There are a number of different ways that we calculate Utilisation. Each method can give you different insight into how your space is being used

Average Utilisation is our best metric for how busy your spaces actually are. We take both the number of visits and the duration of the visits into account to give a highly representative estimate.

For each user we see on a given day, we look at the time that the user has spent on the site. If the user spends more than 4 hours on-site, then we count that as full utilisation of that desk. If a user is on-site for less than 4 hours, we calculate the proportion of the working day that they are on site. We sum these values to get the total people count for the day and divide by capacity to get a Utilisation %. We average the working days to get the overall Utilisation figure when looking at weekly, monthly or longer periods.

Average Utilisation is the main statistic that we use in our Average Utilisation Revometer and in our top and bottom performing tiles, as we see it as the most representative stat of how the space is actually being used.

The daily total accurately indicates how many users are at the site each day. It is less processed than Average Utilisation so is closer to the raw data, but it does not take into account how long people spend at site and therefore may not be a good indication on actually how busy your spaces are.

The daily total is the total number of people on the site on any given day. When showing weekly or monthly statistics, we average the daily totals for weekdays in that period. To convert from a people count to utilisation, we divide by Capacity.

The daily total is shown on the following charts:

Peak Utilisation allows you to understand when your sites are busiest. This allows you to determine whether you are getting close to or even over 100% capacity and plan future resources, events, and promotions accordingly.

To calculate peak utilisation, we look for the time we see the highest user count at a site over the period. To convert Count to Utilisation, we then divide this number by the Capacity. Peak Utilisation is not available when looking at more than one site, as the peaks will often occur at different times at different sites. It can be used at the Site or Occupier level.

Peak utilisation is shown on the following charts:

It is important to understand the capacity of your sites and spaces in order to calculate the percentage of space being utilised. You can configure your spaces and sites to add capacity and sqft/m2 data here.

When looking at the Site level or above, we take the Site Capacity figure to work out utilisation percentages.

When looking at the Occupier level, we take the Capacities of any private spaces they have occupied in the platform and sum these to get their capacity at that site.

We categorise WiFi users based on the data within the platform to provide more insight into the users at your sites. Please ensure you keep your data in the platform up to date so we can properly categorise users.

Resident users have private office space at the site they are visiting. Their occupier company has an active contract in the platform that includes occupancy of one or more spaces.

Members are normally hot-desk users. They have a contract at the site they are visiting, but no dedicated space

Guests are users who are not registered within essensys Platform and have joined the WiFi Guest network. If a user joins WiFi guest and their email address is registered in the system, we will recategorise them into the correct type.

Roamers have a contract as either a Resident or Member at a different site from the one they are visiting.

Staff users are users who work for the space operator. They are added under Account -> Staff Members within the platform rather than under a specific operator.

Intelligence Engine combines multiple data sources to calculate Utilisation and DX. The following data sources are used to calculate utilisation metrics:

The main source of information used to calculate Utilisation is the WiFi accounting logs. These record every device that connects to the network, which Wireless Access Point it is connected to, how long it is connected, and who the user connecting is. The essensys Platform uses enterprise-grade authentication that allows us to track devices and return them to individual users.

essensys provides a system of contracts that allows users to be linked to services and spaces on the platform. We use this data to properly categorise users and provide breakdowns at the occupier and user level. You must update your contracts with any changes so we can properly track your usage.

In order to calculate Utilisation, we need to understand the capacity of your sites and spaces. Please make sure that you have entered the Capacity for all Sites, Floors and Occupiable spaces.

We can track users to which Access point they are connecting. However, these Access Points usually have very technical names, meaning these insights are useless. Please ensure you take the time to Name the Access points based on the zone of the building they are in so that you can get the best level of insight from the platform.

The raw WiFi Accounting data gives us a detailed and accurate representation of the users at the site connected to the network. However, this raw data requires complex processing to provide accurate counts of users and track their location within the building. We use our proprietary algorithms to convert this raw data into usable insight.

It is common for users to briefly connect to the WiFi at one of your sites without actually spending time in the building. This is especially true as essensys Platform allows seamless roaming between sites, meaning that users may end up on the WiFi at a site they have never visited. We look for and remove very short sessions from our data to ensure that Drive By's do not influence our statistics.

We track users, not devices. This means we combine sessions from devices registered to the same users and only track a user once. It is possible for a user to leave one device at their desk while moving to another part of the building with another one. We, therefore, always track the device that moves to ensure that we have the best overall picture.

We know that users may leave devices in the office overnight that may maintain a connection to the WiFi. This has the potential to skew our results. We Look for these sessions and remove them from the data to make the results more accurate.

essensys Platform allows wired devices to be connected to the network. We do not track wired devices as they are normally permanently connected and do not give an accurate reflection of utilisation. Users with wired devices will nearly always have a mobile device that we can track via WiFi.

When calculating averages, we only consider office hours, which are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.