Release Notes

Improvements

• Various performance optimizations on the booking pages and for calendar synchronization.

Bug fixes

• We have fixed many bugs in different places.

Improvements

• New Analytics page: Status, for evaluating the statuses (office, mobile work, absent) specified on the start page (and later in the weekly overview) for individual time periods.
• Loading animations added to the seating plan administration.
• Administrators can change and reset their password for the standard login, even if their account is connected to an SSO service.

Bug fixes

• We have fixed many bugs in different places.

Improvements

• To further strengthen the security of desk.ly, we have introduced a verification process when linking an SSO login for the first time. Every user who connects a (Microsoft or Google) SSO login for the first time must confirm this via a link in the automatically sent e-mail from desk.ly.
• Performance optimization of HR synchronization.
• Various minor improvements to the Analytics pages.
• Various technical measures to continuously improve the security of desk.ly.

Bug fixes

• We have fixed many bugs in different places.

Improvements

• Renamed the status "Home Office" to "Mobile Work", to capture the varying models of mobile work better.
• Several pages have received new loading animations.

Bug fixes

• We have fixed many bugs in different places.

New Features

• Our new start page with the express booking feature is now generally available. We'll be optimizing the experience in the coming weeks to give you an even easier and better way to connect with your colleagues and find the best place to work!
• We've given our administration area some much needed user interface love. You can now access all admin pages from its own navigation and more easily and comfortably switch between different areas.
• A whole new admin dashboard awaits you in our new administration area and provides a quick overview of today's workload and the status of your team as well as a forecast for the next seven days.
• Our new occupation analytics page allows you to easily and quickly dive into the usage of your spaces. Get insights into the occupation levels for all your locations, floors and rooms across any desired time frame. More information on this feature in our desk.ly help centre.
• With our new location manager feature, you can now set which desk.ly managers may only see and edit the assigned locations. This not only applies to the seating plan administration, but also to bookings and our new analytics features as well as to anything that managers may see and do, now and in the future.

New Features

• HR synchronization now includes an Absence sync for all compatible HR systems like Personio. When approved absences from the HR system collide with resource bookings in desk.ly, the bookings are deleted and the resources freed. Which (if any) absence types trigger the automatic deletion can be configured by the desk.ly administrator. Contact us to get your HR system integrated with desk.ly!
• Single-Sign-On logins can be made mandatory, so logins using usernames and passwords are prevented for users that are not administrators.

Improvements

• Resources are now ordered by a more natural ordering, so that numbers are counted upwards properly (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 20, 21, 22...) instead of alphabetically (1, 10, 11, 2, 20, 21, 3, 30...). This helps with the correct ordering of for example seat names during the booking process.
• Characteristics/features on resources are now always ordered alphabetically.
• When logging in to desk.ly, the users are now logged in simultaneously on the default subdomain "app" as well as any potential custom subdomain that has been chosen in the System Settings.
• When uploading a new profile picture, users can now choose and clip the desired part of the uploaded image.
• Zones on the maps now show profile pictures or initials of all users that are booked into the zone.
• Reworked the OpenID Connect login methods and added a new Confidential Application method for OpenID connections with a secret key for more security and better compliance with IT security policies. The Confidential Application method is currently still in Beta, but expected to be compatible with all previous existing methods of OpenID Connect integrations.
• Manually created users that are created as inactive do not receive an initial welcome mail. The welcome mail is sent only when the user is activated for the first time.

Bug fixes

• The check-in popup on the home page should now show up every time a check-in is required as soon as the home page is opened.
• When user accounts are automatically created during Single-Sign-On with a Microsoft Login, their e-mail address is always set to the e-mail address in the Azure AD. The AD login name ("UPN") is now only used as a fallback if no e-mail address is transmitted or available.
• Corrected the labels of Azure-ID and Google-ID fields in user administration and added OIDC information.

Improvements

• Reworked and improved Microsoft Login for better compatibility with MS/Azure Active Directory Logins. Should fix issues with failing logins due to conditional access rules in AD and/or missing MFA requests when logging in via desk.ly.

Bug fixes

• Fixed some issues with QR code recognition under special circumstances.
• Fixed some issues where after scanning a QR code and logging in, the home page was shown instead of the desired booking or confirmation page.
• Customers with large amounts of bookings should now experience a much improved performance of the administration booking list.

New Features

• New resource: Meeting Rooms. A separate resource that can be booked in 15 minute intervals parallel to any seat or zone booking. This initial version allows meeting rooms to be created and booked within desk.ly. We're continuing work on our calendar integration feature (Outlook 365/Google Workspace), which will soon enable integrating your existing calendar meeting room resources with desk.ly to synchronize bookings between the systems.
• New user role below Admin: Manager. Allows access to the Dashboard, Booking list, User management, Plans, Features and Permission groups. Does not allow access to System-Settings, HR synchronization, Authentication, Licence Management and Domains list.
• The new permission groups administrative page now allows all permission groups to be viewed, added, edited and deleted in one place.
• Synchronization of profile pictures from a connected Azure AD or Google Workspace (Enterprise Plus subscription needed).

Improvements

• For our security feature "Account lockout after failed logins" on the Authentication page, it is now possible to configure after how many failed login attempts a user's account is locked temporarily. The account gets unlocked automatically after 10 minutes or after an Administrator has unlocked the user's account manually.
• New e-mail notifications are being sent when a booking is deleted by another user or through an automatic process.
• Whole day bookings are once again sent as full day calendar invitations, even with Hot Desking enabled.
• Anyone who has been authorized to book for another user can now delete any booking for that user, even ones that have been made by the user themselves.
• The area filter on the booking page now shows the free capacity of all available zones on each area (floor / seating plan).
• A new dashboard on the HR synchronization page shows the number of synchronized users and groups and the time of last synchronization.
• A new button on the HR synchronization page allows you to trigger the synchronization manually, for example if you need to synchronize recent changes urgently.
• When using the HR Synchronization feature to synchronize with an Azure AD or Google Workspace, new users are created in desk.ly with the correct user type to be able to log in automatically via Microsoft or Google Single-Sign-On. Furthermore, those users do not receive the Welcome/Password change mail, since they can just log in via SSO.
• When creating new user accounts manually, through CSV import or an HR integration, the new user account's language gets set to the preferred language from system settings. New users created this way will receive their desk.ly welcome e-mails in that language.
• The list on "Who is in the office?" shows the earliest start and latest end time on users that have more than one booking for the selected date.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where the account's subdomain did not remain in the URL after logging in.
• Fixed an issue where in rare cases a display bug did not show some or all of the added permission groups on the seating plan entries, even though adding the groups itself worked successfully.
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to add new departments and teams in the seating plan administration when using the permissions feature.
• Fixed an issue where the start and end times on the "Who is in the office?" list unnecessarily used up two lines.
• Fixed an issue where searching using upper case special letters (like ÄÖÜ or ÂÊÔ etc.) did not return results.
• Floor and seating plan names on the maps are no longer hidden behind the map on certain screen/browser or map sizes.

New Features

• Hot Desking has arrived! All bookings in desk.ly can now be made in 15 minute intervals.
  • The new feature can be enabled and disabled per location as desired or required. If disabled, you can continue to use desk.ly as before.
  • Your users are no longer restricted to just three time frames and "whole day", they can book an available resource anytime they like in a "Custom" time frame (e.g. 10:15 to 12:45).
  • The preset time frames are still there for quick access to the most used periods and can be configured per location.
  • All automations of our useful Check-in feature (mail notifications, deletions of unconfirmed bookings) naturally respect the new flexible booking times. You have flexible working hours? No problem, Check-in always applies to the exact start time of each individual booking made through Hot Desking.

Improvements

• The Admin Analytics Dashboard results can now be filtered by seating plan for even more fine grained statistics.
• Duplicate usage of domains over multiple accounts can now be prevented. In the domain administration, for every configured domain, a new option can be unset to secure the respective domain to the current account.
• Added the option to disable all preset time frames (previously, at least one time frame had to be active). Now it is possible to configure that only "whole day" bookings can be made. As before, this is a per location setting.
• The QR code PDF layout has been updated and modernized. It should now optimally use the page space available and adds more useful information next to each QR code. The new 6x2 grid allows printing on standardized label formats (for example "Avery 3424" or "Herma 4363").
  • (Note: The QR codes themselves are technically still the same and old codes continue to work!)
• All bookings are now grouped by user in "Who is on the office?" - no more duplicate names!

Improvements

• The booking export now allows filtering with a date range, so the desired bookings to be exported can now be selected much easier.
• With Check-in enabled in System Settings, the booking export contains a column showing the check-in state of the bookings.
• With Check-in enabled, the booking overview shows the current Check-in state of the user's bookings.
• Significantly improved the display of tooltips on the maps, so they are not hidden behind the edge of the canvas anymore.
• E-mails from desk.ly now always have the sender name “desk.ly” instead of an empty name or “no-reply”.

Bug fixes

• When deleting the final booking in a month on the booking overview, the deleted booking also disappears visually right away and the overview is now reset properly to an "empty" state.
• A few small bugfixes have been made to improve the general usability of desk.ly.

Check-in Feature Expansion

• A new setting for the Check-in feature has been added that automatically clears booked resources when they have not been confirmed until 30 minutes into the start of the booking.
• Users are reminded 15 minutes before the start of unconfirmed booking by email to confirm (check in) their booking (push notifications in the mobile apps coming at a later date).
• Moved the options "Check-in" and "Book for others" into the "Booking" block on the system settings page.

Improvements

• Scanning of QR-Codes has been optimized and further validations have been added both on the mobile web and app version of desk.ly.
• Maps no longer have unnecessary whitespace around them. Tooltips orient themselves accordingly to stay visible.
• In all calendars for all languages, weeks now always start on Monday.
• Declining calendar invitations for bookings (e.g. in Outlook or Google Mail) no longer automatically remove the corresponding bookings in desk.ly itself. (This was too often a reason for confusion through missing bookings (especially combined with automatic decline) and rarely brought value to the booking experience.)
• Added more specific error messages during login when the user's account has not yet been activated through the initial email or has been disabled by an administrator.
• Resource (seats, zones) names are now limited to a maximum of 50 characters to prevent display issues in several places. Existing names have not been shortened automatically, but will need to be shortened manually when edited the next time.

Improvements

• The whole booking overview has been reworked and optimized and we've improved the user experience. Seat and zone bookings are now shown together in the same list. The visuals have been updated to the current version of our cards like on the "Who is in the office" page. After booking for another user, the booking overview is immediately filtered to that user's bookings. Furthermore, we made a few small bugfixes.
• Users who have not yet set a primary area are shown a tip after booking to choose a primary area for an even faster booking experience.
• The booking export now also contains the creation date of the bookings.

Improvements

• Added the currently booked resource information to the smartphone app start page.
• Resources are now filtered alphabetically on the booking page list.

Bug fixes

• Fixed positioning of the "no results found" message on the "Who is in the office" page.
• Fixed an issue, where in some cases the booking date in the confirmation/invitation mail was off by one day.
• Fixed an issue where in rare cases user deletion was not possible.
• Fixed an issue where QR codes for resources with very long names sometimes overflowed across the page break.
• Fixed many small (mostly invisible) bugs and improved general frontend performance and stability.

Improvements

• When uploading new and updated seating plan images, existing resources and their bookings are no longer deleted automatically. Changes in the pixel size/format of the image will however in most cases still require manual repositioning of the resources.
• The selected primary area is now the default filter on the "Who is in the office?" page.
• Improved visibility of the selected user on the seating maps.
• Raised the limit of the exportable lines in the booking export to 10.000 and ordered by booking date, not creation date.
• To make more space for relevant elements, we removed titles from some pages (Booking overview, Who is in the office).
• Several general technical and performance improvements.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where sometimes teams were not being displayed on users when there were more than ten teams in one department.
• Fixed an issue where locations where sometimes missing and not usable for new features in the administration UI.
• Fixed an issue with older QR codes that failed to scan in the mobile app.
• The booking list in the administration area now also shows zone bookings.
• Six more small bugfixes for special edge cases.

Improvements

• Users in Trial accounts now also always need a license to be able to use desk.ly. This allows administrators of Trial accounts to more specifically control which users may use desk.ly, for example for users that were automatically created using a SSO login method (Hint: Disable “Assign free licences automatically” in Licence overview).

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with not being able to book for another user while having already booked for oneself
• Fixed an issue with the language switching back to German after a Single-Sign-On login
• Fixed an issue while removing preferred seats
• Fixed an issue where the check-in prompt on the home page would return even after a successful check-in
• Improved scrolling speed in the list “Who is in the office” when clicking on a seat on the map
• Optimized performance of the initial loading screen

New Features

• New resource type: Zones! Add zones to your maps for more open team spaces without specific and separate seats. Set a maximum capacity and let your coworkers book with more ease.
• Set your primary area/floor instead of primary location in your personal settings for an even faster booking experience!
• Administrators can now set the license status of all users in bulk via the user import. A new column has been added for this in the import template.
• Administrators can now see more detailed meta information when editing users.

Improvements

• We reworked the map and list on "Who is in the office?". Also, profile pictures (if not available, then initials) are now shown on the seats of most maps.
• We updated all our icons for a cleaner look and added some new icons in the booking filters.
• We slightly updated the design of the calendar on the booking overview page to better show which days have bookings and which day is currently selected.
• We added a row "Active" to the user table in the Admin area to show more easily which users have been activated.
• Areas in the selection list on the page "Who is in the office?" now sorted alphabetically.
• QR codes now always link to the language used when creating the codes.
• Now showing floor and plan name on the maps.

Bug fixes

• Color and custom subdomain settings restored on the system settings page.
• Dates in the calendar invite mails are now properly formatted according to the language of the recipient.
• 7 more minor bugfixes

Improvements

• Welcome mails are not sent to users who are marked as inactive on import. Those users will then receive the welcome mail when they are activated later.
• Added legacy OIDC (Company) login option (“Simple configuration”) for broader compatibility with different identity provider models.

Bug fixes

• Finally fixed all-day calendar invites for (hopefully all versions of) Outlook.
• Increased robustness of permission model.
• Many small bugfixes.

Improvements

• Improved robustness and compatibility of OpenID Connect feature.
• Calendar filter now always jumps directly to the last selected date and does not start on "today" every time when opened.
• Improved and immediate feedback on the change password form.
• Chosen whitelabel colors now also apply to all illustrations.
• Scrollbars in certain lists now only appear when really needed.

Bug fixes

• The login screen/overlay should now not get stuck anymore.
• Previously, all-day calendar invites appeared as 0:00 events in some Outlook versions with a duration of 0. This should now be fixed. Please try and report back to us if there are still issues with invites in your calendar apps.
• Fixed an issue with redirection to the initially requested page after successful login (for example for QR code links).
• Companies in Trial or Expired as well as Companies with a licence model (Enterprise) and 0 licences (all legacy companies) can now delete themselves again.