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This guide shows you how to set up your hybrid office in anny. You will learn how to create workspaces and meeting rooms as bookable resources, connect your team through communities and SSO, and activate the weekly planner as the central booking tool for employees.

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Thinking desk sharing the anny way

With desk sharing, anny maps your physical office structure digitally. The core principle: every room is a resource, and every individual workspace inside it is a child resource. Your team books through the booking area (weekly planner, Discover, maps). You manage everything in the admin area (resources, bookings, dashboard).

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Decision helpers: when do I use what?

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When flex desk and when fixed desk?

Rule of thumb: Start with flex desks for everyone and set up fixed desks only for teams that really need a permanent spot.
For this use case, activate these features under Account settings → Features: Multiple availability with assignment, Communities, Global search. Maps and Check-In are optional, but recommended. Child Resources require Multiple availability with assignment. Multiple availability of resources only adds a quantity on one resource and does not create individual desks.
These features work together in this use case:

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Step-by-step setup

1

Build your resource structure

In the admin area, open the menu item Resources and click New+.
  1. Create a room or area as a resource (e.g. “Open Space 1st floor”).
  2. Add an image, a description and properties (floor, building, capacity, equipment).
  3. Switch to the Availability tab and activate the Child resource toggle. Then add the individual workspaces as child resources.
Use a clear naming convention: for large companies something like “B1.1.001” (building.floor.desk), for smaller ones “Open Space, Desk 3”.
2

Define booking options

Open the resource and switch to the Booking option tab. Click +Add and +New.Recommended settings for workspaces:
  • Name: Daily booking
  • Period: Fixed duration, 1 day
  • Booking interval: 1 day
  • Lead time: -8 hours (otherwise the current day is no longer bookable after the day starts)
  • Advance booking period: 7-14 days
  • Automatically accept all bookings: Activated
  • Allow recurring bookings: Optional (e.g. for fixed office days)
Booking options live centrally in your account. Create a daily booking once and link it to all workspace resources. -8 hours lead time keeps today bookable for 8 hours after the start. Details: Booking option.
3

Set up a community

In the admin area, open Communities and create a new community (e.g. “Company All”).
  1. Link the resources that should be visible for this community.
  2. Set the visibility to Visible and bookable for members.
  3. Add members: manually by email or automatically through SSO and attribute mapping.
For different teams or locations, create separate communities (e.g. “Berlin location”, “Management”).
Should one team see another team’s bookings without being able to book themselves? Use the Observer role in the community settings.
4

Configure SSO

Open Settings > Security > Single Sign-On and set up the connection to your identity provider (Microsoft Entra ID or Google Workspace).
  1. Enter the metadata URL.
  2. Generate the Wayfless link for direct forwarding to anny.
  3. Optionally set up attribute mapping, so employees are assigned to the right community automatically.
Your team then signs in with the company login. No separate account needed.
5

Create maps and floor plans (recommended)

In the admin area, open Maps and upload a floor plan.
  1. Place objects (desks, rooms) on the plan.
  2. Connect each object with the matching child resource.
  3. In the map view, employees see which desks are free (green) and where their colleagues sit.
Train one admin with basic map skills, so desks can be rearranged quickly whenever the office layout changes.

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Typical examples

1

Create the resource

Create the resource “Open Space 1st floor” with an image and properties (floor: 1, capacity: 10, equipment: monitor, docking station).
2

Add child resources

Under Availability, set the type to Child Resources and add 10 workspaces (“Desk 1.001” to “Desk 1.010”).
3

Link the booking option

Link the central booking option “Daily booking” (fixed duration: 1 day, lead time: -8 hours, advance booking period: 14 days).
4

Assign a community

Assign the resource to the community “Company All”. All employees with SSO access see and book the desks.
5

Place them on the map

Open the floor plan “1st floor” and connect the 10 desk objects with the child resources.
1

Create the resource

Create the resource “Meeting room Alster” with properties (capacity: 8, equipment: whiteboard, video conferencing).
2

Create the booking option

Create a new booking option “Flexible booking” with: flexible duration (min: 30 minutes, max: 4 hours), booking interval: 30 minutes, allow recurring bookings: activated.
3

Recurring booking for the jour fixe

Employees book a recurring booking through the weekly planner (e.g. every Tuesday from 10:00 to 11:00). The resource is blocked automatically for all following dates.

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Additional settings & options

Global booking rules

Limit the maximum number of bookings per day or into the future, so that your employees cannot block too many desks at the same time.Learn more

Outlook Add-In

Book meeting rooms directly from Outlook and invite external guests to your appointments, without having to open the anny interface.Learn more

Maps & interactive floor plans

Visualize rooms and desks on interactive floor plans. Employees can see which desks are free and book them directly from the map view.Learn more

Communities

Control visibility and access to resources per team, location or department. Assign members automatically via SSO and attribute mapping.Learn more

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FAQ

As a rule, companies need 4-10 days for the full setup and rollout, depending on the number of locations and resources.
Yes. Besides the weekly planner in the browser, employees can book through the anny app (iOS/Android), the MS Teams app and the Outlook Add-In.
Use the global booking rules under Settings > Booking rules. There you can define, for example, that a maximum of 1 booking per day and a maximum of 10 bookings into the future are allowed.
Yes. If you activate the function in the booking option, employees can switch workspaces or adjust the date and time. For paid bookings, price changes are settled automatically.
Under Settings > Privacy you can define anonymisation periods. For desk sharing we recommend anonymisation after 2-4 weeks: booking data is kept, personal data (names, emails) is removed.
Good luck with the setup! 🥳