First things to know about bookable desks in Microsoft Teams

Need to grab a desk quickly? If you’re working a hybrid schedule and need a place to land in your office for the day, you can reserve a bookable desk. With Teams desktop client, you can make a bookable desk your personal workstation by reserving it in advance or simply by plugging in when you arrive. Even if you haven’t booked a desk ahead of time, the desk will be reserved for you for the rest of the day upon connecting.

Notes:

Bookable desks are currently available on Teams Desktop for Windows and Mac.
Bookable desks must be set up in advance by your IT admin. If you’re not sure whether your organization has set up bookable desks, check with your admin.

Setting up bookable desks in Microsoft Teams

Automatic work location detection cmdlet

Create a desk pool or individual desk in Places

Plug into a bookable desk

When you connect to a bookable desk, a meeting automatically appears on your calendar, reserving the desk for the rest of that day. You’ll also see a notification in your Activity feed.

Screenshot showing a bookable desk reservation notification in the Activity tab in Teams.

Notes:

If you plug in to a bookable desk between 8AM and 5PM, the reservation is auto-created from the time you plug in until 5PM on the same day.
If you plug in outside 8AM to 5PM, the reservation will be auto-created for two hours, starting from the time you plugged in.
You can edit or cancel your reservation through the calendar invite in Teams or Outlook.

Reserve a desk pool or individual desk in advance

Bookable desks are set up in advance by your IT admin. A designated area of one or more desks is called a workspace or desk pool, which is like a neighborhood in your office. A specific seat in your office (like the desk by the window) is an individual desk.

If you reserve a seat in the desk pool or an individual desk in advance, you’re all set. Instead of reserving the seat when you connect to a bookable desk, you’ll see a confirmation message, letting you know that you are in the right spot and ready to start the day.

Screenshot showing reservation confirmation of bookable desk in Teams activity feed upon plugin.

You can reserve a desk ahead of time using Teams or Outlook.

Note: Individual desk booking is available as part of Teams Premium, an add-on license that provides additional features to make Teams events more personalized, intelligent, and secure. To get access to Teams Premium, contact your IT admin.

Using Teams:

Go to your calendar on the left side of Teams and select New meeting.
Set the day and time you’d like to reserve a desk.
In the Add location field, type the name of the desk pool or individual desk you’d like to book. You may need to switch off the Online meeting toggle.
Select Save.

Using Outlook:

From your calendar, select New Meeting.
Set the day and time you’d like to reserve a desk.
If you know the name of the desk pool you’d like to book, type it in the location field. You can also use Room Finder, or Places finder if available to browse desk pools.
Select Send to add the reservation to your calendar. If available, you can reserve a desk pool or individual desk by selecting Desk underneath the New event dropdown menu.

Tip: To cancel a reservation, delete the meeting from your Teams or Outlook calendar.

Using Places:

Navigate to the Places app.
Select Help me find a desk.
You can narrow down your search by applying a building or floor filter.

Automatically update your location upon plug in

When you plug into a bookable desk, you have the option to automatically update your work location to In the office or a specific building, depending on how your admin has configured options for your org. The detected location lasts until the end of your working hours. If you plug in after work hours, the location will be set until 11:59 PM that day.

A banner appears at the top of Teams when you first plug into a bookable desk. Select Set my location automatically to turn this setting on.

Screenshot of banner that appears when you plug into a bookable desk.

To turn this setting on or off:

Go to Settings and more > Privacy.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to find Manage my work location. This setting is turned off by default.
Use the toggle to turn on or off Automatically set my work location to office across all devices when connecting to my organization's networks and devices.

You can still change your work location after plugging into a bookable desk. Simply select your profile picture, select your work location under your current status, and choose from the available options.

Notes:

If you have opted to not share your work location, you can still opt-in to automatic location detection. Your detected location is only visible to you in your profile card. It is not shared with others.
If you don't see the banner notification or aren't able to turn on this option, check with your IT department.

First things to know about bookable desks in Microsoft Teams

Plug into a bookable desk