XY Sense, a platform providing actionable occupancy intelligence for corporate real estate teams, has announced the launch of its new API. This API enables real-time integrations with several workplace experience and booking applications, including Appspace, Calven, and GoSpace.
The XY Sense Occupancy API allows businesses to easily integrate real-time sensor data into workplace experience and booking platforms. The technology relies on XY Sense’s high-precision, privacy-preserving Area Sensors that can detect occupancy down to one foot and update supported platforms every two seconds for real-time insights. By integrating with a company’s booking technology, teams can access live views of which desks and meeting rooms are currently in use, book available spaces in real time, and eliminate “ghost bookings,” where rooms and desks are booked and marked as unavailable but not actually occupied.
Shivaun Ryan, Head of Customer Success at XY Sense, notes that ghost bookings can be a real problem for workplace leaders trying to bring people back into offices. False scarcity can dissuade employees from coming to work, and wasted time spent looking for a desk or room can cause frustration. Additionally, ghost bookings create a reporting nightmare for real estate teams trying to determine which spaces are actually being used.
The XY Sense Occupancy API enables workplace experience platforms to enhance desk and room booking capabilities by integrating real-time data from occupancy sensors. By comparing the status of a booked space with the physical occupancy status reported by sensors, customers can configure their booking apps to automatically reserve a space once it is detected as occupied or release a booking if the space remains unoccupied after five or ten minutes of the start time.
According to Dan Jackson, Co-founder & Head of Product at Calven, “This live space availability integration makes the experience of finding, booking, and checking-in to spaces a truly seamless experience for our mutual customers. Integrating XY Sense helps Calven provide even smarter software for corporate real estate teams to effectively and efficiently run their workplace in a hybrid world.”
Appspace, a leading workplace experience platform serving over 2,500 companies, including 150 of the US Fortune 500, is also partnering with XY Sense to integrate its real-time data into their space management, wayfinding, and reporting tools. As stated by Paul Alley, Director of Partnerships at Appspace, “We’re always looking to integrate best-in-class solutions which help our customers unite their physical and digital workplaces. The more accurate and timely the data, the better the outcome. Our integration with XY Sense further strengthens our space management, real-time wayfinding, and reporting tools for joint customers.”
The XY Sense Occupancy API provides valuable spatial utilization data that can simplify space planning for teams implementing unassigned or agile seating in hybrid workplace models. One of the integration partners, GoSpace, is utilizing the data to power dynamic group space bookings in hybrid workplaces.
Amy Pirie, CRO at GoSpace, stated that the company thinks about space bookings differently. Rather than having individuals book their own desks, GoSpace uses a variety of data points, including historical and real-time sensor data from XY Sense, to dynamically allocate teams to a specific zone or bank of desks for the day. This approach reduces the mental load on employees and helps workplace teams make more productive use of office space in a hybrid workplace setting.
Luke Murray, Co-Founder & CTO of XY Sense, expressed his satisfaction with the real-time integrations. He believes that incorporating sensor data into the experience layer of offices can solve user experience problems that impact millions of people at work every day. He also mentioned that space utilization data has always been a powerful tool for historical real estate reporting, but with sensor hardware like XY Sense that can perform with precision in real-time, it opens up a new realm of capabilities for integration partners and joint customers.
Over the past twelve months, XY Sense has experienced rapid growth, doubling its enterprise customer base. Corporate real estate teams are turning to real-time occupancy sensor data to monitor return-to-office programs, strategically reduce real estate costs, and inform the redesign of office spaces for new hybrid working models. XY Sense now powers occupancy intelligence in over 17 countries for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including CBRE, Xero, Toast, Mirvac, Fidelity International, and leading global financial and pharmaceutical firms.
The XY Sense Occupancy API offers both real-time and historical (up to one million change events) occupancy data feeds, although integration configuration capabilities do vary by partner.
