Good team communication is key to success, and that’s why Microsoft Teams has become a leader in business collaboration applications. In addition to standard communication options, it offers much more, becoming the team management center! The Bookado integration for Microsoft Teams extends the application’s capabilities with the option of easy and quick booking of conference rooms and desks.
The integration of Bookado for Teams
When we built Bookado, we knew that it was essential that it sound easily integrate with Microsoft Teams, otherwise it would be instantly dismissed by half the organizations in the world. However, we also knew that integration alone was not enough. In spite of the excellent workspace and time organization that can be achieved through Teams, we need to make sure that the Bookado integration made it better. In fact, we need to make sure that it was better at first glance, so that users would fall in love with their new booking system rather than reverting straight back to what was known and familiar.
How does Bookado improve the use of Teams?
With Teams, we managed to create that at-first-glance impression on the user through an instantly intuitive and visually more pleasing interface than what Teams itself offers. It’s only a minor tweak in the application logic but it’s one that we believe is more in line with the way the human brain works—and with the way the modern office operates.
With most booking systems, it is not a problem to find a room a week or month in advance. But in modern offices, where people meet spontaneously and need rooms on demand, they need a system that shows them availability of all resources at a glance.
Bookado designates spaces with colors so users can instantly see the availability of any room through an ‘available now’, ‘available soon’, and ‘busy’ key.
Booking rooms (and more) in Teams with Bookado
There are other features such as filtering rooms by resource or booking desks in advance as companies limit the number of people in the office as a result of the pandemic. With each feature, the key is to ask “How can we make this better than what the user already has here?” For us, it always comes back to the same point in our product design process. We aim to:
– Deliver something that doesn’t feel like it is built outside of the MS Teams system, because it works seamlessly with the wider framework
– Create an interface that is so intuitive and good looking that it actually delights the user
This is the right approach to take when building such an integration with a huge system like Teams or Google Calendar. Rather than entering with the mindset “It will be good for our business when we have a Bookado and MS Teams integration”, the thinking should always be “It will be great for users when they have a Bookado and MS Teams integration”.
It’s important to look at these powerful engines as tools that can always be improved in some way, and to take on that challenge with the end user in mind.
