Operate Space Publisher

Advertise your Meeting Rooms to a wider audience using third party aggregators

Alex Taylor avatar
Written by Alex Taylor
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

Space Publisher is a tool that allows you to publish your meeting rooms to office space aggregator platforms. The aggregators that Space Publisher works with at the moment are: meetingrooms.com, liquidspace.com and davincivirtual.com

Office space aggregators will list your meeting rooms on their platforms and thus make them available to their audience. Customers will have the possibility to see your rooms' availability in real time, book through the aggregator's website, and then Space Publisher will receive their booking and add it to your Operate system.  

Benefits

More Exposure for your Space

Publishing your space through an aggregator is a great way to promote your offering to a specialized audience, who visit these aggregators precisely because they are interested in booking the type of space that you provide. 

Convenient Booking Process

All you need to do is sign up with an aggregator and publish your space. That's it! Your space will be available online, for customers to book on the aggregator's platform. When they do, your bookings will automatically sync to Operate.

How Space Publisher Works

Here is the overall process that you will go through, while using Space Publisher: 

  1. Create your rooms in Operate - Add Meeting Rooms and make them available online (see below).

  2. Sign up with an Office Space Aggregator - Choose one or more of the supported aggregators and sign up with them. See here for more information.

  3. Configure Space Publisher - Ensure that your space is published and your desired promoter is enabled in Operate. 

  4. Operate and your selected promoter will sync - Within a few minutes of setting your Location and Rooms to 'visible', they will be available to the aggregator

  5. Configure your rooms with the aggregator - You can now work with the aggregator to set your rooms live on their site. Depending on the aggregator, this can involve talking directly to their team, or managing your rooms on their portal. See here for more information about the aggregators and how to configure your rooms with them. 

  6. Customers book your space on the aggregator's website - They will follow the booking process that your chosen platform uses, but they will see the real time availability of your space. 

  7. You receive your bookings - Bookings made through the aggregator will come through to Operate and will be displayed onto your calendar as web bookings, while the aggregator itself will be listed as the Lead Source. This prevents double bookings from occurring, even if you also sell your space directly to your customers. If a booking is cancelled, it will be removed from your calendar. The bookings may be displayed under the final customer's account (in which case Operate will automatically create an Account and Contact for them) or under the aggregator's account. This will depend on their own booking policy. The booking will include all of the details that the aggregator will pass to Operate, including the amount paid bt the customer. 

NOTE: If you are using the Operate Portal, bookings that come through it will also be marked as Web Bookings on the Calendar. The easiest way to distinguish Space Publisher Bookings at the moment is to look at the Lead Source, where the aggregator is listed.

How Pricing Works

The prices you have set for your Meeting Rooms in Operate will sync to the aggregator at the External Rate

If you would like to use a different price for Space Publisher rooms, you can set it on the aggregator's platform and when booked, meeting rooms will sync to Operate at that price, without affecting your Operate records and any other pricing you might be using when booking directly to customers.  

How Billing Works

When a booking comes through to Operate, it will be recorded as invoiced. Due to the booking process involving the aggregator as an intermediary and to the fact that these bookings will involve commissions paid to the aggregator, you do not need to bill the customer directly for the booking. This is the responsibility of the aggregator.

You will only bill the customer directly for any additional services, when the booking takes place (e.g. for catering).

To be paid for your bookings, you will need to manually invoice the aggregator.

Configuring Space Publisher

There are several steps to take in order to configure Space Publisher and use it to book your spaces. 

Step 1 - Create your Meeting Rooms

Create Meeting Room products. Each room must have a maximum capacity, and at least one Layout Style. You will also need to check 'Make Available Online'.

Step 2 - Sign up with an Office Space Aggregator

To be able to list space on an Aggregator Platform, you will first need to sign up to an account and start a partnership with them. See here for more information.

Step 3 - Install Space Publisher

Go to your Operate Settings > Integrations and search for Space Publisher. Click Install, then click Open

Step 4 - Publish Your Locations

Operate will now list all of your locations. You can choose which ones you would like to publish through your aggregator(s) of choice, simply by toggling the switch on the right to the ON position. (The toggle is grey when turned off and blue when turned on). 

Step 5 - Publish your Meeting Rooms

Once your location is published, click on its name and you will be directed to a list of all rooms available at the selected location. Turn ON the switch on the right of each meeting room you want to publish. 

Step 6 - Manage Promoters

In the Manage Promoters section, you can switch on the aggregator(s) where you want your space to be published (and with which you have signed up).
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Step 7 - Ask your Aggregator to Publish your Rooms 

See here for more information. 

Each of the aggregators will need the Location and Resource IDs for the rooms which you would like to list. 

Your Location ID is listed next to each of your locations in Space Publisher.

Select a location to see each of your rooms and the associated Resource ID.

Viewing and Managing your Space Publisher Bookings

Space Publisher Bookings

Bookings from the aggregator will automatically appear in your calendar as a Web Booking. 


As soon as payment for the booking has been processed by the aggregator, the booking status will show Confirmed.

The Lead Source will display the name of the Aggregator through which the booking came.

Further details about the booking, including the number of people, layout and any additional services requested will be listed in the calendar booking notes. Some aggregators will also provide a link here which you can use to see more details about the booking. 

A new Account will be created with the company name associated with the booking, with the Lead Source listed as the aggregator, and a Contact will be created for user who made the booking. 

Cancellations

If a customer cancels their booking, it will automatically disappear from your calendar in Operate. 

If you would like to cancel a booking, you will need to contact the aggregator as well as removing the booking from Operate to ensure that the room is available for further bookings.

Invoicing for Space Publisher Bookings

The invoicing of your bookings is outlined in your agreement with your aggregator. We have provided you with a Report to verify which bookings have been made and the details of each. If you want to invoice for these through Operate, you can add the aggregators as an Account, and manually issue an invoice to them for the relevant amount.  

Space Publisher Reports

A report is available in the Reports area which lists each booking which has been made at any of your locations.

The report outlines, for the previous month:

  • Location

  • Resource (room) 

  • Time and date at which the booking was received

  • Date of the booking and start and end time 

  • Account name associated with the booking

  • Total price (including any additional services purchased via the aggregator)

If you want to run the report for a different time period, select Edit when viewing the report and change the Date Filter.

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