific team zone, guest meeting rooms
No one	The object has no group links; the owner and the assignment keep working	A resource whose access is set by the owner or the assignment only

For details, see Access Groups: rules and configuration options.

The owner department

The card of a desk or a parking space has an “Owner” field where you pick a department from the company organisational structure. This is the second way to grant access, independent from groups: the employees of the owner department get the resource even if it has no Access Groups at all.

Access travels up the tree. The resource goes to the employees of the owner department and of every department above it. Employees of subordinate departments get no access.

For details, with examples on a department tree, see Workspace access through the organisational structure.

Assigning a resource

Assignment is the third source of access. With the “By weekday” assignment the assigned employee books their resource on their days even if the resource has no Access Group and no owner: after deleting the automatically created booking they can book the resource again, while for everyone with access through the other sources it becomes free that day. The “For period” assignment keeps its access only inside the automatically created bookings: once the employee deletes such a booking, they can book the resource again only if it is available to them through groups or the owner.

For details, see Assigned seats, priority and the booking horizon.

The booking horizon

Even when access to a resource exists, it cannot be booked for any date whatsoever: the office card holds the booking horizon settings — how far ahead employees may book resources and how many advance bookings they may hold at once.

Setting	What it limits	Unit
Weekday limit	How far ahead bookings are allowed (the block itself is titled “Advance booking threshold”)	Working days: weekends and holidays are not counted and push the limit further out
Booking opens at	The time of day when the next day of the horizon opens	Hours and minutes
Booking count	How many advance bookings an employee holds at once in this office	Items
Ongoing bookings	Whether a booking that has already started counts towards the limit; in the UI — a choice of “Future bookings only” / “Ongoing booking included” under the “Booking count” limit	Choice of two options

What matters about the horizon:

• The horizon is an office setting, not a company one: different offices have different values.
• For an employee it looks like this: dates beyond the horizon are blocked in the calendar, and no resources are shown for them.
• The horizon is not applied to guest bookings. When booking for a colleague, the limit is counted against the person the booking is made for, not against the person making it.
• Resources assigned by weekday have their own limit of 28 calendar days, see the article on assignment.

The roles the horizon does not apply to. The limits are bypassed by the Super Administrator and the Office manager — the setting hint puts it as “Limits do not apply to users with the “Office Manager” or “Admin” role”. Note the nuance: the Offices Administrator, the Users Administrator and the Integrations Administrator are subject to the horizon and the limits, even though the word “administrator” in the hint may suggest otherwise. If you test the behaviour on your own Super Administrator or Office manager account, you will not see the limits a regular employee sees.

How to choose a setting

Task	Setting	What to keep in mind
The resource is free for every employee	“Bookable” + “On any days”, access “All users”	The number of bookings is limited by policies and the horizon, not by access
Resources belong to one department whose members change often	The “Owner” field — the department	The list updates together with the organisational structure, nothing has to be maintained by hand
Resources are available to several teams that do not match the organisational structure	Access Groups	Group membership is maintained separately or comes from an external directory
A permanent seat for a specific employee	“Assigned” + “By weekday”	On days of absence the resource is released to the others automatically
A seat for an employee for the duration of a project or a trip	“Assigned” + “For period”	No longer than three months; parking has no such option
Several people compete for one resource, but they have priority	“Assigned” + “Priority”	The others will only be able to book it on the day of use
A team comes to the office on certain days	“Bookable” + “Priority” with a group selected	No automatic bookings are created
The resource is taken on the day of arrival only, with no advance booking	“Bookable” + “Day to day”	Handy for resources in free-seating zones
Restrict who books a meeting room	Access Groups only	Meeting rooms have no owner and no assignment
Take a resource out of booking completely	Type of use “Unavailable”	The “No one” option does not do this — it only removes the group links

What is not access

Mechanism	The question it answers	Where it is configured
Access rights	Whether the employee may book this object at all	The object card and Access Groups
Booking horizon	How far ahead and how many bookings at once	The office card, “Booking Rules” → “Advance booking threshold”
Booking policies	How many days a week, booking for colleagues and for guests	Company settings
Booking confirmation	Whether approval is required for a booking to take effect	The meeting room card, delegates

Policies and the horizon do not take part in the availability calculation: an employee who has hit the limit sees the resource as available but is refused when they try to book it. Booking confirmation exists for meeting rooms only: in strict mode the employee has access to the meeting room, but the booking does not take effect until a delegate confirms it. Desks, parking and lockers have no confirmation.

One more interface detail: an unavailable resource does not disappear from the office map — it is shown as blocked. An unavailable office is different: neither its map nor its resources are shown.

Two more states are unrelated to rights: if a floor has no map or the office is hidden by the administrator, its resources are shown to nobody regardless of the access settings.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to select an Access Group?

No. If the resource has an owner department or is assigned to an employee, access will appear without any groups. A group is needed when the circle of employees matches neither the department nor the list of assigned people.

An employee set an absence status — who can book their seat?

On days with the “Work remotely” or “Not working” status no automatic booking is created for the assigned desk, and the desk is free that day (parking is an exception: its automatic bookings ignore absence statuses). It can be booked by any employee who has access through any of the sources: a member of an Access Group as well as an employee of the owner department. One source does not switch off another — the availability rule here is the general one, not “the group only”.

The group is linked to a floor, but the resource is still unavailable

Access is not inherited down the space tree. The link is needed on the object being booked: if resources were added after the floor was configured, they have to be linked to the group separately.

What happens to bookings if access is removed?

If it is about Access Groups, the owner department or group membership — the bookings that already exist are kept, and the change only affects new ones. Editing the resource card itself, however, can delete bookings. When the resource is switched to “Unavailable”, when the list of priority employees changes and when the resource is assigned for a period, the interface asks whether to delete the existing bookings; switching “On any days” to “Day to day” always deletes future bookings — the system only asks for confirmation.

Related articles

• Workspace access rights: overview — the entry point to this section
• Configuring resource access rights: all settings — the settings reference
• Access Groups: rules and configuration options
• Workspace access through the organisational structure
• Assigned seats, priority and the booking horizon
• Booking policies — booking limits, booking for colleagues and for guests