All companies face a common problem: how to manage their meeting rooms following their growth and process optimization.
A task that begins by being purely administrative is often managed with a paper at the entrance of each meeting room.
DXspark, as part of the innovation drive in the MoOngy group, has been challenged to find a solution for managing the meeting rooms of MoOngy's new home building. Come visit us!
In the search for solutions we found product subscriptions and solutions as a service, to meet almost all identified requirements. However, with the aim of exembracing and demonstrating our competence in digitial transformation, we decided to design a root system, from its design to its physical production. The materialization of this system implied a small number of dependencies and a low adoption impact in the organization.
With the adoption of Microsoft Office 365 throughout the MoOngy universe, we have supported the entire system in the room management functionality (features) provided by this system. We designed a tablet solution in Xamarin.Forms, which uses Azure API Management to communicate with Microsoft Office 365 graphQL. This integration allows for simplified use of meeting room diagoning through Microsoft Outlook without any further development.
We involved mobile xamarin.forms development skills (prepared for .NET MAUI), UI/UX for the development of tablet application interactions, as well as 3D squematic design through Tinkercad, development of APIs in Azure APIM and even soldering iron was used.
Microsoft Office 365
Rooms have been configured as Office features, also recording their characteristics and capabilities, with the markup policies associated with each Office365 group. For example, meeting appointment in the Administration room can only be done by certain groups.
Microsoft APIM – Azure API Management
We used an APIs framework that receives room marking requests and redirects orders to Microsoft Office 365 graphQL. Endpoints have also been developed that receive the Callback from Microsoft with the acceptance of the markup, sending a token to the user who made the request.
Microsoft Outlook
Meeting room booking is done through Outlook, where we select the room in which we intend to schedule the meeting. The visual information presented indicates the capacity and availability of the rooms, at the time we select during the appointment.
After the booking is confirmed, the user is informed of the token to be used to check in to the room at the time of appointment.
Tablet and Application
We have selected the Samsung TM-290 tablet with Android due to its price and size indicated for this purpose. With a launcher and application, we guarantee that at any time the device is turned on, the meeting room management application ends up occupying the entire screen by taking the system buttons from the visible area. The application was developed with the concern of UI /UX well present, so the user can quickly and visually perceive whether the room is free, marked or in use (and what will be the duration of the meeting that is taking place).
Support Structure
We designed the CAD structures to be printed on a 3D printer using PLA. All tablets have been fixed to the wall, connected with USB wiring and step ups to keep the current and electrical voltage at sufficient levels for charging the tablets, even with 5-meter USB cables.
Final result:
For a more integrated look with the decoration, we chose to acquire frames in machined aluminum that was glued on the structures printed in PLA. Currently, all employees of the Moongy group can book meeting rooms and training through Outlook.
Many companies are in need of a meeting room management and training solution, and using microsoft office 365 features we only have to make this information available to the rooms.
Microsoft's availability of graphQL APIs enables Microsoft Office resource management, and in another light, we can also deplan a Dashboard implementation to track Scrum performance (speed, burndown chart) or CI/CD-associated pipeline executions, using Azure DevOps API, here in the context of project delivery monitoring and/or product teams.
Knowing the capability of Microsoft systems and services, the process of digital transformation becomes easier. If you're curious or have digital transformation initiatives underway, launch the challenge and we'll be here to help design the architecture and implementation.
DXspark – igniting ideas