We have said once or twice that it is always better to solve problems before they even occur. Luckily for you, most of them can be resolved later too. Two weeks ago, we wrote about problems we had during an acquisition of another company. Instead of writing complaints, we prefer to write lines of code. What is the result? A mobile application called Office App.
Why should I use it?
Before diving into the specifics, let’s talk about questions that are probably running through your head right now: “what the heck is this OfficeApp” and “why on earth do I need it?”. The Office App is an application which intends to be a way to improve your daily office processes like onboarding new employees, finding people and places or booking meeting rooms. Sounds cool, right?
Here is a list of main benefits you can gain by using the app:
- Save time – don’t spend any more minute on asking every new employee you see “hey, what’s your name again?”, looking for a printer, trying to find available meeting room or a co-worker you have been e-mailing with for two last weeks
- Improve your office – it’s not about the pursuit of perfection. It’s about making employees feel like home. Every employee can report office related issues directly to the Office Manager through his or her phone.
- Check meeting rooms availability – you can always check if anyone is inside a meeting room by using our application
- Find people and places easily – it’s especially helpful when new employees come to your office or when you are travelling to another company office in a different city
- Boost the onboarding process – the implementation is easy and fast for any organisation. Just a few moments and you are ready to go!
As you can see, the benefits are wide-ranging, both for employer and employees.
Features you haven’t even dreamed about
We have decided to build this application because we wanted to solve problems we had in our office. The idea was simple – our goal was to apply digital transformation concepts to make office management easier. It wasn’t easy to achieve that goal. We had to use some tips and tricks together with creativity and experience to make the application look and work exactly as we planned. There is still room for improvement, but the OfficeApp is awesome already!
Key features are:
Virtual office map – including:
- Finding anyone in the office in a fast way
- Indoor positioning (beacons based)
- Locating important places (e.g. kitchen, restroom)
- Checking if a room is reserved or occupied
Office management made simple – including:
- Booking conference and meetings rooms
- Reporting issues to the Office Manager
- Using the Availability Reporting Tool
- Locating all printers in the office
Cloud-based solution:
- It’s a ready-to-sell product based on Microsoft Azure Cloud
- It’s integrated with Microsoft Office365
- The implementation is fast and easy for any type of organisation
- It can be managed by using Web Panel Account
Fascinating development process
The OfficeApp project is being created by a team of 15 people. They are using an Agile methodology, sprints and daily meetups to achieve the best results possible.
Team structure:
- Back-end team responsible for database structure, admin panel and communication API – 4 developers with advanced skills in Python
- Android team – 4 developers
- IOS team – 4 developers
- 1 Software Quality Assurance Engineer
- 1 Project Manager
- 1 person responsible for creating hardware devices needed required to check if a meeting room is occupied
We are still working on our application but the history of the development is already quite long:
- Creation of maps with possibility to mark rooms and people in the office
- Possibility to suggest improvements in the office
- Conference rooms booking system
- Language of the application depends on the language on the user’s mobile phone
- MS Office365 integration
- Possibility to add more than one company to the application
- Possibility to connect different email addresses within one account in the OfficeApp
- Possibility to configure colour scheme for a specific company
- Displaying room availability in a front of the door
- Integration with Google accounts
- Integration with Facebook accounts
- Checking if there is anyone in the room by using movement detectors
Where and how to use it?
Our application will be useful for you especially if you have a fast-growing company or if your company has branches in different cities or even countries. But let’s not limit ourselves because a list of possibilities is much larger. Let’s take a look at them:
- Checking rooms or places availability (restrooms, conference and meeting rooms, courtrooms, tennis courts, etc.) – no more awkward moments when you enter into a middle of important management meeting
- Supporting the alarm system – an easy way to check if there is anyone still in the office
- Improving the office – report any issue or idea regarding the office that comes to your mind
- Setting up fast meetings on the go – check if a person you want to meet with is in the office, then check if any conference room is empty, and if yes, make a reservation
Summary
As you can see, the OfficeApp can help you to digitalize many aspects of your daily office management. It depends on you whether you will use this application in a case of a company merger, a relocation to another office or when you are just struggling to find a restroom. 😉 Why not to try the Office App for yourself and your company? You can download it for free for iOS or Android. You can download it for free for iOS or Android.
More info about our application here.
