How desk booking software can help colleges go back to school and businesses return to work

(BPT) - Since the COVID-19 pandemic, university administrators and employers alike are searching for ways to welcome people back safely. Their needs are complex: Higher education institutions must schedule for multiple buildings and even multi-campus environments while trying to maintain social distancing, and businesses need to find ways for employees to safely return to the workplace, along with visitors, vendors, and clients.

Recent technological advances have provided solutions, offering office and university administrators useful tools to help maintain social distancing, schedule extra cleaning — and even initiate contact tracing when someone becomes infected.

Here are ways this new desk booking software can help colleges and companies get going again.

Campuses

Leading cloud-based business software company Epazz, Inc. (Ticker: EPAZ) has developed desk & room booking software called DeskFlex, which is becoming instrumental in helping higher education institutions with their unique scheduling needs.

This software system allows schools to seamlessly schedule multiple classrooms, meeting spaces, and even reserve equipment for faculty and staff. The system ensures that rooms have occupants within the safe capacity, helping the staff and students maintain social distancing. Faculty and students can quickly check classroom reservations, preventing confusion, double-booking or lost reservations. Students can even use the room scheduling software to reserve study spaces, lab spaces or club events.

Universities can also use advanced Bluetooth beacons installed in hallways and other areas to detect how many students are present, helping to prevent overcrowding.

All of these innovations work together to establish and enforce health and safety guidelines across a college campus.

Offices

Similarly, companies can use DeskFlex to schedule desk or office space, ensuring that employees are maintaining social distancing. Vacancy sensors monitor which workstations are available, allowing employees to book a vacant desk before arriving to avoid unnecessary contact. Software tools like this are essential to managing office space, improving productivity and allowing staff to return to work in a safe environment.

The system even allows for automatic notification of cleaning staff after a desk or office reservation ends, allowing time to sanitize the space before the next employee arrives.

Just as with universities, employers can use Bluetooth beacons throughout offices to automatically count who is there, to limit capacity in any given area.

DeskFlex hardware reduces the need to touch shared surfaces. For example, users can check-in and out from room reservations using the QR code scanner of contactless room displays and FlexCube devices. Lobby kiosks make it easy for users to find available workstations with just a few taps on the screen.

Contact tracing feature

Advanced Bluetooth technology also allows businesses or universities to conduct contact tracing. When a student or employee checks into a building, the Bluetooth beacons regularly update their signal to a central server. It keeps a record of users' login activities, reservations and location in an office or on campus. When users move around the office or school, other Bluetooth beacons pick up their mobile signals and register their position.

DeskFlex's Contact Tracing software screens students, faculty, employees and registered users for symptoms of coronavirus upon logging into the system. If a student or employee tests positive for COVID-19, the Contact Tracing tool can run a report on that user's geographical data. Administrators can analyze the user's data and create a report listing other users who were present in the same location at the same time as the infected individual. The employer or school can then immediately locate and recommend quarantine for those users.

Proactive virus defense

Thanks to machine learning, recent software innovations provide facial biometric information upon someone's entry into the building. Then the system automatically alerts management when it detects elevated temperatures or people not wearing protective masks. When someone is not wearing a mask or has an elevated temperature, the system will deny them entry to the building, helping to protect the health and safety of everyone at that facility.

Compared to other room booking providers, only DeskFlex can effectively address the coronavirus threat in the workplace with its latest software and hardware innovations. Built-in customization features also let each business or institution modify it according to that organization's needs.

Visit DeskFlex.com to learn how to help your school or business get back to work.