The Desk Hoteling offering provides access to Robin, a tool used for desk and room reservation in a hoteled or shared working environment. Administrators of Robin can create maps of workspaces with reservable desks and spaces. Once a workspace has been created, users of the space can reserve desks or rooms using Robin’s web interface or mobile app.
Schools or centers opting to use Robin will be assigned a Robin campus with which to create their own buildings, floorplans, and desk layouts. As Robin is an open platform, all schools’ campuses are visible to any user of the tool, although users will only be able to interact with their own campus.
Robin uses desks and spaces for reservations, which have different use cases.
Desks:
Desks can be reserved by individual users. There are three types of desks within Robin:
- Hot Desks: Hot Desks can be reserved up to one day and not in advance (same-day reservations only)
- Hotel Desks: Hotel Desks can be reserved multiple days and in advance (durations determined by the Robin admin)
- Assigned: Assigned desks can only be assigned or changed by a Robin admin and cannot otherwise be reserved.
Spaces:
Spaces within Robin are generally conference rooms or other shared spaces. There are two types of spaces:
- On-Demand spaces: Areas for ad-hoc usage; there is no calendar connected to them and they cannot be reserved in advance. On-Demand spaces do not consume licenses and there is no charge for them.
- Scheduled Space: Areas linked to a PennO365 calendar that uses can reserve in advance from Robin, much the same way as one could from Outlook. Any reservations made via Robin will be reflected in the corresponding PennO365 calendar and vice versa. Scheduled Spaces consume a Robin license and are billable.
Robin’s online documentation provides much more detail about desks, spaces, and their use cases.
User roles:
Each school or center using Robin will have one or two administrators assigned as “Campus Admins.” Campus admins have near-full access to the tool, so it is important for them to ensure that roles-based permissions are set up correctly and that their other users are assigned the correct roles. Permissions for roles can be very granular, so it is advised that Robin Campus Admins create specific roles for their users prior to onboarding them.
Granting Access to Robin via Grouper:
Robin is SSO-enabled, but will auto-provision accounts when someone without a Robin account logs in using their PennKey, so as an additional layer of security, users must be pre-cleared to access Robin via Grouper. Schools and centers using Robin will need to add their users to the “robinHoteling” folder in the “Home > Root > penn > (school/center name) > apps” path within Grouper. ISC will create this path for schools and centers new to Robin.
It is very important to note that adding a PennKey identity to a school or center’s robinHoteling path DOES NOT create the user’s account in Robin, though it does grant access. Once a user in a robinHoteling group logs into Robin using their PennKey, a user account will be automatically provisioned with a “Member” role (which cannot perform any actions in Robin). A Campus Admin will need to then need to add appropriate roles to their account.
Alternatively, prior to a user logging into Robin, a Robin account for that user can be created manually by the Campus Administrator using the user’s PennKey identity as the user account name. The Campus Admin can then assign the appropriate Role to the newly created Robin user so that upon logging in, the new user already has the appropriate Role.
Spaces and O365 considerations
When linking Spaces in Robin to O365, there are a few considerations and limitations to take into account:
Granting permission to add a room to Robin:
Each school and center will need to add the room resources they want to link to Robin to an AD group within the Groups-O365 group in ARS. The group will be named *-robin-svc-roomaccess, with * being an abbreviation of the organization’s name. (e.g. isc-robin-svc-roomaccess for ISC) Once a room resource is added to this group, it can be linked to a Space within Robin.
O365 integration limitations:
Robin communicates with O365 via a service account. While Robin can potentially “impersonate” individual O365 users, due to technical limitations and security concerns, this feature is not currently available. For this reason, personal O365 accounts cannot be linked to Robin, and there are some Robin features that require personal O365 account linkage (such as room reservation approvals) that are not currently usable.
For more detailed information about using Robin at Penn, please see our Robin Onboarding Guide.
The following are some useful links to Robin's online documentation:
Getting Started: Setting up your Workspace
Managing Office Buildings and Campuses
Assigning a Map To a Floor
Setting up Desks and Spaces on Maps
Connecting an Office 365 room to a Space
Permissions and Policies Overview
Adding Permissions to Roles
Adding and managing groups