The answers to all of your questions

Your frequently asked questions answered.

General

  • What is Clearooms?

    Clearooms is a workspace management tool to support the safe use of office desks and meeting rooms. The Clearooms Portal is the central hub for all desk booking activity and is where you can find the settings for the Clearooms app. The app is for our meeting room booking feature only and has been designed to be displayed on a tablet outside each meeting space to show availability and easily make bookings.

  • How do we start the Free Trial?

    First, you’ll need to create your account in the Portal by clicking here. When you have filled in your email and password, the onboarding wizard will start and help you through set up. You can choose to just set up meeting rooms, just hot desks, or both. The wizard has been designed to walk you through each of the steps to make it as simple as possible, but if you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch and we’ll give you a hand.

  • Will we be tied into a contract?

    No. Clearooms accounts are billed monthly and can be cancelled at any time. There are no minimum terms and no cancellation fees. You can review our full Terms and Conditions here.

  • Can we pay by invoice rather than by credit card?

    We offer invoice billing for customers on Plan 2 or above for desks and for customers using meeting rooms bookings. Our invoicing payment terms are 30 days from the date of the invoice, Invoices are sent monthly on the last working day and our payment terms are 30 days from the date of the invoice. If you would prefer this payment method and meet these criteria, please get in touch.

  • Can we run usage reports from Clearooms?

    Yes. Reports can be run to analyse both meeting room and desk usage. These can be customised within the portal to cover certain time periods, teams, rooms or desk configurations. They can also be automatically scheduled so you receive up-to-date information as and when you need it.

  • Can Clearooms integrate with other systems/platforms?

    Yes, Clearooms integrates with Microsoft, Google, Paxton, Salto and many more.

    Clearooms also has an open API so you can integrate it with other software you use.

    You can find out more about our current integrations here, but please contact us to request access to additional documentation.

  • Can Clearooms create custom booking questions for users to complete?

    Yes. Our custom booking fields are a way to gain additional information from users when they book a desk or space. Examples could be:

    1. Create a Covid-19 questionnaire that restricts bookings based on answers provided
    2. Request information for car park bookings like the registrations number or the make and model of their vehicle
    3. Enter a password for booking a specific desk
    4. Show information about a desk and get confirmation the user has read the detail.

    Questions created can be linked to specific offices or desks and responses can be `yes/no, radio buttons, check boxes or text fields. Click here for the admin guide.

  • What languages are supported

    The Clearooms portal supports English, French, German,Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Welsh languages. Users are given the option to select a language from the user profile page.

Hosting & Security

  • Where is Clearooms hosted?

    Clearooms is hosted on AWS in one of their data centres in Ireland.

  • What firewalls are used?

    We use AWS firewalls.

  • Has Clearooms been Penetration Tested to check for vulnerabilities?

    We have not had any external Pen Testing conducted but we use the same tools internally every 3 months to ensure that our platform is kept up to date with emerging threats.

  • Could Clearooms be compromised?

    Clearooms.com is accessed via AWS CloudFront and points to static files in S3. This method is recommended by AWS to protect against potential attacks. The database and app servers are not accessible publicly.

  • Does the application support Single Sign On (SSO) and SCIM (User Provisioning) ?

    Yes. If you use a SAML directory provider such as Azure Active Directory, you can enable Single Sign-On to authenticate your users on your central directory. This will allow you to grant or revoke user access using your own rules and allow users to log in without a Clearooms password.

    We also support multiple Single Sign On configurations. So if you have multiple authentication platforms such as 2 or more active directories, due to different email domains, we can support that for you.

    SCIM (user provisioning) is also supported to sync your users to Clearooms as well as matching groups to teams.

    For help with setting up SSO for Google accounts, click here
    For Azure (Office 365), click here

  • How are usernames and passwords stored?

    Usernames and passwords are stored in IAM.

Desk Booking

  • What is the pricing structure?

    As part of our fair pricing structure, we charge per the number of desks you add, not according to the number of users. Take a look at our pricing page for more information.

  • We have a high number of staff who use our offices, how many users can I add?

    You can add an unlimited number of users to your Clearooms account. There is no maximum or minimum. You could even invite regular visitors from external companies if they frequently come to your office to work.

  • What type of floor plans are required?

    To get started with desk booking, all you need is a floor plan image which is one of the following file types – PNG, SVG, PDF or TIFF. There are some default floor plans in the portal you can choose from if you don’t have your own.

    We offer a service to create floor plans for you should you not have any. All we need is a rough sketch to get going and we will have a draft plan back to you with 48hrs. Find out more here.

    If you’re unsure or would like some help, please get in touch.

  • We have multiple office locations, what’s the best way to manage this?

    When adding your offices, make sure you give them clear names, for example, Huddersfield Floor 1, Huddersfield Floor 2. This is one of the most straightforward ways for users to find the right desk.

    In addition, users can choose their own default office which will show first each time they log in, or an admin can choose a default office for the entire organisation.

  • Can I see my desk bookings in my own calendar?

    Yes, Clearooms will integrate with Google Calendar, Outlook 365, Calendar (MacOS) and Microsoft Outlook 2016. We also support multiple time zones for global organisations, so everyone is in-sync.

  • Can we book car parking spaces through Clearooms?

    Yes. Simply upload a birds-eye view image or plan of your car park and add a ‘desk’ to each space to be booked as normal.

  • Is there an easy way to see which colleagues are in on a given day?

    Yes. Click on the “Who is in” button in the centre of the office plan page, this provides a snapshot of all booked desks, and if they have checked-in or not. There is also an option to view the full week from here too. Additionally, booked desks all show as red on your office plan. Click on a red status icon to see who has booked the desk, if the user has added a profile picture you will also see this. From the mobile app select the list view on the top right-hand side.

  • How can you tell if a user attended after booking a desk?

    Clearooms has a ‘Check-In’ feature which prompts users to check in to each booking made. The prompt opens whenever a user logs in and has un-checked bookings for today or in the past. There is also a ‘Check-In’ link on the main desks page that shows how many unchecked bookings a person has. The ‘Trace Report’ displays this check-in status when run.

  • We need a gap between bookings for desks to be cleaned, can Clearooms help with this?

    Yes. You can set a time period for desks to become unavailable after a previous booking within the Desk Limits section of the Portal Settings. Choose your desired time period under ‘Buffer Times’.

  • We need to ensure a safe distance is kept between booked desks for social distancing. How can we do this?

    Our ‘Plan Scaling’ feature ensures that desks can’t be booked too close together, according to your chosen social distance rules. By clicking on two points of your floor plan and entering the distance, Clearooms will automatically calculate the entire scale of your floor plan. Then, by adding a social distance to be kept between bookings, only desks which fall outside of your chosen radius of a desk booking will be available to users to book. Find out more here.

  • We have a user thats tested positive for Covid-19, how can we tell who was in the office at the same time?

    The ‘Trace Report’ allows you to select a users name and a date range to view and export details on any users that were in any offices at the same time.

  • In our office we all sit at the same desks each day, will Clearooms still be useful?

    Of course. Desks can also be allocated to individuals or Teams and restricted so only that person/team can book the desk.

    You can also allocate desks on certain days of the week to accommodate part time staff as well as releasing desks before or after a given time so allocated desks that are not booked can be made available for everyone else when needed.

  • We don’t want our staff to book their own desks, can admin control desk bookings/cancellations on their behalf?

    Yes. Users with an Admin or Manager user role can book and cancel desk bookings on behalf of other users.

  • We have dedicated desks for users, can we restrict who can book a desk?

    Yes. You can allocate a desk to a specific user and restrict the booking of that desk to just that one person for as long as you would like.

Meeting Rooms

  • What hardware is needed for booking meeting rooms?

    The Clearooms app will work with any Android or iOS device including PoE devices. We don’t supply the hardware, so you can use any compatible devices you already have, or we can help you source them if you would like some assistance.

  • Can the app be rebranded to our brand?

    Yes. The app can be branded across 3 levels. You can choose to brand an individual device, per room (for when there is more than one device paired with it) and to standardise across the entire account. Brand colours and logos can be uploaded to the app and to individual meetings.

  • How do I integrate my calendar?

    Clearooms will integrate with Outlook and Google calendars for seamless room booking. During the setup wizard, you’ll be walked through the relevant steps to do this.

  • I don’t currently use my email provider’s calendar, can I still use Clearooms for my meeting rooms?

    Yes. The Clearooms Portal has its own calendar to book meeting rooms which can be used instead of integrating your own if you wish.

  • Can we show the app on multiple devices for the same room?

    Yes. This is common for larger meeting spaces with several entrances, or for those who wish to also have the app on display on the inside of a meeting room, for example, to easily extend a meeting. In the Settings of the Portal, you can pair your devices with your added rooms.

  • How can we avoid adding more physical touchpoint to the office - how can we minimise this?

    The Clearooms app has a contactless mode, so the tablet it is displayed on doesn’t have to be touched. When activated, a QR code will show for a user to scan with their own device then continue to interact with the app safely.Can we order catering from the Clearooms platform?

  • Can we order catering from the Clearooms platform?

    Yes. Our meeting rooms services feature allows you to create any number of services that users can request when booking a meeting room. Find out more here.