Microsoft Teams has become the digital workplace for millions of employees. Meetings, messages, calls and collaboration all happen in one place, so if your organisation operates a hybrid workplace, it makes sense for desk booking to happen there too.
There are now several desk booking platforms that integrate with Microsoft Teams, alongside Microsoft’s own workplace functionality. But the depth of those integrations varies considerably.
Some allow employees to find and book workplace spaces without leaving Teams. Others use Teams primarily for notifications or as a route back to another application. So, what should you be looking for?
Why integrate desk booking with Microsoft Teams?
One of the biggest advantages is adoption. Every additional piece of workplace software creates another application employees need to remember to use. If your organisation already runs on Microsoft Teams, putting desk booking there removes some of that friction.
- See which desks are available
- View an office floor plan
- Book or cancel a desk
- Find where colleagues are sitting
- Book meeting rooms
- Reserve parking spaces
- View upcoming bookings
- See who else is coming into the office
For IT teams, there is another side to the equation. If you are already using Microsoft 365, it is worth considering how your workplace platform works with Microsoft Entra ID, Single Sign-On, SCIM and Outlook, as well as Teams itself. A good integration can make deployment and ongoing administration much simpler.
Not every Microsoft Teams integration is the same
This is where the detail matters. A supplier saying it “integrates with Microsoft Teams” does not necessarily tell you what employees can actually do inside Teams.
At one end of the scale, an integration might simply send a Teams notification or provide a link that opens another application. At the other, employees can access the booking experience directly inside Teams, authenticate using their Microsoft identity and complete the whole process without moving between different systems.
Microsoft Single Sign-On
Employees should not have to remember another password just to book a desk. Microsoft SSO allows them to authenticate using their existing organisational Microsoft account.
Microsoft Entra ID and SCIM
User management becomes particularly important as an organisation grows. Adding and removing employees manually might be manageable with 30 people. It is considerably less attractive with 3,000. SCIM provisioning can automate the creation, updating and removal of users based on your organisation’s identity provider, helping IT teams keep workplace access aligned with the employee directory.
Outlook integration
Teams might be where employees communicate, but Outlook remains an important part of the Microsoft 365 environment. Calendar integration becomes particularly useful when desk and workplace booking starts to overlap with meetings, rooms and employees’ existing schedules.
Desk booking directly inside Microsoft Teams with Viewteam
Viewteam has been designed to fit naturally into a Microsoft-based workplace. Employees can book desks, meeting rooms and parking spaces through the Viewteam Microsoft Teams app on desktop or mobile, as well as through a web browser.
The important part is that Teams is not simply being used to send a booking notification. Employees can see interactive office floor plans, check availability and find the space they want from within the familiar Teams environment.
They can also see who else is booked into the office. That turns desk booking into something more useful than simply reserving a seat. Employees can decide which day to come in based on their colleagues’ plans and choose a desk near the people they want to work with.
What does the IT setup look like?
For IT teams, what happens behind the booking screen matters too. Viewteam supports Microsoft Single Sign-On, allowing employees to access the platform using their Microsoft account.
For organisations requiring automated lifecycle management, the Enterprise plan also supports SCIM provisioning through Microsoft Entra ID, allowing users to be provisioned, updated and removed automatically. Outlook calendar integration is also available on Enterprise, allowing bookings to fit more closely into an organisation’s existing Microsoft workflow.
This helps Viewteam fit into an organisation’s existing Microsoft environment without adding unnecessary administration for IT.
It is about more than Microsoft Teams
Teams integration is useful, but it should not be the only reason you choose a desk booking platform. Ultimately, the software still needs to manage the physical workplace.
Viewteam allows organisations to manage desks, meeting rooms, parking and other workplace resources across multiple offices from one platform. Interactive floor plans help employees understand the workplace visually, while amenities can be added to individual spaces so somebody can find a desk with the equipment they need.
Organisations can also combine flexible desks with permanently assigned spaces, team neighbourhoods and desks reserved for particular employees or groups. Booking rules can control things such as availability, advance booking periods and who is permitted to use particular spaces.
Tackling the no-show problem
There is also a significant difference between a booking and somebody actually using a desk. An employee might reserve a workspace on Monday for the following Thursday, then change their plans and work from home. If they do not cancel the reservation, everyone else sees an unavailable desk even though nobody is sitting there.
Viewteam’s check-in functionality helps address this. Employees can confirm that they are using their reservation and administrators can configure automatic release times. If a booking is not used, the space can be released so somebody else can book it.
This also makes workplace data more useful because managers have a clearer picture of actual attendance rather than relying solely on advance reservations.
Turning bookings into useful workplace data
Desk booking also creates useful information about how the workplace is being used. Over time, booking and utilisation data can answer some important questions: Which days are busiest? Which floors are underused? Are meeting rooms constantly booked while desks sit empty? Do we have enough parking? Is one office consistently running below capacity?
Viewteam provides workplace analytics and reporting to help organisations understand occupancy and space utilisation rather than relying on assumptions. That information can support decisions ranging from changing a floor layout to reconsidering how much office space the organisation needs.
What about Microsoft’s own desk booking functionality?
Organisations using Microsoft 365 should also consider Microsoft’s own workplace functionality, including Microsoft Places. For some organisations – particularly those wanting to manage workplace resources deeply within Microsoft’s infrastructure – that can be a logical route.
The alternative is to use a dedicated workplace platform that integrates with Microsoft Teams. With a dedicated platform such as Viewteam, Microsoft Teams becomes the familiar interface employees can use to access workplace booking, while workplace teams retain a purpose-built system for configuring floor plans, desks, rooms, parking, booking rules and utilisation reporting.
For many organisations, the question therefore is not simply whether desk booking works with Teams. It is how much of your workplace management you want Microsoft itself to manage.
What about other Teams-compatible desk booking platforms?
Viewteam is not the only desk booking system that works with Microsoft Teams. Platforms including deskbird, Kadence and Officely also offer Teams integrations alongside various workplace management features. They take slightly different approaches: some focus on broader workplace operations and real-estate management, while others put collaboration tools such as Teams and Slack at the centre of the employee experience.
When comparing them, look beyond the Teams logo on the integrations page. Ask the supplier to demonstrate exactly what an employee can do from inside Teams, which actions open another application, how Microsoft authentication works and how users are provisioned. Those differences become much more important when you are deploying the system across an entire organisation.
What should you ask before choosing a system?
A few technical questions can quickly reveal how mature a Microsoft Teams integration really is.
- Can employees see a floor plan and make a booking without leaving Teams?
- Does the platform support Microsoft SSO?
- Can users be automatically provisioned and deprovisioned through Entra ID?
- Is SCIM supported?
- Does it integrate with Outlook?
- Can IT deploy the application centrally?
- Can administrators change floor plans without technical support?
- Can you manage permanent and flexible desks together?
- What happens when somebody does not turn up?
The best solution should work for both sides of the organisation: simple enough that employees actually use it, but robust enough that IT and workplace teams can manage it effectively.
Make Teams part of the workplace experience
Microsoft Teams integration should not be about adding another button to Teams. Done properly, it removes friction from the hybrid working experience.
An employee can already be working in Teams, decide they are coming into the office tomorrow, see who else will be there, find a suitable desk and make the booking without having to think about which workplace system their organisation uses.
That is the experience Viewteam is designed to provide. Behind it, workplace teams still have the tools to manage desks, rooms, parking, floor plans, policies and utilisation, while IT can take advantage of Microsoft SSO and, where required, Entra ID-based SCIM provisioning and Outlook integration.
See Viewteam in Microsoft Teams
If your organisation already works in Microsoft Teams, you can try Viewteam in the same environment your employees use every day. See how desk, room and parking booking works with interactive floor plans and Microsoft integration.
Try Viewteam free for 30 days. No credit card required.